Saving Time and Money: How Solity Optimised Everlast Windows and Doors IT Infrastructure and Online Presence
About Everlast Windows and Doors
As a small business Everlast have slowly grown there online presence with there office manager knowing enough about IT and an online presence to start setting up a web site emails, social media and systems.
However, Bianca was starting to feel a little out of her depth so contacted Solity to take advantage of our offer of a free review of their IT structure, systems and current solutions. They wanted to add extra email accounts with their current provider.
The issue was that their existing solution was on a well known web hosting platform where the first mail box was free. Adding another three was going to cost an extra £30 per month, not a massive amount but as the business is starting to grow, so will there need for extra mail accounts and the costs will just snowball.
We just wanted to create some new email accounts, but we were unsure what the best options were.
Problems with SaaS
There are multiple businesses in the SaaS (software as a service) marketplace and most offer a cheap or even free solution to get you subscribing. They know that if your business grows, the simplest option is to expand on their platform and that’s where they costs start to rocket. Solity review what’s best for your business, not your software provider. We offer solutions that will give you the most flexibility for the least cost, allowing your business to expand with being shackled by your choice in software provision.
The Review Process
*We should note creating as many email accounts as you like on a vps server is possible, however there can be extra costs if they take up more space than the VPS ‘s allotted disk space.
We also suggested that to make the website transfer more seamless that we look at the domain name, we pointed out that typing Dave@everlastwindowsanddoors.com was quite a long email address for customers to type and it might be easier to change the domain to something shorter. An issue with their Website builder solution was that you couldn’t easily back up the server and move the site onto another platform.
We wanted to make sure that Bianca could easily maintain and support the website so we suggested the hosting site had WordPress on it, which is a simple content management system that offers flexible ways of managing websites.
Building the VPS and transferring the website.
Everlast commissioned Solity to build the new server, create a copy of their website and create new email accounts. As we were using the existing hosting company, Everlast were in control of there own server and costs, no monthly hosting costs from Solity.
By changing the domain we could build Everlast a copy of the website without interfering with their current live site. Within a few hours after registering the new domain Solity had built the server and created the new email accounts.
We then replicated the original website manually transferring images and content, adding quality links to ensure the email and telephone numbers could be clicked and quantified.
Hosting your own server
There are lost of companies in the market place that will allow you to rent your own Virtual Private server (VPS) . The advantages of using a cloud solution like this is that they provide you with a basic server that is preconfigured to your needs and then you use just like a shared hosting solution. It can be packed with all sorts of software and features saving time and money.
Other advantages are:
- Increased Control and Customization: Its basically your server, can be configured to meet your needs.
- Improved Performance: It’s not shared so a neighbours well used website does not effect it.
- Scalability: As its virtually hosted, its easy to increase, memory, space or processing power.
- Enhanced Security: server can be configured to restrict access to your requirements.
- Cost-Effective Performance: You get so much more for your money
- Custom Software and Application Compatibility: Can install more on a VPS than on a shared hosting platform
- Automated Backup and Recovery: The host will perform backups daily and maintain the server. No technician required
- Greater Flexibility: you can pick the operating system and software you need.
- Server Support & Expertise: The hosting company normally makes engineers available, who can advise on all sorts of questions and problems.
The Solution - Saving Time and Money
Within a short period of time everlastwindowsanddoors.com became everlastdundee.com, with three new email accounts and a web site redirect. Bianca logs into the server like she did into the hosting site, but now she has more flexibility of a dedicated server and email accounts.
The simplicity of the new domain and the unlimited email accounts have really streamlined our communication. We're no longer worried about escalating costs. Thanks to Solity for their assistance, saving time and money for our business
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