Rackspace Reseller Supports Over 400 Clients

Reseller Program, Technology, 10-50

Openquest Information Systems implements multimedia solutions for institutional websites and online businesses helping clients find the right technologies and software to address their specific business needs.

• Challenge
  Excessive downtime and provisioning limits with previous provider
• Solution
  Rackspace Reseller Program with Reseller Control Panel and dedicated reseller support team
• Results
  Gained 20 hours a week previously spent on email maintenance and currently manages over 400 accounts

Email Wastes 20 Hours a Week

Openquest Information Systems, based in Portugal, is a software development firm focused on website development. In addition to providing web development services, they also provide email hosting and solution implementation services to their clients.

Initially, they managed email on their local servers. “When we were handling our email internally, we had a lot of problems with spam and viruses,” says Fernando Silva, Team Manager and Developer at Openquest. Email management was eating up nearly 20 hours a week. Because they also manage email for many of their clients, they concluded that outsourcing email to a trusted provider would provide more reliable email not only for their business, but also the businesses they support resulting in greater customer loyalty.

They selected a private email service provider in Portugal. With that service provider, according to Fernando, “we experienced a lot of downtime.” And downtime for them, meant downtime for their clients. In addition to excessive downtime, the former provider imposed limits on the amount of email accounts they could maintain.

Their control panel wasn’t conducive to managing multiple accounts. To perform administrative tasks for their email customers, they would have to login and out of each account separately. Spread over nearly 400 accounts, the time it takes to login in and out adds up quickly.

Fernando needed an email provider to deliver business-grade service for his organization and the businesses they support. He also needed a provider with an understanding of the administrative needs of email resellers. Ideally, he wanted the ability to manage multiple accounts from a centralized control panel.

Reseller Support with Flexible Terms Makes the Difference

Fernando found Rackspace’s flexible terms with no long term contracts very appealing. “We looked at another solution but we liked being able to acquire the Rackspace service and if we weren’t satisfied, we could cancel because there were no long term contracts.” Rackspace’s philosophy on customer satisfaction doesn’t rely on enforcing long-term contracts to maintain customers. Rather, Rackspace relies on delivering outstanding service every day to keep customers coming back because they want to, not because they’ve signed a contract.

As a member of the Rackspace Reseller Program, Fernando can scale up to accommodate his growing client-bases’ email needs without buying more equipment, hiring more staff, or being constrained by provider-enforced restrictions. Rackspace’s experience working with resellers shapes the development of the Reseller Control Panel layout, the tiered offerings available through the reseller program, and the availability of dedicated reseller support.

Hosting 400 Accounts with Rackspace

With Rackspace, Fernando can add unlimited client email accounts and manage them all from a dedicated Reseller Control Panel. The old provider limited Openquest to just 80 accounts. With Rackspace, they now manage about 400 accounts. “There’s no way we could host 400 accounts internally and our old provider couldn’t accommodate us either,” says Fernando.

In the Rackspace Control Panel, Fernando manages all of his accounts. With one login and password, he can access all of his client accounts and their internal mailboxes. “The Control Panel was easy to learn and easy to use,” says Fernando.

The few times he’s had to contact our Fanatical Support^® team, “they’ve always solved the problem.” He mainly consumes support via our online support ticket system and gets fast results. He can also access support via live, phone support, or live chat 24×7x365. Comparing Rackspace to their previous in-house email management efforts and disappointing experience with a previous provider, Fernando says, “Rackspace’s email service works smoothly, without trouble. It just works like it’s supposed to and allows us to continue growing our business.”