Some Tools to Automate Clients' Maintenance

This week, I’d like to share with you tools that our web agency used during clients' maintenance. To give you some background, I work in web development company and we provide web design, development, and strategic marketing consultants services for our clients.

We are a team of three individuals: Tom (Marketing and sales), Yury (account manager) and Jane (our awesome founder and chief). Additionally, we have a group of 2 designers and 2 developers spread through out the world. So here is what we used in our work for communication, support, backups and other maintenance needs.

Plesk 

Plesk is a hosting control panel which allows you to manage your hosting account through web based interface. You can use this panel with VPS, Shared and Dedicated server. Plesk also enables you to control thousands of virtual host under a single machine. The control panel allows you to automate many tasks which in turn reduce the cost and resources. It also increases the profitability, efficiency and customer satisfaction.

R1Soft 

R1Soft is the developer of Continuous Data Protection (CDP), scalable and high-performance disk-to-disk backup software for Windows, Linux, and virtual servers. R1Soft also offers free system admin tools for Windows and Linux. R1Soft Hot Copy, a universal disk snapshot utility for Linux servers, creates an instant point-in-time disk and volume snapshot of a Linux block device while the system is running, without interrupting applications.

BitCalm 

BitCalm is a supersimple service to back up files and databases on Linux servers.  After installing python client (<1 min) user can manage backups for files and even databases for all servers in a single web-interface. Service provides Amazon S3 as a storage and allows users to connect their own storage for backups. All backups are incremental. BitCalm is built for servers and supports all popular Linux based OS: Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, ArchLinux. Every user gets daily/weekly reports and notifications. BitCalm users can restore the whole backup or a single file or database to any server added to service or simply download archive for the backup to local drive.

Bornevia  

A platform that unifies all conversations and your teams. Monitor multi-channel enquiries from a single inbox, organize them, discuss them, measure productivity, and more..as a team. Track outgoing or email replies, full-text archivable search, auto-responder, and more..here are all the features that you’ll take for granted. Or not.

BitCan 

BitCan is a cloud-based database backup and restore system that takes the pain out of database and system management. It works seamlessly across all of your systems including: MySQL, MongoDB, and Linux/Windows servers. It’s unique architecture requires no plugin or install and has zero impact on client performance.

Zendesk 

The fastest path to better communication. Zendesk streamlines your support with time-saving tools like ticket views, triggers, and automations. This helps you get straight to what matters most — better customer service and more meaningful conversations.

ManageWP 

Manage all your WordPress sites from one place — including updates, backups, security and more.

Keeping 

Keeping is a Gmail extension that adds helpdesk functionalities to any Gmail or Google App email accounts. It allows you and your team to manage customers support more efficiently directly from your current mailbox without having to use an external helpdesk.