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Dynamite comes in small packages
Peter Nesbit
Email and Web Developer
Jessica Faircliff
PR & Content
Matt Faircliff
Managing Member
Garreth Pegg
Graphic Artist
James Faircliff
Financial Manager
Be part of the team
Think you have what it takes to be a big fish in a small pond? Well, Databias is hiring. Send us your CV today and you could be part of our organisation.
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Need a new website?
Is your current website not up to your expectations? Databias can help. With years of experience under our belts, web sites are where we began. Let us accompany you through the full cycle of your web development project; from needs analysis and project scoping to post-implementation review. We deal solely with free-software based sites and comply stringently with the W3C regulations. We believe this adds to overall compatibility across browsers (reach more of your market) as well reducing cost of development (no proprietary licensing).
What differentiates Databias from any other web design shoppe?
Apart from our insanely cheap pricing, great design, programming skill and server-side knowledge is the fact that we are highy focused on customer satisfaction. We will design a site that suits you, your corporate image and your budget. If you're sick of large corporations taking you for a ride whilst you wait patiently for somebody to respond to your request (or take you off hold!) then Databias is for you.
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Do you want a site that fits your company look like a glove? Let our skilled team of designers give your site the flair it deserves.
Databias design skills include the following:
- Graphic manipulation
- Dynamic Flash movies
- Animations
- Template creation
- Scalable vector graphics
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At Databias we take pride in making the leanest, meanest code around. Be kind to the viewers of your website, don't make them wait while data which isn't core to your web presence downloads. Our pursuit of cleanly coded websites borders on fanatical. Our developers stick to W3C recommendations as much as humanly possible - without rules the web would surely be a wild place. Get as much bang-for-buck out of your webiste code as possible, choose Databias to code your site.
Databias' skills at front and back-end coding include the following:
- [X]HTML
- XML
- CSS3
- jQuery
- JSON
- AJAX
- Perl
- Perl-apache modules and Perl packages
- PHP
- JSP and Java servlets using Tomcat
- MySQL databases
- Shell scripting
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Our web pricing is intended to be competetive, but since sites are so varied in their requirements we charge our services out on an hourly basis, and we work FAST!
- Design - R350 per hour
- Coding - R350 per hour
The above prices are exclusive of VAT. Give Databias a call for a free quote.
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Our hosting environment
Databias' servers ensure maximum security, redundancy and throughput for all hosted clients.
Having standardised our hardware and storage platforms solely on Dell server technology, customers can rely on our good relationships with Dell distributors within South Africa for peace of mind and maximum uptime.
All Databias equipment is hosted in the state-of-the-art Internet Solutions data centers for optimum speed and availability for South African users.
Our primary nameservers are hosted in Cape Town and secondary name servers in Raleigh, North Carolina on the US East Coast. This setup ensures the best response times for our local clients whilst providing for a solid, non-local failover server.
All non-Microsoft products are supported by the FreeBSD (http://www.freebsd.org) operating system which is renowned for it's rock-solid stability.
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Various options exist for hosting websites using Databias.
Option 1
The simplest of all hosting options, option 1 is for 'brochure-like' websites under 10 megabytes in size. This option is designed for sites such as this one.
Option 2
Option 2 is aimed at small websites requiring 5 or less mailboxes. Simple CMS sites, online-catalogues and the like are ideally suited to option 2.
Option 3
This option is directed at medium to large scale, session-oriented, multiple database websites (eg. online purchasing applications).
Option 4
Aimed at enterprises with up to 30 email recipients and a strong web presence, option 4 is the most comprehensive package offered by Databias. Should prospective clients wish for anything over and above this, terms and pricing can be individually customised dependant on requirements.
Databias realises that all websites are unique. Should yours require anything different please don't hesitate to ask us.
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| Included services | Option 1 | Option 2 | Option 3 | Option 4 |
| Setup costs | FREE! | FREE! | FREE! | FREE! |
| Domain hosting | FREE! | FREE! | FREE! | FREE! |
| Bi-directional web traffic | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| FTP login | YES | YES | YES | YES |
| FTP disk space | 100MB | 200MB | 350MB | 500MB |
| POP3 email accounts | 10 | 25 | 50 | 100 |
| POP3 mailbox size | 50 MB | 50 MB | 50 MB | 50 MB |
| IMAP email accounts | 0 | 5 | 10 | 15 |
| IMAP mailbox size | N/A | 1 GB | 2 GB | 5 GB |
| Email aliases | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Webmail | YES | YES | YES | YES |
| SMTP authentication (with TLS) | NO | YES | YES | YES |
| Web form to email | YES | YES | YES | YES |
| Server Side Includes (SSI) | NO | YES | YES | YES |
| Perl scripts | NO | NO | YES | YES |
| PHP scripts | NO | NO | YES | YES |
| Session support (Apache::Session) | NO | YES | YES | YES |
| Databases (MySQL 5.5) | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Daily website activity reports | YES | YES | YES | YES |
| Daily email activity reports | YES | YES | YES | YES |
| 24x7x365 website monitoring | YES | YES | YES | YES |
| Daily website backups | YES | YES | YES | YES |
| Monthly price (excl. VAT) | R100 | R250 | R350 | R850 |
| Add-on services | ( Excl. VAT ) |
| Additional cost per 100Mb of storage | R2.50 / month |
| Additional bandwidth cost | R0.02 / Mb |
| Additional database (excl. storage cost) | R50 / month |
| .za.net or .za.org domain | FREE! |
| New .co.za and domain renewals | R100 |
| New .com, .org, .net, .biz, .co and domain renewals | R200 |
| Domain hosting (primary/secondary) | R50 / year |
| 1 year SSL certificate + installation | R200 |
| 2 year 128-bit Thawte SSL certificate with EV + installation | Contact us |
| FTP account setup | R100 |
| FTP account bandwidth charge | R0.02 / Mb |
NB! Should customers wish to pay for a year of hosting services in advance they will receive the last month free of charge. Pay for 11 months, get one free!
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Mass mailing made easy
Reach your target market using the most efficient method avaiable, email. Use Databias to help manage your ever-growing database of client information and implement a customised, measurable email campaign.
Email is unlike any other medium of mass communication; it is unintrusive, comprehensive and accountable. Using both plain text and HTML (web page) emails, users can create flexible multimedia correspondences that will reach all your clients no matter what software they use. These emails can be customised to the recipient by embedding variables such as first and last names as well as images or data from a database.
Allow Databias to plan, implement and analyse your email campaigns and reap the benefits of automated client communication.
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Rocketseed really rocks!
Rocketseed is the new buzz word in the world of email marketing. The purpose behind Rocketseed is to use email as a marketing mechanism. Inserting banners, business cards and disclaimers on everyday email customised on the sender as well as the recipient of the mail is only a small part of Rocketseed.
Another purpose of this web-based tool is to allow users to send scheduled, intelligent opt-in bulk mailings which are trackable on a per recipient basis. See which inserts people have been clicking on, who clicked on them, when, as well as who didn't click anything at all!
All email branding and bulk mailing at Databias is driven by the Rocketseed system. Sign up today to see the power of Rocketseed unleashed on your subscriber base.
Download the Rocketseed One-to-many email content management brochure here or else visit the Rocketseed website at www.rocketseed.com.
"I did the calculations and to achieve the same reach over the same time period through traditional direct and indirect marketing channels would have cost us 51 times more! And that's through channels without Rocketseed's ability to target and track."
Gary Hendrickse, Marketing Manager, BoE Bank
"Harnessing email as a marketing channel in this way can help shorten communication response times and improve communication channels. And because the emails contain legitimate original content, they will get opened and read every time."
Desi Doran, Corporate Advertising Manager, Metropolitan
"Our entire company was up and runnning in half an hour. Normally this level of installation would involve not only a lengthy period of time on site, but also a process of dealing with numerous technical glitches and failures before achieving success."
Wayne Vincent, Technical Manager, VWV Interactive
"Rocketseed lets us, as a professional originator of creative marketing, practice what we preach by turning each boring normal outgoing email into a powerful, entertaining branded message."
Doug Lockhart, Managing Director, Hero Design & Advertising
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Should your email campaign not conform to the below basic parameters, contact Databias for a campaign specific quote.
| Included services | |
| Setup costs | FREE! |
| Monthly subscription | FREE! |
| Telephonic support | FREE! |
| Real-time reporting and analysis | YES |
| HTML and plain text mails | YES |
| Smart embedding/referencing of images dependant on recipient | YES |
| Template-based customisation | YES |
| Variable interpolation | YES |
| Email attachments | YES |
| Variable cost per 100kB email delivered (excl. VAT) | R0.10 |
| Fixed cost for lists under 5000 recipients (excl. VAT). | R500* |
| * No variable cost is applicable to lists of fewer than 5000 recipients where the size of the mail sent is under 100kB. |
NB. Databias does not send SPAM - only legitimate, solicited list mailing will be permitted whereby list members can unsubscribe themselves at any time. All bulkmails should by law contain a mechanism which allows the recipient to opt out of any future mailers.
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Why brand?
Branding originates from the ole days before time when people would mark their livestock with a hot poker to prove ownership. But why brand today? What especially is the need to brand email?
Branding creates an awareness of the organisation. This applies to the employees as well as customers of an organisation. Why brand letters, stationary, notices and other media if you don't brand the biggest communication medium today? Email constitutes up to 85% of a company's daily correspondences. Surely this would be the ideal avenue to pursue a brand awareness campaign?
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Let Rocketseed light up your daily mail
Email has rapidly become the most important corporate messaging tool in use today, accounting for most of our everyday business communication. Consequently, it has become a key business requirement that every email leaving every staff member on a daily basis is properly monitored and controlled, as well as leveraged to achieve its full potential as a powerful one-to-one marketing and communications channel. This entails processing all individual outgoing emails to, amongst other things, implement standardised branding, insert targeted marketing messages and ensure enterprise legal compliance (for example via email disclaimers).
Enrich every email sent
Rocketseed is a web-based central management system that will enrich every email sent by every employee.
Drive people to your website
Using Rocketseed you can drive recipients of your email to any area of your website where you can provide additional information regarding the email insert clicked.
Track and report
Get real-time, detailed statistics on email flow, bandwidth usage, recipient clicks and much more!
Rocketseed stands apart!
- Centrally controlled
- No impact on employees
- No impact on existing technical infrastructure
- Easily configurable
- High ROI
- 24x7 remote monitoring
- Proven track record
Download the Rocketseed rich messaging for everyday email brochure here.
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Interested? Want a quote?
Contact Databias today for a customised quote dependant on the size of your sender base.
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Get smart with your email
Databias provides an email backup service allowing you to access all your mail from anywhere. You download your mail as normal to your personal machine and leave a copy of the message on the server. Never again lose email as there will always be a backup on our servers. Also, if you are working on a very slow or expensive connection (ie. satellite / BGAN), Databias gives you the option to download email headers only so you can remove or file unwanted emails before unneccesarily downloading them. Now thats working smart!
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What is IMAP
IMAP is a way of accessing electronic mail that is stored on a central server.
Certainly, this statement is true, but there's more to it than that. More precisely, IMAP is a way to retrieve messages from one or more mailboxes and manipulate the messages into a folder heirarchy of your design on a central server without ever having to download a single message to your local hard disk. The messages remain on the server at all times and are only downloaded to your personal machine when you actually decide to view them.
Managing IMAP - by Dianna Mullet; Kevin Mullet - O'Reilly
Anyone can IMAP!
Using the IMAP protocol (versus the usual POP3 protocol), Databias gives users the ability to store and organise all their email on our servers. Never lose email again and always have all your information at your fingertips, with or without your laptop or PDA - all you need is a web browser! IMAP is compatible with most mail clients and is now the defacto standard for integrating a mail client with the server from which it receives mail.
The benfits of IMAP
- Email backups - never lose an email again!
- Ability to download only mail headers (great for low-speed links)
- Shared mailboxes for group collaboration
- Server side email folders
- Access all your messages from anywhere
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Effortlessly archive every email
Legislation in South Africa is fast moving toward enforcing compulsory archiving of all emails within organisations. Databias makes this otherwise arduous task easy with it's email archival solution. All inbound and outbound emails are invisibly archived on our redundant email archive servers. Company email administrators can then easily log onto the web interface and view any email from or to any mailbox in their domain.
Email archiving logon
Users already configured on the system can logon to the Databias email archiving below:
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Pay for what you use
IMAP email is available in the following 3 mailbox sizes:
Bronze (2GB): R25 / month
Silver (5GB): R40 / month
Gold (10GB): R60 / month
The following points are relevant to the all IMAP email hosting options
- Zero setup costs
- No contracts (although upfront payment is required)
- Unlimited bandwidth
Email archival is simply charged as follows:
R30/month per mailbox archived
The following points apply to Databias' email archiving:
- No setup costs
- No contracts (monthly pre-payment required)
- 48 hour turnaround for archive retreival to anywhere is South Africa (at cost price)
- Access to a web based front-end in order to monitor email traffic in real time
- Bottomless 5 year archives (after 5 years the mails are silently deleted day by day)
- Smart hosting for inbound and outbound emails, configurable per domain
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Exchange for everyone
We all know about Microsoft's email client Outlook and it's Mac counterpart Entourage. Well, Microsoft has just launced a new version of both, with Entourage being completely rewritten on the native Mac Cocoa platform and being renamed to Outlook 2011 for Mac.
While both products are the defacto desktop mail client applications, one would only be scratching the surface if you were using them for POP or IMAP email only. The calendaring and address book functions are top-notch too, but the collorative benefits gained by coupling Outlook with it's big brother Microsoft Exchange really steal the show.
Exchange is basically a form of IMAP email on steroids. All your mail is stored centrally on the Exchange server along with your contacts and calendars. ActiveSync makes all this data accessable from most recent smartphones (Samsung, Nokia, Apple ,BlackBerry etc.) and the Oulook Web App allows you to securely access all your data via any web browser. Self-service administrative accounts, shared calendars, global address books, distribution lists and resource allocation (such as the ability to reserve boardrooms or equipment) compliment the already feature packed Outlook offering.
For information about Microsoft Outlook, read Micrsoft's offical basic tasks in Outlook 2010.
Exchange hosting pre-requisites
Databias advises that clients host their domain name DNS record with us. However, should this not be possible a simple update of the DNS zone file is all that is necessary to get your company up and running with Hosted Exchange.
Using Outlook Anywhere to connect to your Databias Hosted Exchange
Instead of using a VPN to ensure a secure connections to an Exchange server, these days a technique called Outlook Anywhere is used. Outlook Anywhere uses SSL to encapsulate the data between the server and the client ensuring protected and verified end-to-end communication. Read more on Outlook Anywhere and how to configure it here.
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Enterprise software for individuals
Integrate your BlackBerry smart phone with your Databias hosted Microsoft Exchange account for maximum convenience when not at your desk. Push email and syncronised contacts and calendaring ensure that you are always in touch and on time.
No longer is it necessary to manage two sets of Sent items, contacts on your phone match those on your computer and calendar entries are in sync between your devices.
All that is required for use of the Databias BlackBerry Enterprise Server is a data plan (BIS / data package) and a BlackBerry device.
Lets get you BES activated
Have you got your activation password from Databias? Click here to for the official BlackBerry activation howto.
Digging deeper into BES
Want to learn more about how BES actually works? Read the Wikipedia BlackBerry Enterprise Server overview here (not for the technically challenged).
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Start small and grow
What used to cost large corporations tens of thousands of Rands is now available to individuals at very affordable prices. Databias offers clients the ability to start small and grow into their Exchange usage with three packages based on mailbox size.
Bronze (2GB): R50 per month
Silver (5GB): R100 per month
Gold (10GB+): R150 per month
All of the above packages include the following:
- The latest version of Microsoft Outlook (Mac or Windows)
- SSL secured SMTP traffic
- Spam and virus filtering
- Microsoft ActiveSync
- BlackBerry Enterprise Server - change your BlackBerry from smart to genius!
- Outlook Web Access
- An administrative OWA account (an email account with adminstrative priviledges which can add / remove mailboxes, log into other mailboxes, manage distribution lists and track message delivery)
- Zero sign-up costs
- No contracts (pre-payment for mailboxes is required though)
- Unlimited email traffic
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Enterprise backups made easy
Can your offsite backup provider guarantee data back in your hands within 24 hours? Are they willing to sign SLA's to this effect? Well, Databias can.
Databias offers a flexible storage platform unlike any other. Only pay for the space you use and at R25 / month / GB this is surely the answer to your storage requirements.
Databias can configure incremental backups for your files so that only the data that has changed since your last backup will be copied, saving you bandwidth and time. Should you already have data you need backed up we can provide a seed backup service where we will visit your premises, take a copy of the data and physically transfer the data to the servers in our data center. This saves you the hassle of the initial transfer of data.
Our backup software is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 as well as Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. The software also runs on Linux and all BSD variants. All data is encrypted prior to transfer and is stored in encrypted archives on our servers.
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Pricing
The costs involved with the backup solution are as follows:
- Account setup: FREE
- Seed backup: R2500 (not compulsory)
- Cost per GB per month: R25
- Bandwidth charge: R100 per GB
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Sign up to receive our bi-monthly newsletter full of the latest email marketing and online news. We'll keep it short and only give you what you want to know. Obviously, you can opt out at any time with just one click.
September 8th: Databias reduces pricing on all hosted Exchange packages
A year after launching our wildly popular hosted Exchange 2010 service we are proud to announce a 50% drop in the entry level 2GB package, as well as decreases in the price of the larger mailbox offerings. We stand to be corrected but as far as we know this makes us the cheapest hosted Exchange provider in South Africa (unlike some competitors, we don't charge for addons like BlackBerry Enterprise). With 99.9% uptime there is little reason not to choose Databias as your HE provider.
May 16th: Hosted SharePoint 2010 now avialable from Databias
Workflow, project management, team communication and document versioning are just some of the advanced features available in Microsoft's SharePoint 2010. This amazing software is now available from Databias in a hosted model in order to guarantee the end-user maximum return with minimum investment.
April 14th: Databias' knowledge base kicks off
Hot on the heels of our updated support procedure is the Databias knowledge base. The knowledge base is a regularly updated repository of self-help articles intended to solve the most common queries arising from clients.
October 1st: BlackBerry Enterprise Server launch
Tired of having 2 sent items folders, one of your BlackBerry and the other on your workstation? Or what if you want to control your calendars and contacts on your BlackBerry using Outlook? With Databias' hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) your BlackBerry and Outlook will always be in sync. See our Hosted Exchange section for more details.
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