FROM THE FOUNDER: GOING INTO 2020
Preparing for 2020
This post intends to prepare all our clients for 2020.
I like December, most of our clients take a break, others use the slower pace to work on those things they hardly have time for.
One of the things I always do is to take a hard look at Cyberdevs. During this process we are making a lot of changes this year with the goal to scale.
The highlight of my year is, I won the largest Artificial Intelligence programming competition in South Africa (Details Here).
This achievement shows that I have become a first class programmer, since writing my first “Hello World” program over a decade ago.
All Service Changes going into 2020
Accounts
I always put product first and this has caused the following problems for accounts:
- We do some work is not billed for (Un-adjusted quotes and favors).
- I also leave clients to pay in their own timing.
In 2019 we had some sites which operation costs we carried for a few months. Only to have the business close down with no real means of collecting the funds due. Which were avoidable.
Important:To keep accounts fair to both Cyberdevs and our clients, we are enforcing the following:
A) All website development, updates and maintenance will be time (minute) based.
This should solve scenarios where clients “overpay” or “underpay” for services.
B) We are implementing auto account suspension for any hosting outstanding for more than 3 months.
C) We are implementing a loyalty reward system where clients earn points for all payments. Points earned will be influenced by the amount of work done over a period of time. So the more work is done, the higher the earned points. These points can be redeemed for products or services as a “thank you” for doing continued business with us.
D) We are rebuilding our Client Account and Admin Interface to accommodate the above.
Hosting
Hosting fees will remain unchanged.
Other Changes:
– Important: In order to avoid a 10-20% hosting increase due to cPanel licensing changes, we are changing our main website control panel from cPanel to Interworx. The interworx control panel has all the features cPanel has and I personally like its interface a lot more.
– All website security was completely redone mid 2019. These efforts have kept our primary servers clean for the last few months.
Support
Email and Website support is included for all hosting clients.
Important: Regarding Emails:
Going into 2020 we will charge a support fee in cases where email problems were caused by problems outside of Cyberdevs’ control.
An email account has 3 parts: Server, Network and Client. If the server works and problems were found to be Client side (Outlook Corruption, Network blocking ports) then we will also charge a service fee.
Regarding Websites:
We will charge a support fee to repair websites which is maintained by any person whose not Cyberdevs Staff.
Web Design
Our Web Design packages will include an allocated amount of time (minutes) for special requests. To combat cases where we receive a small amount of website specifications with a large amount of the requirements only being made known to us after quote acceptance.
Website Development (Website Programming)
Any work involving PHP, SQL Databases and Interactive JavaScript programming will have a 1.5x billed time offset.
The salary requirement for programmers skilled in these areas are much higher than normal development. We introduced the offset to ensure we can employ more developers as we scale. Without the department taking unnecessary strain due to higher salary demands.
All general website update rates will remain unchanged.