Frequently Asked Questions

Open all Close all
Advice 3 questions
  • What am I paying for with managed apps?

    Your server subscription and data is your property. We simply setup, maintain and protect it on your behalf — based on extensive experience of each system’s best-practice.

    Certainly, you can research and do these things yourself too — although, there is a learning curve, and it might not your core business.

    Outsourcing your remote digital services management frees your focus for your core business. We offer dedicated team of experts, available 24/7.

    We just turned our ecommerce experience into a Prime shopping service, as easy as buying anything, and delivered as it should be.

    Please, enjoy your time-off, and the work you do — while we monitor, maintain and update your app cloud.

    Think of us as your 5-star IT hotel, where the linen is always fresh, the towels fluffy, and room-service always a call away 🙂

  • Can’t I just copy what you do and go direct?

    Sure, we don’t sell secret sauces — we provide apps and hosting at cost, with technical, creative and management services at international industry standard rates, commensurate with our experience and time-efficiency. We learn about your business as you learn about our skills and recommendations.

    You’re not paying for the hours and days to do something, you’re paying for the years of experience it takes to show you how to do these things in hours and days — and you can learn from us, by example, as we go, so you can do the same next time if you enjoy building systems too.

    Everything we offer we explain in great detail, so you can equally do it all yourself — if you have the time and patience to learn it all, of course!

    We believe that what we offer should not be beyond anyone’s understanding or later adoption for in-house management, if you so wish.

    It’s your business, organisation, data and brand assets — so, we only offer apps and services that enable your evolution, without vendor lock-in tactics or per-user pricing that becomes an excessive tax to grow with.

    As you gain economies of scale, your cost-base should reduce as a percentage because that’s your growth and efficiency-made profits to enjoy.

    What Brandlight offers you is experience. We practice what we preach, we use what we offer, we do what we say, and we promote what we also need for our own efficiency and scale.

    Everything you’re looking at, we’ve done before, learned all the best-practices, navigated all the curiosities, and mastered our craft for perfecting your digital infrastructure as if it were our own.

    And if you are driven to learning these things too, why not master them with your own setup?

    We openly invite all experienced experts in their field to join us as partner service providers, working remotely to offer your own setup and maintenance management experience to brands anywhere in the world, with the Brandlight community here to promote, support and protect your good work too.

  • Can you help me with Google, Microsoft or Amazon Services?

    We don’t resell Google, Microsoft & Amazon solutions. They tend to have dedicated resellers limited to their more costly and proprietary closed-source ecosystems, typically designed to lock you into their brand and up-sell pricing per user and feature.

    All our services work alongside any other, without conflict, and separated by subdomain URLs. You can mix & match or migrate as you find each of our alternatives more efficient.

    Our focus is on clients that wish to own their cloud software and keep data close to their teams, with confidence in the security of their data, and portability between all hosts as needs may change and teams grow.

    As proud promoters of open-source freedoms, efficiency, privacy and security, we use and recommend the best and, in our experience, more efficient solutions for your ownership and assurance of continuity.

    All our solutions are priced for unlimited users at no additional charge, since you’re only paying for the hosting resources and maintenance time you actually use.

    Every app is full-featured, with no artificial limitations on usage or extension.

    We can help you migrate away from any other service too, if you choose, with our faster, privacy-focused and GDPR-compliant alternatives.

    Generally, we provide equivalent solutions for a 50%-80% lower cost, so please share any quoting or invoices you have, by clicking the money icon in the top-right on any page, and we’ll return your personal quote for price-comparison.

    Please take a look at these tried & tested enterprise applications in comparison:

Compliance 1 question
  • Where is my data stored?

    You can choose between your own server accounts or to use ours.

    We currently support and recommend Hetzner in Germany & Finland, Scaleway in France & Netherlands, and Contabo in Europe & United States.

    All our providers are chosen for performance, security, privacy and value, with all European hosting providers being GDPR-compliant.

Feature Requests 1 question
  • Can I invest in Brandlight?

    Sure!

    Our investors are our clients and our partner service providers.

    Brandlight isn’t a company, it’s an open-source organisation platform, for networking and connecting clients to service providers — also known as a collective or cooperative, with the low-overhead efficiencies of these direct professional connections to match.

    So, whichever you are, client or provider, working with us is investing in us.

    If you are a brand, business or organisation with digital applications, hosting or support needs, we’d love you to invest by bringing your needs to us to solve, and save you time & money.

    Generally, we are 50-80% lower cost than the equivalent Microsoft, Google or Amazon alternatives, and even lower cost at scale. So, investing your faith in our services, is equally an investment in your own cost-efficiency, with ethical digital services for your team and customers.

    If you design, develop or manage digital services, use the Brandlight platform to offer your apps and services. We only charge the industry standard 10% commission on transactions, which covers the costs of payment-processing, administration and marketing your excellence, and if we can reduce those fees, we will.

    You already invested a little time in reading this far, so thank you. Please spread the word and follow us on Twitter.

Feedback 2 questions
  • How can I trust an outsourced freelancer or consultant?

    All our freelance consultants have their identity and address verified independently by Yoti, so you can be sure who you are working with and their personal accountability for your data-security.

    We personally interview and review the experience and portfolio work of all freelancers. They are either permanent full-time members of the Brandlight team or we’ve tested their services to ensure we are satisfied with their work as their client too.

    As consultants build their client-base, you will see the verified feedback they receive from brands. We’re sure you’ll be happy enough to do the same after your one-off project or 90-day trial period for apps is to your satisfaction.

    If ever you have any issues, questions or concerns, please contact-us by email or chat, we’ll assign a qualified peer for review of their work, and review your briefing to ensure expectations match.

  • What if I don’t like an app for any reason?

    Every self-hosted open-source app that Brandlight offers comes with a 90-day free trial, are billable monthly or annually, zero-notice cancellations to stop all future billing.

    Setups take your on-boarding expert a little time, so setup fees are non-refundable, and unfortunately, we don’t have the facilities yet for partial-refunds on any unused days from cancellation.

    We highly recommend a migration expert if you change your mind between apps — user and data-migration can be quite time-consuming and distracting from your core business.

    We’ve completed many successful migrations before, so can you out of app-limbo sooner, and with less fuss.

Guarantees 1 question
  • How can I trust an outsourced freelancer or consultant?

    All our freelance consultants have their identity and address verified independently by Yoti, so you can be sure who you are working with and their personal accountability for your data-security.

    We personally interview and review the experience and portfolio work of all freelancers. They are either permanent full-time members of the Brandlight team or we’ve tested their services to ensure we are satisfied with their work as their client too.

    As consultants build their client-base, you will see the verified feedback they receive from brands. We’re sure you’ll be happy enough to do the same after your one-off project or 90-day trial period for apps is to your satisfaction.

    If ever you have any issues, questions or concerns, please contact-us by email or chat, we’ll assign a qualified peer for review of their work, and review your briefing to ensure expectations match.

Help 9 questions
  • What am I paying for with managed apps?

    Your server subscription and data is your property. We simply setup, maintain and protect it on your behalf — based on extensive experience of each system’s best-practice.

    Certainly, you can research and do these things yourself too — although, there is a learning curve, and it might not your core business.

    Outsourcing your remote digital services management frees your focus for your core business. We offer dedicated team of experts, available 24/7.

    We just turned our ecommerce experience into a Prime shopping service, as easy as buying anything, and delivered as it should be.

    Please, enjoy your time-off, and the work you do — while we monitor, maintain and update your app cloud.

    Think of us as your 5-star IT hotel, where the linen is always fresh, the towels fluffy, and room-service always a call away 🙂

  • How can we setup a webapp asap?

    That’s quite easy, all we need is the ability to add what’s called an A record or a CNAME record to your domain name hosting.

    You can either put us in contact with whoever manages your domain name, or we can pick up that for you.

    We recommend the following services are good for performance, value and collaborative management, although we can work with any, and help you migrate if you choose to for any reason:

    If you want the full private cloud and email hosting services, we can automate all the domain management for all Brandlight services, so you’ll always have that monitored and maintained by our team 24/7/365, and you don’t need to worry about security of your domains and access to someone that knows what to do if you have any special requests.

  • Can I invest in Brandlight?

    Sure!

    Our investors are our clients and our partner service providers.

    Brandlight isn’t a company, it’s an open-source organisation platform, for networking and connecting clients to service providers — also known as a collective or cooperative, with the low-overhead efficiencies of these direct professional connections to match.

    So, whichever you are, client or provider, working with us is investing in us.

    If you are a brand, business or organisation with digital applications, hosting or support needs, we’d love you to invest by bringing your needs to us to solve, and save you time & money.

    Generally, we are 50-80% lower cost than the equivalent Microsoft, Google or Amazon alternatives, and even lower cost at scale. So, investing your faith in our services, is equally an investment in your own cost-efficiency, with ethical digital services for your team and customers.

    If you design, develop or manage digital services, use the Brandlight platform to offer your apps and services. We only charge the industry standard 10% commission on transactions, which covers the costs of payment-processing, administration and marketing your excellence, and if we can reduce those fees, we will.

    You already invested a little time in reading this far, so thank you. Please spread the word and follow us on Twitter.

  • Can’t I just copy what you do and go direct?

    Sure, we don’t sell secret sauces — we provide apps and hosting at cost, with technical, creative and management services at international industry standard rates, commensurate with our experience and time-efficiency. We learn about your business as you learn about our skills and recommendations.

    You’re not paying for the hours and days to do something, you’re paying for the years of experience it takes to show you how to do these things in hours and days — and you can learn from us, by example, as we go, so you can do the same next time if you enjoy building systems too.

    Everything we offer we explain in great detail, so you can equally do it all yourself — if you have the time and patience to learn it all, of course!

    We believe that what we offer should not be beyond anyone’s understanding or later adoption for in-house management, if you so wish.

    It’s your business, organisation, data and brand assets — so, we only offer apps and services that enable your evolution, without vendor lock-in tactics or per-user pricing that becomes an excessive tax to grow with.

    As you gain economies of scale, your cost-base should reduce as a percentage because that’s your growth and efficiency-made profits to enjoy.

    What Brandlight offers you is experience. We practice what we preach, we use what we offer, we do what we say, and we promote what we also need for our own efficiency and scale.

    Everything you’re looking at, we’ve done before, learned all the best-practices, navigated all the curiosities, and mastered our craft for perfecting your digital infrastructure as if it were our own.

    And if you are driven to learning these things too, why not master them with your own setup?

    We openly invite all experienced experts in their field to join us as partner service providers, working remotely to offer your own setup and maintenance management experience to brands anywhere in the world, with the Brandlight community here to promote, support and protect your good work too.

  • Where is my data stored?

    You can choose between your own server accounts or to use ours.

    We currently support and recommend Hetzner in Germany & Finland, Scaleway in France & Netherlands, and Contabo in Europe & United States.

    All our providers are chosen for performance, security, privacy and value, with all European hosting providers being GDPR-compliant.

  • How can I trust an outsourced freelancer or consultant?

    All our freelance consultants have their identity and address verified independently by Yoti, so you can be sure who you are working with and their personal accountability for your data-security.

    We personally interview and review the experience and portfolio work of all freelancers. They are either permanent full-time members of the Brandlight team or we’ve tested their services to ensure we are satisfied with their work as their client too.

    As consultants build their client-base, you will see the verified feedback they receive from brands. We’re sure you’ll be happy enough to do the same after your one-off project or 90-day trial period for apps is to your satisfaction.

    If ever you have any issues, questions or concerns, please contact-us by email or chat, we’ll assign a qualified peer for review of their work, and review your briefing to ensure expectations match.

  • What if I don’t like an app for any reason?

    Every self-hosted open-source app that Brandlight offers comes with a 90-day free trial, are billable monthly or annually, zero-notice cancellations to stop all future billing.

    Setups take your on-boarding expert a little time, so setup fees are non-refundable, and unfortunately, we don’t have the facilities yet for partial-refunds on any unused days from cancellation.

    We highly recommend a migration expert if you change your mind between apps — user and data-migration can be quite time-consuming and distracting from your core business.

    We’ve completed many successful migrations before, so can you out of app-limbo sooner, and with less fuss.

  • Can you help me with Google, Microsoft or Amazon Services?

    We don’t resell Google, Microsoft & Amazon solutions. They tend to have dedicated resellers limited to their more costly and proprietary closed-source ecosystems, typically designed to lock you into their brand and up-sell pricing per user and feature.

    All our services work alongside any other, without conflict, and separated by subdomain URLs. You can mix & match or migrate as you find each of our alternatives more efficient.

    Our focus is on clients that wish to own their cloud software and keep data close to their teams, with confidence in the security of their data, and portability between all hosts as needs may change and teams grow.

    As proud promoters of open-source freedoms, efficiency, privacy and security, we use and recommend the best and, in our experience, more efficient solutions for your ownership and assurance of continuity.

    All our solutions are priced for unlimited users at no additional charge, since you’re only paying for the hosting resources and maintenance time you actually use.

    Every app is full-featured, with no artificial limitations on usage or extension.

    We can help you migrate away from any other service too, if you choose, with our faster, privacy-focused and GDPR-compliant alternatives.

    Generally, we provide equivalent solutions for a 50%-80% lower cost, so please share any quoting or invoices you have, by clicking the money icon in the top-right on any page, and we’ll return your personal quote for price-comparison.

    Please take a look at these tried & tested enterprise applications in comparison:

  • Can I pay by card?

    Yes, you can choose from the Credit Card or Paypal option on the checkout – or phone us with your order and payment details. We accept Visa, Mastercard and most major bank Debit Cards

Ordering 2 questions
  • How can we setup a webapp asap?

    That’s quite easy, all we need is the ability to add what’s called an A record or a CNAME record to your domain name hosting.

    You can either put us in contact with whoever manages your domain name, or we can pick up that for you.

    We recommend the following services are good for performance, value and collaborative management, although we can work with any, and help you migrate if you choose to for any reason:

    If you want the full private cloud and email hosting services, we can automate all the domain management for all Brandlight services, so you’ll always have that monitored and maintained by our team 24/7/365, and you don’t need to worry about security of your domains and access to someone that knows what to do if you have any special requests.

  • What if I don’t like an app for any reason?

    Every self-hosted open-source app that Brandlight offers comes with a 90-day free trial, are billable monthly or annually, zero-notice cancellations to stop all future billing.

    Setups take your on-boarding expert a little time, so setup fees are non-refundable, and unfortunately, we don’t have the facilities yet for partial-refunds on any unused days from cancellation.

    We highly recommend a migration expert if you change your mind between apps — user and data-migration can be quite time-consuming and distracting from your core business.

    We’ve completed many successful migrations before, so can you out of app-limbo sooner, and with less fuss.

Payments 2 questions
  • What if I don’t like an app for any reason?

    Every self-hosted open-source app that Brandlight offers comes with a 90-day free trial, are billable monthly or annually, zero-notice cancellations to stop all future billing.

    Setups take your on-boarding expert a little time, so setup fees are non-refundable, and unfortunately, we don’t have the facilities yet for partial-refunds on any unused days from cancellation.

    We highly recommend a migration expert if you change your mind between apps — user and data-migration can be quite time-consuming and distracting from your core business.

    We’ve completed many successful migrations before, so can you out of app-limbo sooner, and with less fuss.

  • Can I pay by card?

    Yes, you can choose from the Credit Card or Paypal option on the checkout – or phone us with your order and payment details. We accept Visa, Mastercard and most major bank Debit Cards

Products 2 questions
  • Can you help me with Google, Microsoft or Amazon Services?

    We don’t resell Google, Microsoft & Amazon solutions. They tend to have dedicated resellers limited to their more costly and proprietary closed-source ecosystems, typically designed to lock you into their brand and up-sell pricing per user and feature.

    All our services work alongside any other, without conflict, and separated by subdomain URLs. You can mix & match or migrate as you find each of our alternatives more efficient.

    Our focus is on clients that wish to own their cloud software and keep data close to their teams, with confidence in the security of their data, and portability between all hosts as needs may change and teams grow.

    As proud promoters of open-source freedoms, efficiency, privacy and security, we use and recommend the best and, in our experience, more efficient solutions for your ownership and assurance of continuity.

    All our solutions are priced for unlimited users at no additional charge, since you’re only paying for the hosting resources and maintenance time you actually use.

    Every app is full-featured, with no artificial limitations on usage or extension.

    We can help you migrate away from any other service too, if you choose, with our faster, privacy-focused and GDPR-compliant alternatives.

    Generally, we provide equivalent solutions for a 50%-80% lower cost, so please share any quoting or invoices you have, by clicking the money icon in the top-right on any page, and we’ll return your personal quote for price-comparison.

    Please take a look at these tried & tested enterprise applications in comparison:

  • Is this information correct or up-to-date?

    If there’s something not quite clear, confusing or incomplete on the website, please do use the quick Feedback form – we review all feedback as quickly as any other messages and will get back to you with an updates or expectation on when we might have further information.

    There’s a lot of information to manage, so we really appreciate your reviews and feedback to keep improving every day!

Service Providers 4 questions
  • How can we setup a webapp asap?

    That’s quite easy, all we need is the ability to add what’s called an A record or a CNAME record to your domain name hosting.

    You can either put us in contact with whoever manages your domain name, or we can pick up that for you.

    We recommend the following services are good for performance, value and collaborative management, although we can work with any, and help you migrate if you choose to for any reason:

    If you want the full private cloud and email hosting services, we can automate all the domain management for all Brandlight services, so you’ll always have that monitored and maintained by our team 24/7/365, and you don’t need to worry about security of your domains and access to someone that knows what to do if you have any special requests.

  • Where is my data stored?

    You can choose between your own server accounts or to use ours.

    We currently support and recommend Hetzner in Germany & Finland, Scaleway in France & Netherlands, and Contabo in Europe & United States.

    All our providers are chosen for performance, security, privacy and value, with all European hosting providers being GDPR-compliant.

  • How can I trust an outsourced freelancer or consultant?

    All our freelance consultants have their identity and address verified independently by Yoti, so you can be sure who you are working with and their personal accountability for your data-security.

    We personally interview and review the experience and portfolio work of all freelancers. They are either permanent full-time members of the Brandlight team or we’ve tested their services to ensure we are satisfied with their work as their client too.

    As consultants build their client-base, you will see the verified feedback they receive from brands. We’re sure you’ll be happy enough to do the same after your one-off project or 90-day trial period for apps is to your satisfaction.

    If ever you have any issues, questions or concerns, please contact-us by email or chat, we’ll assign a qualified peer for review of their work, and review your briefing to ensure expectations match.

  • Can you help me with Google, Microsoft or Amazon Services?

    We don’t resell Google, Microsoft & Amazon solutions. They tend to have dedicated resellers limited to their more costly and proprietary closed-source ecosystems, typically designed to lock you into their brand and up-sell pricing per user and feature.

    All our services work alongside any other, without conflict, and separated by subdomain URLs. You can mix & match or migrate as you find each of our alternatives more efficient.

    Our focus is on clients that wish to own their cloud software and keep data close to their teams, with confidence in the security of their data, and portability between all hosts as needs may change and teams grow.

    As proud promoters of open-source freedoms, efficiency, privacy and security, we use and recommend the best and, in our experience, more efficient solutions for your ownership and assurance of continuity.

    All our solutions are priced for unlimited users at no additional charge, since you’re only paying for the hosting resources and maintenance time you actually use.

    Every app is full-featured, with no artificial limitations on usage or extension.

    We can help you migrate away from any other service too, if you choose, with our faster, privacy-focused and GDPR-compliant alternatives.

    Generally, we provide equivalent solutions for a 50%-80% lower cost, so please share any quoting or invoices you have, by clicking the money icon in the top-right on any page, and we’ll return your personal quote for price-comparison.

    Please take a look at these tried & tested enterprise applications in comparison:

Services 4 questions
  • What am I paying for with managed apps?

    Your server subscription and data is your property. We simply setup, maintain and protect it on your behalf — based on extensive experience of each system’s best-practice.

    Certainly, you can research and do these things yourself too — although, there is a learning curve, and it might not your core business.

    Outsourcing your remote digital services management frees your focus for your core business. We offer dedicated team of experts, available 24/7.

    We just turned our ecommerce experience into a Prime shopping service, as easy as buying anything, and delivered as it should be.

    Please, enjoy your time-off, and the work you do — while we monitor, maintain and update your app cloud.

    Think of us as your 5-star IT hotel, where the linen is always fresh, the towels fluffy, and room-service always a call away 🙂

  • How can we setup a webapp asap?

    That’s quite easy, all we need is the ability to add what’s called an A record or a CNAME record to your domain name hosting.

    You can either put us in contact with whoever manages your domain name, or we can pick up that for you.

    We recommend the following services are good for performance, value and collaborative management, although we can work with any, and help you migrate if you choose to for any reason:

    If you want the full private cloud and email hosting services, we can automate all the domain management for all Brandlight services, so you’ll always have that monitored and maintained by our team 24/7/365, and you don’t need to worry about security of your domains and access to someone that knows what to do if you have any special requests.

  • What if I don’t like an app for any reason?

    Every self-hosted open-source app that Brandlight offers comes with a 90-day free trial, are billable monthly or annually, zero-notice cancellations to stop all future billing.

    Setups take your on-boarding expert a little time, so setup fees are non-refundable, and unfortunately, we don’t have the facilities yet for partial-refunds on any unused days from cancellation.

    We highly recommend a migration expert if you change your mind between apps — user and data-migration can be quite time-consuming and distracting from your core business.

    We’ve completed many successful migrations before, so can you out of app-limbo sooner, and with less fuss.

  • Can you help me with Google, Microsoft or Amazon Services?

    We don’t resell Google, Microsoft & Amazon solutions. They tend to have dedicated resellers limited to their more costly and proprietary closed-source ecosystems, typically designed to lock you into their brand and up-sell pricing per user and feature.

    All our services work alongside any other, without conflict, and separated by subdomain URLs. You can mix & match or migrate as you find each of our alternatives more efficient.

    Our focus is on clients that wish to own their cloud software and keep data close to their teams, with confidence in the security of their data, and portability between all hosts as needs may change and teams grow.

    As proud promoters of open-source freedoms, efficiency, privacy and security, we use and recommend the best and, in our experience, more efficient solutions for your ownership and assurance of continuity.

    All our solutions are priced for unlimited users at no additional charge, since you’re only paying for the hosting resources and maintenance time you actually use.

    Every app is full-featured, with no artificial limitations on usage or extension.

    We can help you migrate away from any other service too, if you choose, with our faster, privacy-focused and GDPR-compliant alternatives.

    Generally, we provide equivalent solutions for a 50%-80% lower cost, so please share any quoting or invoices you have, by clicking the money icon in the top-right on any page, and we’ll return your personal quote for price-comparison.

    Please take a look at these tried & tested enterprise applications in comparison:

No questions matching current filter