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Our standard approach is to host sites if at all possible. This means it can use the central body of code which is continuously evolving. We do use Populate for bespoke installations but maintaining these and keeping the core scripts in sync with the main application become much more difficult, time consuming and therefore expensive

We do sell direct to business and to the public.

Your entire site can also be exported as a ZIP file containing each page as an HTML page with all images, CSS and JavaScript. This could be hosted elsewhere but before it was usable you would need to replace our server side ajax responders with equivalent scripts in the new hosting environment. Typically these would be:

• Server side scripts for dealing with form submission
• API responses for feeding back filtered products as part of the product searches
• Search routines
• Checkout routines
• Login routines

You can export all of your data including product, customer and order data as a series of XLSx files.

You will not be able to take any server side code or databases with you.

We support all of the major gateways including PayPal, Stripe, Worldpay and SagePay.

Apple Pay, Google Pay, Ideal, Ogone etc, we normally manage through stripe.

Any gateways we don't currently support we can add. At the moment we only support offsite payments.

Gateways can be easily set up via the admin, When setting up each gateway type you will be asked for a number of credentials and explains for each where to find them, if you are experiencing any difficulty, as usual, we are on hand to assist via the ticketing system.

Payment gateways can be locked to customer account of locked to specific IP addresses allowing you to safely test even while the site is up a and running.

We normally expect the gateway to be set up by the client, any transaction fees the gateway charge to the client si dealt with at that point, we do not apply any transaction charges.

Our stock control system was written internally. If you would rather use stock hero is similar, this can be integrated

We do not apply any fees per transaction, or impose any limits on the number of transactions. 

If you use the default templates and change the colours, logos and fonts via the appearance manager there is no need to know any programming languages.

The templates are written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

• HTML: The html templates feature a custom markup language to render dynamic and managed content that is easy to read and write.
• CSS: Our default templates are all written in CSS3, if you prefer to use SASS this available.
• JS: Our default templates use jQuery, but you can use vanilla JS or any other front-end JavaScript library. You can use any front end JavaScript add ons that you want, these can be uploaded in the template editor.

The default template sets are easy to read and to amend for anyone with moderate HTML skills.

The front end code is html, CSS and JS. You can use any javascript libraries you want (our default templates use Jquery). You can use SASS as your CSS preprocessor if prefer, we don't in our default templates.

Yes. We do allow users to gain access to there template area via sftp, but we will need to add you remote address into the firewall. We also would prefer that you use the tempalte editor as it not only will inform you if another user has a template open it also keeps a record of all changes you make so that you can roll back if required.

Bronze level support is included in all of our hosting packages. There is a support ticketing system in the admin, you can ask an unlimited number of questions and we guarantee a response within one working day however our response times are usually far quicker. Our Silver and Gold level support includes telephone support with quicker response times and Gold includes a number of development hours per month - see here for details

What is covered

Any functionality issues that are found in the admin or front end. Any questions regarding any aspect of Populate.

What isn't covered

Making changes to code beyond fixing issues with code written by us.

Population of data is not covered by support. 

Our different tiers have a different response time. The standard bronze tier gives a guaranteed response time within one working day (8 -6 Mon to Fri)

Populate can be paid by subscription through PayPal recuring payments or by yearly invoice.

You will not have any access to the server side code and will not be able to create any. This is to ensure the integretity of the platform.

If there is a requirement for some custom code on the server side, for instance to add a variable into the template system, to respond to an ajax request or a custom endpoint for the API we will provide a cost to you for doing this based on your specifications.