In the next couple of months we are making some major changes, these will affect billing, support and end users hosting accounts. Below is a break down of some of the key changes.
Support System
Currently support is dealt with using an internal system, we are replacing this with a new external ticketing system.
This means when you email, a ticket will be generated, you will be notified.
Basically the benefit is faster support, easier internal support for multiple staff, and less chance of any support requests being missed.
Billing System
Once the support system is live we will be rolling out a new fully automated billing system.
This system will allow you to manage the payment of the services we supply you. When you order any additional services they will be consolidated into one system, this includes domain renewal and purchases. The new system is vastly different from the current system, and will aid you as well as us in managing payments. However there will be a migration period where we will firstly be altering our website and reseller system to allow to all purchases to be made with the new system, and secondly migrating customers to the new billing system. The new system will allow for immediate domain renewal and purchasing. If you have multiple accounts with us, we will aim to consolidate all the separate billing into one account. We will do this by sorting the payments via e-mail address. If you wish to keep any services separate (I.E. you purchase one for personal and one for business) please let us know so we can ensure we create two separate accounts.
Hosting Control Panel
Once the support and billing systems are live, the next phase will be the hosting control panel.
We have always been a bespoke hosting provider, something a little different from the norm. first class support, always looking to offer something outside of the box etc... As time has gone on, we have gained a large amount of customers who want more of the norm. Customers who prefer everything in a nice shinny control panel, and don’t like to ask us to do things for them.
As a result we have two types of customer, the highly technical who like doing their own thing, working with us to set-up custom solutions, and the regular hosting customer who just want things to work, don’t really care about the underlying technology but want to be able to point and click to do the things they require without needing to understand it.
So having listened to the customers who we are not catering for as well as we should, we are installing a new control panel for mainstream hosting customers. This will integrate with the billing software. Customers will be able to do most things they require online without the need of contacting us. This in turn free's us up to work more on the custom hosting.
Bespoke Hosting (Custom Solutions)
With the introduction of the new hosting control panel leads nicely onto the bespoke hosting accounts.
Main stream control panels are great for "most" customers, but for customers who require their own instance of MySQL etc.. a standard control panel doesn't work.
So as well as offering hosting under a control panel system, we will continue to offer bespoke hosting accounts. These will give customers more flexibility and choice in the hosting they require.
PHP6 Hosting
One of the bespoke hosting options we intend to supply will be a developer account, this will consist of using bleeding edge software I.E.
The latest php (6), the latest MySQL, the latest Apache etc....
These will not be suitable for production hosting environments, but will be designed for customers who are devoloping their applications for use on newer software.
