About Cloudient

Our services were first established in 1997 as a response to demand for website hosting, email services were growing and there were few providers.

Over the last decades, the market has grown and consolidated many times, and at the time of writing most providers offer a commodities service which often does not provide a personal or value-add service. We are pleased to have customers who have been with us since the start of this journey and for many years to come.

Cloudient is established with the policy of not blaming our supplier. If something goes wrong, it is always our responsibility. As we run our own infrastructure, we always know exactly where your data is.

Our business model

Very simply, we charge for time and infrastructure. There are no other background affiliate schemes or selling of your data. We never use your data to feed AI, big data or to monetise you. Our services reflect the true cost of providing a personal service so will not be aligned with the bulk low-cost providers.

Our specialisms

Cloudient differentiates itself from the market by offering boutique service and customised solutions. Our boutique service provides high quality personal support to ensure that everything works as it should.

This is valued by individuals who want to outsource the problem of domains, email, hosting and telecoms, as well as for agencies who have demanding clients and must be able to deliver what is needed.

We are particularly capable of understanding and developing custom configurations and solutions where requirements are not met through the average marketplace. As we run our own infrastructure, there are no limitations as to what we are able to offer.

Partners

We are a small team however have built strong relationships with many partners so when a project becomes greater than our capacity or beyond our capability, we can introduce and guide as required to ensure a successful outcome.

Our partners include:

  • Web and graphic design agencies
  • Software development and bespoke code companies
  • Filming and photographers
  • Legal and policy experts
  • Business and accountant professionals

We only partner with people that we know. If you would like to partner with us, then assuming we are already familiar with each other, just ask.

Environment

Digital systems consume a great deal of power. Keeping things simple also reduces power required to provide our services. We do not process your data or sell to 3rd parties, so there is no unnecessary processing in the background, again reducing energy demand.

Using Open Source prolongs the life of the hardware; there is no planned obsolescence.

Having good security practices also reduces power and compute demand.

Infrastructure

As with the first infrastructure deployed in the 90's, the hardware, architecture and deployment is directed by Stuart J Mackintosh. Software and infrastructure is Open Source which ensures that it is always maintainable and the mode of operation can be audited.

We do not rely on any cloud or proprietary software for our operations.

The equipment operates from three sites in Europe. The choice to host in Europe is primarily owing to the stringent EU data protection rules. It is not certain that services can be maintained to EU organisations when based within UK whereas UK customers benefit from the additional protection offered by the EU. Further, the EU offers good support to innovative and Open Source organisations.

Our clients

We work with high-growth companies, start-ups, small businesses, charities and foundations. These organisations demand dynamic and flexible tech or find that the commodity markets don't serve their needs well.
Many of our clients depend on professional and personalised services. They value:

  • ability to scale and manage high-growth
  • benefitting from deep automation
  • knowing where their data is
  • focussing on their own business and outsourcing the tech

The services commonly requested are:

  • legacy application hosting
  • domain selection support
  • email configuration hand-holding
  • email relay
  • large storage
  • custom DNS
  • telephone system integration

Digital (in)security

There is no 'secure' however we all should do our best to guard against services being impacted by nefarious activity, data loss and unintended data disclosure.

Every security failure is ultimately a human error. Either a user has revealed a password or clicked on an unsafe link, the software developer has missed an opportunity to sanitise a process, or the implementer left a door open within the infrastructure.

There are many desperate people in challenging situations with limited income who may have little choice but to take work stealing data and disrupting systems for money. New system weaknesses and vulnerabilities are found every minute of every day by motivated individuals either manually or using ever increasing automated processing techniques, so wherever the cracks are, they will be found, whilst the software industry being equally as motivated, works to address the issues.

Find out more about our approach to security, password policies and responsible disclosure ยป