Many people compare our monthly subscription costs with simple hosting costs provided by a traditional website hosting company, BUT we actually offer a whole lot more than just hosting.

The Zeald MOnthly Costs – A Breakdown

What the Zeald monthly subscription fee covers.

1. Research & Development (R&D)

Continual updates, modifications and enhancements to the core Zeald website system.

We are continually updating, improving and investing in our core website system. Your website will be built on top of this system and you will benefit from this ongoing investment. The ongoing investment is funded out of the monthly fees that are paid by all our customers. Essentially, you benefit not only from the monthly fee you pay but the fee paid by all our customers. Examples of the type of continual updates we often do are as follows:

• If a new version of a major internet browser is released we will change our website system to help your website work correctly in the new browser.
• If Google or another major search engine changes the way it indexes websites we will change our core system to ensure your website is correctly indexed by the search engine.
• The regular creation of new viruses and security threats online means that your website security is paramount. If we discover that such developments have created a security flaw or weakness relating to the technology used by your website, we will fix this so that your website security is not compromised.
• If you are processing orders through your website and the bank changes the way their system operates when processing credit card transactions we will fix this so that credit card transactions can continue to be processed successfully.

We are always enhancing our current features and adding new features to our website system. Many of these enhancements and new features you will receive for no extra charge as they become available. Examples of this recently are;

• Advanced pricing levels allowing for VIP/Wholesale pricing as well as retail pricing within the same website and controlled by Member login.
• Quantity Breaks – special pricing for different quantities of product.
• Simple Options which allows changes to colours, sizes, weights etc to alter the pricing.
• Advanced Options which allow multi-variant matrixes for complex pricing structures.
• Order entry Page which allows the website owner to enter an order and process payments through a secure and efficient process at the back-end of the website instead of through the customer interface.
• Google redirects which allow a website owner to benefit from previous relationships built via a previous website.
• Autoresponders which allow for tailor made automated communication with a visitor initiated by the visitors actions.
• Expanded configurability on Product pages allowing for ‘fast order’ or ‘normal order’ to suit different business styles and ordering processes.
• A Budgeting page to allow the website owner to budget for sales and traffic and track this via a user friendly reporting system.
• Google Analytics integration to allow for advanced reporting and information.
• Developer API to provide the ability for a large range of other software such as accounting packages (MYOB, Quickbooks etc) to ‘communicate’ with the website directly allowing for increased cost savings, efficiencies and business process advantages.
• Access Control allowing only specific nominated parties to view certain pages or products.
• Automated Invoice generation.
• Image Importer for those who have bulk images.
• Batch load product importer to save time and money, this allows the website owner to upload from an excel spreadsheet.
• Integration of new payment gateways and payment gateway methods
• Upgrades to many of the addon products such as Wishlists, Reminders, Dropshipping and Image Gallery.
• And numerous additional preferences for configuring how the website works.

Zeald also makes use of many ‘open-source’ website components that are developed around the world. We integrate these ‘open-source’ components into our core website systems to ensure that you obtain further advantages as a Zeald website owner.

For a list of the recent updates to the Zeald website system, Please see our Whats New Blog

Extensive range of inbuilt tools and features

We provide an extensive range of inbuilt tools and features along with many add-ons and additional services to consistently improve your website and online return on investment.

• A large range of measurement and reporting tools providing accurate, timely and easy to review reports on the performance of your site. This information is crucial to completing ongoing incremental improvements to your website.
• An easy to use ‘content management system’ that provides you with the ability to create unlimited web pages on your website and puts you in control, giving you the flexibility to create or update every element of content on the website.
• A wide range of website tools built into your website that are relevant to your organisations online needs (please note, the specific features vary with the website solution you choose). Such as;

1. Custom designed homepage (all sites)
2. Unlimited content pages (all sites)
3. Unlimited product pages
4. Product comparison
5. Product image gallery
6. Product options
7. Simple pricing management (Retail & VIP Pricing, Quantity Breaks)
8. Advanced Pricing Management (Unlimited Pricing Levels, Pricing by Customer Group)
9. Internal Search Facility
10. Secure Shopping Cart and Checkout
11. Account Logins (provide access to restricted areas and VIP pricing) – Membership & Access Control
12. Enquiry Form
13. Refer-a-Friend facilities
14. Simple Automated Freight Calculation
15. Currency Conversion (Pop-up)
16. Import/Export Tools & Developer API
17. Automated Invoice Generation
18. Multiple dispatch notification
19. Automated Search Engine Sitemaps
20. Up-sell and Cross-sell Facilities
21. Time Limited Special Offers & Promotions
22. Simple Inventory Management
23. On Account Ordering (purchase orders etc)
24. Discussion Forums
25. Customisable Enquiry Forms

2. Support

Extensive ongoing website support including the following:

• Access to our online Learning Centre which includes help videos/manuals, how-to articles and website advice and guidance.
• Phone and email support, 9-5, Monday to Friday provided by the New Zealand based Zeald Support Team. Our Support Team can assist you to diagnose and resolve any website problems you might be experiencing. They can also guide you in the use any of the Zeald website features and provide advice and guidance on improving your websites day to day performance.
• Access to after-hours support engineers in the case of a major disruption to your websites operation.

3. Hosting

High level, enterprise grade, website hosting

The Zeald hosting architecture has been carefully designed and tested to provide a high level of fault tolerance and availability. Every server function and item of data is replicated across several servers, ensuring the maximum possible level of fault tolerance.
The hosting architecture runs on multiple clusters of servers, currently hosted in various data centres in Auckland, Australia, USA and UK. Each physical server is then divided into a much larger number of virtual machines.

The Zeald hosting architecture provides a number of key benefits:

• Scalability – New servers can be and are regularly added into this cluster as demand requires. A significant amount of the capacity within our hosting cluster (approximately 50%) is dynamically and automatically assigned to different groups of websites as needed. This means that should a website have an unexpectedly large load spike (which can happen for a variety of reasons including malicious activity or simply highly successful marketing campaigns!) the system will automatically adapt to account for this change.

• Performance – The system balances load over a number of servers – this means that higher performance can be gained than from one server alone.

• High availability – Any server within the Zeald hosting infrastructure can be removed (or even physically destroyed!) without interruption to hosting services. All of the servers within the system are provided with at least one live replica – should a server fail monitoring will automatically detect the failure and fail-over to the replica.

• Full redundancy of website data and information – All data and website information is mirrored across multiple redundant servers. Website backups occur every 24 hours with a weekly backup stored in a highly secure, offsite vault to maximise data protection.

In addition to the Zeald hosting architecture, all servers are located in a high security, professional data centre which includes the following:

• Power backup systems including battery backup and auto-startup diesel generator.
• Multiple, redundant internet connection suppliers to minimise outage risks.
• Climate control systems to regulate temperature and humidity for maximum performance.
• Fire detection and suppression systems to minimise fire risk.
• Highly secure locations that include24 hour surveillance and monitoring, re-enforced doors and windows, double-layer concrete walls, steel mesh wall structure and concrete pole building supports.

In addition to this, all our servers are monitored on a 24/7 basis to minimise the extent of a website outage.

Full redundancy of website data and information.

Every item of data within the Zeald hosting system is duplicated a number of times:

• RAID 1 (mirroring) – all data is stored on multiple disks within each server to protect it against drive failure.
• Replication – all data (both files and databases) is replicated in real-time to at least one hot replica server – in the event of a server failure the system can be failed over to this replica automatically and near-instantly (typically within 5 seconds)

Every client’s website is backed up on a nightly basis. The backups are stored on a separate backup server within each hosting cluster. Every backup is stored for at least 30 days. These backups provide protection against accidental modification or destruction of the website data.

In addition to this, backups are also synchronised weekly to a highly secure, offsite vault to maximise data protection. Should a major disaster destroy one of our hosting facilities, we still have the potential to restore our client’s websites on new hardware.

A website interface is provided to enable customers to manually download a backup of the entire website, including all databases, images & files and code and configuration. This is provided in an encrypted file to avoid potential data compromise should this file be stored in a public location. Downloading and storing this backup file ensures that organisations can meet any regulatory or internal requirements around data retention or backup.

Optional domain name and email hosting

The hosting of Domain Names is not included in the monthly fee, this is an additional cost and some of our clients choose to have their domain hosted with other providers. Hosting of the domain name and domain name email addresses can be done via the Zeald Domain & Email Manager. Click here to see a summary of the fees for domain name hosting

The security of knowing you’re with the best.

The security of knowing that your website supplier is Zeald, New Zealand’s largest and fastest growing provider of website design, online marketing and e-business consulting services to small to medium sized businesses. Established in 2000, you have the security of knowing that your website is provided by the same company that currently provides website services to over 2000 New Zealand businesses.