How do you keep customers informed?

XN-Matt

With cPanel/Plesk which are largely customer per server setups, it is easy to see the server they are on via the billing platform and then sync mailing lists so if there is an issue, or planned work, you can email those specific customers and only them.

With Enhance we lose this ability as they could be on four different servers for four different services, per site container or even sub-account.

We would still like to keep the ability to email a customer specific to a server they are on so wondering how anyone else is doing such a thing? i.e where are you pulling the data from?

I can't see an API call which would allow us to pull all server hostnames (as defined on the server page) that are used within the package as a csv, or formatted value which could be used and imported to the billing engine and then later to a mailing list sync for example which could be segmented.

On extension to this, similar to the single server nature of cPanel/Plesk, a status page was easy as we could name the server in question and customers would generally know what they were on. We can't do that now as the control panel gives no mention of server names only IPs and they are not very user friendly, especially when you may have many similar IPs (and in the case of v6, long strings).

CloudyBlake

I could see a case for an internal and optional external status page of all servers in the cluster.

Internally, I'd like to know what server doing what. For now the home page for admin kind of covers this.

For customers, I would rather it be grouped by role, web, email, dns, etc. If a server in that role is having an issue then it's flagged. (I could see this getting a little tricky)

XN-Matt

Potentially a start but for those who want to contact those customers by either means ahead of time (i.e planned work), there seems to be no way to do this proactively.

Equally, let's say you have servers and the CP one location which is having issues, other locations may be fine. Those customers could be in the dark.

CloudyBlake

XN-Matt To me this would be better handled by a mailing list, but you'd need a way to export all the user emails from that enhance server to drop into the mailing list.

XN-Matt

CloudyBlake I agree, hence my original post 🙂

It's what we do with cPanel now as we always know what server any specific account/user is on, not possible to know programmatically (as far as I can see) with Enhance.

Although we don't need the emails. The way i'd see it working is respective billing module could poll this data when it collects usage information (so it is updated regularly). We'd sync our mailing list data as we do now with said billing engine and then pull that extra data to create segments i.e "web users on server xyz".

CloudyBlake

XN-Matt It looks like WHMCS allows you to send out email campaigns based on server.

XN-Matt

WHMCS won't know the actual server being used, it only knows/sees the control panel server.... I suspect the same for other billing engines too, as well as those made in-house.

(It does work for cPanel for example where it connects directly to each end server).

CloudyBlake

XN-Matt True.

I setup a server in WHMCS for each service. For Enhance, I just have one so far, so I can see where this might get tricky if there is more than one Enhance webserver.

XN-Matt

+and just to add on this. For a reseller, the same call would need to collect all potential servers that their sub-accounts as listed on and return in the string. At a basic level, just a list and maybe further expansion would be package + list.

twest

We use BetterStack uptime monitoring, which also has a status page you can setup for customers to see status of all your services you wish to display, it's highly customizable. When doing major updates we'll announce via social media and our status page with as much notice as possible, then another reminder notice 24 hours in advance.

XN-Matt

The problem I’m trying to address is contacting those specific customers directly instead of just post on status pages or alert out to those not affected by planned work or a service issue.

We have status pages and socials but have found that people rarely check these for planned works.

twest

XN-Matt best bet for that is going to be tagging each subscriber in your newsletter services so you can easily send a notif to just those effected clients.

XN-Matt

twest agree but no way to isolate which customers….