How we manage your BottledCode Account
Please take a few moments to learn how your account will be managed by our team.
Your Digital Stack Pack Subscription
Your subscription at a high level:
- Paid Monthly, your credits ‘float’ across different areas of your stack as you need them.
- Choose either PayPal or Invoice as your payment method
- Payment is due each month on your anniversary date
- It is a minimum 12 month agreement
- You receive all the inclusions for the Pack you are on
- We regularly add new inclusions for free
- You commit to providing us with your deliverables in a timely manner (we tell you exactly what we need from you via a Deliverables Checklist)
- After the first 6 months, you can elect to downgrade your account to our ‘Keep The Lights On’ mode for $29 per month
- If your needs exceed your monthly credit limit included in your Digital Stack Pack, simply purchase extra ‘floating bottled credits’
How our business model works
To help you understand how we work, it’s important to understand our business model.
We are living in a new era of the internet, one which is Cloud Based. This Cloud first paradigm uses a Pay As You Go model. This model can lead you to have a multitude of accounts with different service providers, paying varying amounts during the month.
To give our clients more peace of mind and better cash flow management, we have decided to group together the essential (PAYG) digital products your business needs into a fixed price subscription model.
Then we apply what we call ‘Floating Bottle Credits’ (FBCs) to your account and track your PAYG usage across all your products and everything is covered and managed by us.
So think of our arrangement as us as your Digital Right Hand on a Retainer. We are there for you across everything digital and just an email away with an answer to any question related to your digital needs. We even have clients forward us suspect emails before they click on links!
If your usage is low each month, we target spend on key layers of your stack for growth. If your usage is greater than what your Digital Stack Pack allowance is, then we let you know that you need to top up your account with X number of extra FBCs.
So instead of you not knowing how much your monthly digital cost will be, we make it easy for you with one low monthly cost. And you also know when you will need to pay more and what you’re getting.
As you can appreciate, to offer all our products for such a low price, we need to be really good at systemizing and automation. So we therefore need consistency of inputs. To help us with this, we ask you to commit to providing us the Client Deliverables we ask, in a timely fashion. A project has to have a certain amount of momentum to achieve its desired velocity and therefore goals!
The other problems we have solved
These are a bit of a white elephant. They are lessons learnt over 20 years.
5 Minute Jobs were killing us
After creating the initial website for a fixed fee, we would naturally move on to the next client and maintain all previous sites. We would earn recurring income through hosting, domain and SSL fees. Plus extra work which would be painstakingly analysed and agreed upon.
But the requests for just a quick ‘5 minute job’ were like death by a thousand cuts for our business. Billing for these jobs were tricky and painful, almost wiping out the profits. The obvious solution was some sort of subscription model. So we sold maintenance hours in packs, up front. But these funds were quickly used up but the 5 minute jobs kept rolling in…
Then we changed our name from FunKey Web to BottledCode and suddenly what seemed like a gimmick at first started to make a lot of sense.
Floating Bottled Credits was the answer to this problem and the new PAYG Cloud paradigm.
These bottles could act as containers for tasks and value.
So they are purchased and assigned to your account and are applied to different areas of your stack, in a fluid sort of way. You get a certain number free each month with your plan. We split a bottle up into, you guessed it, 5 minute sections. These sections are called ‘Sips’. A sip is 5 minutes of time for tasks, or value for things like hosting, domains, SSL etc. We know exactly how many sips all our tasks within our Digital Stacks take.
So essentially your credit ‘floats’ across all the services you need for your Digital Stack and if it runs dry you buy an extra bottle. You will know exactly what you’re getting and spending, then if you want something new for us to make or integrate, you will easily know exactly two things:
- How many bottles you need to buy to cover it
- What your deliverables will be
You can then decide if it’s worth the cost and the time it will take to create any deliverables, which as you know we expect you to be on top of!
Your next steps #1
If you have not already done so, please create your account with us. You won’t be billed yet.
Your next steps #2
Choose your Subscription level, checkout and select your billing method, PayPal or Invoice.
Q. How do I get started?
Simply go to https://bottledcode.com.au/start/?src=faqs to get started.
Our on-boarding process is as follows:
- You enter your name & email into our start form
- Confirm your email address
- Await our Getting Started Pack via email
- Click on the link in the email to complete your Site Needs Analysis (SNA)
- We then create your Digital Strategy & Stack Proposal and send it to you
- You accept the proposal by purchasing your first month via our store.
- We then create a Build Plan
- We give you a Client Deliverables Checklist (CDC) to give us what we need to build your site
- Once you complete the CDC your One Week Go Live timer starts ticking!
After we launch your site, your monthly plan inclusions then kick in.
Q: What does a 'floating bottle credit' represent?
More than just a gimmick, we use bottles to act as a container of tasks and capability. One bottle roughly equates to 75 mins of actual work done: 60 mins of technician time and 15 minutes of manager/tester time. This ensures for every hour of work we do, we have both governance at the manager level, plus testing time to ensure the work is completed correctly .
We have refined this pricing over 20 years and hundreds of clients. Read more about our transparent pricing model.
Q: Why do I need an SSL Certificate?
We are moving towards what's called The Encrypted Web and it essentially means that if you don't have an SSL Certificate applied to your site then you will be penalised. We've written a blog on it here.
Q: What is the difference between DV and EV SSL Certficates
Domain Validated (DV) certificates provides the least level of confidence in buyers as to obtain one you only need proof that you own the domain, not who you are - so any nefarious individual can get these. An Enterprise Validated (EV) cert goes the extra mile to prove the entity owning the site is indeed legitimate. It requires much more effort to get one, but don't worry, we handle most of it for you.
Q. What happens if I can't afford my subscription one month
We have a flexible pricing policy, where you can postpone a payment until the next month with no penalty. You can do this up to three times in a subscription period (12 months). If you are struggling or want to just downgrade to our 'keep the lights on' level, you can do this at any stage. It will then only cost you $29 per month, but you won't have any floating bottle credits, just website, hosting and your domain name, plus email.
Q: What are the different levels of Social Media Marketing?
Level 1 means you get 2 bottles used per month exclusively on your Social Media campaigns. Level 2 means you get 5 bottles..
Q. How long is the subscription term?
All subscriptions are for 12 months.
Q. What is your cancellation policy?
There are two ways this is handled;
- Before your first 12 months is completed: You get to keep all the design documents we created for you, but your website is backed up and turned off.
- After your first 12 months is completed: We give you a full backup of your digital stack including your website.
Remember, we always setup 90% of your stack in your name to start with, so moving away from us at any stage is easy for you.
In both cases we sever all Security Authorisations we may have in place with you, so we no longer have access to any of your stack.
Remember you can downgrade at anytime if you can't afford your monthly pack cost.
About the Author: Brad Jeffery
Chief Bottler - BottledCode
Brad is the Founder of BottledCode. He is also the Founder of IdeasKicker.com and is the inventor of the term Crowd Vetting. In 2005 he co-founded RealXstream.com, a video streaming service for the extreme sports industry and in 2014 was a senior tech lead on the largest FinTech project in the Southern Hemisphere. He also spends his time running multiple e-commerce sites as well as the owner of Made in the Gong, a makerspace. Over the last 20 years he has built hundreds of websites, apps, middleware, plugins and services and has a passion for marketing & developing automated business processes through software.