January 1, 2018, New York -- Happy New Year! 2018 is here and we are very excited to share with you what's going on here at Westlinks Online.
Thanks for subscribing to our newsletter. This is the fourth edition and we are excited to have you on board!
What's new this month?
December was HUGE! There were major changes made to our platform. Here's the rundown...
New Server Ordering Process
After a middle-of-the night epiphany, it became clear that we needed a complete make-over in how we deliver our server orders. Rather than going through the shopping cart and paying a flat monthly charge, you can now order a server on the fly, operate it for any length of time you wish and then only pay for the time you used it. Need a server for a week? Not a problem. You only have to pay for that week, not the whole month.
Corresponding New Billing System
The daily usage charge makes a lot more sense and conforms with how most cloud hosting is operated. Some providers charge by the hour. We don't consider that necessary for our business model at this time.
If you keep your server for a full month (as most website customers do), pricing converts to the monthly fee and never exceeds the monthly list price. This keeps it predictable and convenient.
Finally, all server usage is billed on the first of every month for every customer. Other charges such as domain names, software installation and consulting are paid for at the time of the purchase.
Enom Integration
Enom the domain name registrar service we use to provide in-app domain name registration directly to our customers (you) has been fully integrated.
You can now do these activities:
- Buy and register domain names
- Manage host settings
- Manage email MX settings
- Manage DNS including your own nameservers
- Manage contact information
- Transfer to/from other registrars
- Set auto-renew
These features are available on request but not integrated into the platform:
- Purchase SSL certificates
- ID Protect
Social Media Marketing Update
Olive has been doing a phenomenal job on social media. Instagram is popping with now over 100 followers and growing quickly. She has established our Facebook page, posts to Twitter and is working on G+ and Pinterest as well. This activity helps to establish name recognition and eventually customer attraction. It's very exciting to see it come to life.
January Plans
Communication Options
The latest project we're working on and nearly have complete is the ability to control how you would prefer notifications to arrive. Email is the default but it will soon be possible to choose SMS text messages and Facebook Messenger as well. SMS is in testing now and should be released in the next few days.
Event Notifications
We now retain all notifications on the website so you can visit your profile and see what has been sent out to you there. Some messages are too long for the 160 character limitation of SMS so we provide a link in the text message to the full message in your profile.
We invite you to log in and investigate this new section and look forward to your feedback!
Feedback
Do you have any suggestions or ideas of how you would like this to work? We welcome your thoughts and suggestions. Send them to suggestions@westlinks.com. Thanks!
