We provide a rich suite of hosted applications to every customer. Fully managed, secure, fast, highly available, and locally supported.
It's a lot more than just a web hosting service. We work with you to strategically design a digital marketing and operations platform that suits your business. Then we keep it humming and help it grow. Fully managed with 24x7 monitoring and local, personalised support, our advanced network is geared for speed, security, reliability, and cost effectiveness.
If something goes wrong with your website and your database crashes, who should you call - your IT manager, the hosting company, or your website developer? We don’t think you should ever have to ask that question. We take a direct stake in the reliability of your digital framework.
A guiding principle behind the design of the DDSN hosted digital platform is value through optimisation. Manage costs, security, support and service levels just once for all your websites and online tools.
What's in the Hosted Platform?
Everything below is included with every digital platform hosting service. It's not a shopping list, you can have it all.
Website and Domain Name Hosting
Rock solid hosting for one or several websites, applications, and domain names. Monitored, secure, and fast.
Shared servers for smaller businesses, ranging up to dedicated platforms for bigger business requirements. It's all built on the same foundation: the DDSN private cloud.
www.yourdomain.com
Content Management Systems
We offer standard support for cm3 Acora CMS, Wordpress, Elcom CMS, and Kentico CMS.
Each supported CMS platform can be covered by a dedicated technical support and managed upgrades plan. We'll keep your software up-to-date and in tune. Or we'll host your favorite CMS platform under a custom arrangement.
Email Direct Marketing
Each DDSN hosting service includes access to the DDSN Campaign Manager. It's a simple but powerful subscription lists and email campaign management tool. Unlimited subscribers, lists, and emails. It's all included.
Can I just use MailChimp?
You sure can. It's a fantastic product, and there are others like it too. We integrate our systems with them all the time, and we're delighted to support your digital platform if it includes MailChimp or in fact any external product. But MailChimp costs extra money if you've got more than a few subscribers. The DDSN Campaign Manager is included in the hosting fee, so it's a great alternative.
Email Delivery Server
Provision and support of a robust SMTP server for campaign and transactional email delivery is part of every DDSN hosted platform. We provide our own optimised email servers, and for advanced or high volume sending needs we'll connect you to a dedicated SMTP platform.
Don't I get this with every hosting service?
Probably not. Every host should give you an SMTP server for your website to send email from. But few provide real security or support services with it. What happens when something goes wrong? Deliverability of email from your website isn't as simple a thing as you might think. We'll help set up SPF and DKIM records, dedicated IP addresses where needed, and our email servers are optimised and monitored for both marketing campaigns and transactional email delivery.
Analytics
The DDSN Analytics Server provides advanced usage reporting for your websites, e-commerce exercises, and mobile apps. It's all securely hosted behind the DDSN.net firewalls. If your website runs on cm3 Acora CMS or another supported framework analytics are directly integrated, and if not we can help you set them up.
Can I just use Google Analytics?
You sure can. It's a fantastic product, and it's free. We integrate Google Analytics into web projects all the time. But you don't own your data, Google does. You can't extract your data or back it up, you don't know where your data is held, and it's not easy to change accounts if you ever need to. There are some other drawbacks too, in the areas of security, support, and customisation capability. Feel free to ask.
Many of our customers run the DDSN Analytics Server and Google Analytics side by side. It doesn't cost extra to use them both.
Backups and Disaster Recovery
We back up your websites, databases, files, and hosted apps. Automated weekly backups of critical data is the starting point, ranging up to custom backup services, off site storage, and nightly incremental backups for those with greater needs. Recovery of your website from a backup is included in the service in case of disaster.
Dedicated Monitoring and Response
We don't just monitor the servers, we monitor the applications too - 24x7. Our monitoring agents are constantly watching all of your websites and online tools to detect any problems, and we respond pro-actively if any arise.
Streaming Video Delivery Network
Each DDSN hosting service includes access to an advanced video CDN (Content Delivery Network). Easily upload videos for automatic encoding and conversion to streaming formats. Host public and private videos. Embed videos in your websites and apps.
File Storage and Digital Asset Management
Upload and securely share files. The DDSN cloud file management tool gives you your own file Dropbox, hosted behind the firewall and supported by service level agreements.
Marketing Automation, Landing Pages, Lead Forms, Search Engine Optimisation
The world leading Mautic marketing automation tool is available on the DDSN digital platform for no additional charge. Mautic provides drip feed communications, contact and lead management, social media monitoring, campaign management and marketing reports.
Customer Relationship Management
Many of our projects involve integration with customer relationship management platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce. For those customers without a separate CRM in place, the industry leading and feature rich open source application SuiteCRM is available on the DDSN digital platform without additional charge.
Learning Management System
We often work with professional associations and education providers. The leading open source learning management system Moodle is available on the DDSN digital platform without additional charge.
Security - SSL, SFTP, Payment Solutions
+ Advanced Firewalls, DDoS Protection, Active Penetration Testing
Securing your digital tools is a core part of the DDSN service. We'll work with you to set up SSL certificate(s) to encrypt communications on your domain name. We provide FTP for file transfers to and from your site, but only the secure kind - SFTP. Hosting of payment gateway components is included for no extra charge.
PCI compliance is available by special arrangement.
Wait, don't all hosts give me these advanced security services?
No, most hosts don't! The DDSN private cloud is protected by a uniquely advanced security paradigm. Active DDoS protection is rare - e.g. you don't get it on Amazon or Microsoft Azure. And our network is regularly subjected to active penetration testing by third party security experts.
That's why we're hosting for customers like Telstra, Goulburn-Murray Water, and the Police Association of NSW. The same security framework covers your site too, at no extra charge.
Other Applications & Open Source
We're adding apps to our official support list over time. We're also delighted to consider integrating your preferred applications into the DDSN.net hosting and support systems, or just hosting your preferred software under a custom arrangement. Just let us know what you need.
Some of our customers are already running their own project management tools, wikis and knowledge management apps, intranet/extranet portals, chat servers, events management portals, private social collaboration networks, and other things.
Servicing the Platform
Support and Managed Upgrades are Included
All officially supported applications are provided with "break/fix" technical support and managed upgrade plans, making sure your software is always up-to-date and problems can be solved without additional costs.
Plain old hosting with pay-as-you-go upgrade and support services are also available for those on a tight budget.
Development, Staging, and Production Servers
Whether your project is managed by DDSN, internally, or by another support vendor, every DDSN hosted platform offers development and staging server environments to support robust application development and publishing processes.
All DDSN code is deployed via an enterprise version control system, and we make that system available to external developers when needed too.
Collaboration and Support for All Your Technology Vendors
If third party designers, developers, or other vendors are involved in your process, we'll collaborate with them to offer the best possible balance between fully outsourced, robust managed services, and the flexibility your support experts need to continue to develop and grow your systems.
Frontline Support - The First Point of Call
If something goes wrong with your website and your database crashes, who should you call - your IT manager, the hosting company, or your website developer? We don’t think you should ever have to ask that question. We take a direct stake in the reliability of your platform, learning how it works and how to keep it running, whether or not we built it.
Service Level Agreement
The DDSN digital platform hosting service is covered by a formal Service Level Agreement (SLA).
World Class Data Centre
Low level hardware and networking support and monitoring is provided by our long term partner at Nexon in Australia's premier data centre environments in Melbourne and Sydney.