Working with OpenSure: How do we do things, and what are we about?

We’re about getting things working by listening and helping. So instead of telling you what we want, here we answer the questions new and potential customers actually ask us.

The list continues to grow and the answers change as things develop and improve so this is where you will get current information that reflects in your terms what we do.

Our renewably powered systems and servers are managed by us and are housed in data centres in the UK and EU.

Support is available 24/7 – administrative support (eg domain purchases, additional email addresses, general enquiries) is available during office hours, technical support is available between 7am and 10pm and our emergency support crew is on stand-by overnight to handle major platform-related problems (needless to say, this is a very rare event!). Support is conducted primarily by email because of the need to have a written record of events. We have our own Support team that is in constant communication to look after all clients.

We impose no limits on traffic volume, page views or website size as we allocate space in the first place based on our assessment of your need. Should anything change unexpectedly we will contact the client to discuss the options.

Please note we are platform specialists rather than web designers, so while will do what we can to help with web queries and provide online tutorials of many popular WordPress functions and plugins, undertaking web design forms no part of our agreement as things stand and is ultimately the responsibility of the client. Our responsibility is to prepare, maintain, update and troubleshoot platforms and to keep email running.

Email services provided by us use the Zimbra platform, and we provide tutorials for configuring many desktop and mobile email clients to run Zimbra.

Your annual bill will cover all expected care and maintenance and support calls and there will be no extra billing unless a project or expense is agreed between OpenSure and the client.

We don’t look after or configure clients’ hardware (including mobile devices) or office computing services, but we are always happy to make recommendations and give advice where we can

Like many businesses we have several bases of operations.

We use our renewably powered systems and data centre presences in the UK and EU. We have an administrative base in Milton Keynes and have office and technical and support staff working across the UK in places as far flung as Nottingham, Herefordshire and the South West.

We are part of a small group of businesses under the umbrella of Keepnet Ltd which has been providing internet and online services since 1997

OpenSure charges are based on simple blocks of use. For most small businesses the cost is £395pa + VAT, but please see the tariff information at the foot of the page for other options.

As an example, that would buy you five mailboxes with 10GB storage, as many shared calendars, shared contact lists, shared tasks and document libraries as you need, website hosting and a domain name, with everything supported and managed by us.

Once you decide to use our services simply contact us and arrange for a callback to discuss what you want when you want, 9am to 9pm. We will help design the package that best meets your needs.

Once we understand your needs we will configure all the services you need to get up and running including setting up email accounts, user accounts and configuring settings – even your domain name and more. All you need to do is log in and get going.

Any changes or additions are just an email away and you need never get your hands dirty in the technical underbelly.

To complement our core hosting service, we include the following:

Domain name registration, DNS, mail relays, shareable and collaborative mailboxes, calendars, contacts, tasks, documents, content management systems, account systems, on-line surveys, customer relationship management, databases, list services, instant messaging, virtual desktops and virtual offices.

Any of these can form part of your package and can be changed and amended as your business grows.

From OpenSure's point of view email services are any service that is involved in the presentation, storage and movement of email.

This can include handling the setting up the DNS to allow for incoming email on servers, providing the servers to send or receive email on the Internet or storing and delivering the email to you. It may also include anti-spam filters, anti-malware filters, spam prevention and more.

OpenSure need to ensure that you have safe and consistent access to your email services so we ensure things can be encrypted, are compliant to Internet standards and flexible. Email is thesedays often bundled and connected to other related functions and processes such as calendars, contact lists, tasks etc. These are generally in fact part of our collaboration services but the two terms email and collaboration services often become combined and imply each other.

We provide a fully managed open source version of Zimbra so you get a full collaboration service in one. We set it up for you so you can use your domain email addresses and as many aliases and distribution lists as you need.

Zimbra provides a complete shareable business grade service for collaboration offering email, contacts, calendars, tasks and documents in a controlled feature rich but web based way. You can use Zimbra in the same way you use old email solutions using simple IMAP email client which works well and allows you to synchronize emails across many different devices and email clients but none will quite give you the full on experience of Zimbra using the web. Closest is the free open source Zimbra Desktop that allows your Mac, Windows or Linux PC to work offline with dozens of different accounts simultaneously.

So with Zimbra you can control, use and share multiple calendars, contacts, mailboxes, tasks and document libraries simply and easily from any device with a web browser, even your mobile phone.

Nextcloud started off a bit like a private Dropbox service with all the control and few of the limits. It is now a core part of many businesses day to day collaboration service for file sharing, built-in web based office apps, project controls, calendars, contacts, Kanban tools, video, voice and text chat, shared screens and even digital signing and much more.

Since 2016 and the start of Nextcloud (and before with OwnCloud 2011) OpenSure have managed and offered Nextcloud services and instances for all types of organizations.

The result is the ability to disconnect from large scale third-parties like Google and Microsoft or even Dropbox and other filesharing apps and regain control over your data and access to it. Its also federated so you can connect and share with other peoples Nextcloud instances with similar levels of control and open some access to the general public internet and partners.

Although fully accessed via any modern safe web browser, it also has free native desktop clients and apps syncing and working with Nextcloud on Windows, Mac and Linux as well as IOS and Android so all your bases are covered.

We can offer from single accounts to large private Nextcloud instances or manage your existing service for you, wherever it happens to be hosted.

We are always looking for new ways to meet the needs of customers and so if you want something new then please do ask us.

We have some 60 different packages under constant review and many of them are available as a service. We will always consider anything that you are interested in and will try to fulfil the need if feasible.

Of course we will always need to ensure that the software is properly maintained and is properly open source.

We can provide just one service, several or lots!

We know some people like to use other providers as well as us, while others aren’t ready to use more than a few basic parts of a service.

We charge our basic fee and encourage you to use the services as needed to get the end result you need.

Many customers have existing services from other providers and we are used to working with third parties and migrating from them. Whether it’s an existing domain, website or email service, we can help you migrate to our services with the least disruption possible, although sometimes subject to varying third party consent and assistance!

During our initial chat about your business we can discover if you have any services that need to be taken into account and deal with that with you and them.

penSure likes to feel more like your own external IT department so please burden us with your problems!

We offer advice whenever we can but anything outside of our services is not backed up by anything other than our best endeavour. In other words we can’t warranty the advice given on third party products or services.

If you want full-on consultancy then we can offer that too but it isn’t part of the on-line package and is quoted separately often on a fixed fee basis.