Updates to G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Work)

November 10, 2016

Announcement, Developers, News, Resellers

G Suite by Google Cloud now with annual billing and WHMCS

This past August, we were incredibly excited to release G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Work) both to our Enom.com retail customers, and our network of over 28,000 resellers. It has been one of the highlights of our year as we evolve the Enom platform to deliver a more modern, user-centric experience. But our commitment doesn’t stop at the initial release. Today, we’d like to announce three updates to G Suite that will be implemented in the coming weeks.

New G Suite Branding

The first change may be something you’ve already heard about. In September, Google announced that Google Apps for Work would be renamed “G Suite” to fully reflect how Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, and Hangouts work together to transform businesses. G Suite will continue to offer the same features you’ve come to expect from Google Apps.

At Enom, we are already updating our website content and graphics to reflect the new G Suite name. That said, there may be a transition period when you encounter both “G Suite” and “Google Apps” branding on our platform. Just know that the two terms are effectively the same, and the transition to the G Suite name will be made without any disruption to your service.

G Suite Basic & Business Annual Billing

For small businesses looking for convenience (and savings) in their billing for services, we will soon start offering an annual billing option for G Suite. Customers using both G Suite Basic (formerly Google Apps for Work) and G Suite Business (formerly Google Apps Unlimited) will be able to enjoy the entire suite with a single, simple payment per year (per seat). G Suite Basic customers will also see a discount when selecting annual billing equivalent to two free months of service versus the monthly plan.

For our resellers offering G Suite, the new annual plans will also be made available to you, both through Enom.com and via the API. We will be sending follow-up notices to you soon regarding wholesale pricing for the new billing plans.

Free WHMCS Plugin

Speaking of billing, one of the most exciting updates coming to resellers offering G Suite will be our new free plugin for WHMCS users. As one of the most popular platforms for web host billing automation, the ability to merge WHMCS and G Suite was among the most anticipated features when we first launched. Soon, you will be able to manage selling and billing G Suite to your customers using your installation of WHMCS, no coding required! Documentation for the WHMCS plugin with G Suite will be available soon, so be watching for more details to come.

When Enom first started down the path of adding Google apps to our offerings, we were thrilled at the prospect of modernizing our product line for Enom.com customers. The update to G Suite branding and addition of annual billing and the WHMCS plugin are even more validation that 2016 is the year of the Enom Evolution.

Learn more about G Suite’s features and pricing plans.

How we’re implementing ICANN’s new Transfer Policy

October 26, 2016

Announcement, News, Resellers

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Enom is implementing an update to the Transfer Policy effective December 2016

Back in June, when ICANN announced the official compliance date for the Transfer Policy (formerly the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy), we posted an article describing the new process that would take place whenever certain domain registrant information is changed. We also promised to update all of our customers, partners, and resellers once we knew our exact approach to complying with the policy. We’ve since worked out a timetable and would like to share the changes with you now.

First, a brief recap of the policy itself. It concerns all gTLD (non-country code) domains, and comes into effect whenever a material change is made to the registrant’s name, organization, or email address—which could occur while transferring ownership of a domain, or simply updating contact information. It will affect Enom retail customers, as well as our resellers and their customers. All accredited domain registrars, such as Enom, must be in compliance with the Transfer Policy by December 1st, 2016.

Our implementation makes a few updates that we believe will satisfy the policy while minimizing the impact on our customers. In our approach, Enom will act as a “designated agent” on behalf of the relevant domain registrants. This means that whenever a Change of Registrant process is triggered as outlined in the Transfer Policy, Enom will auto-approve the changes, then email the party or parties with a notice of the change. The affected domain will then be placed in a 60-day transfer lock (unless the previous registrant has opted out of the waiting period).

To prepare our resellers for the implementation of the policy, we have updated our API documentation and will soon make the relevant commands available in the Reseller Test environment. We will conduct our own tests and finalize our implementation through November in order to be ready to go live on December 1st. Note that we have also updated our Registration Agreement, Reseller Agreement, and ID Protect Agreement to reflect Enom’s implementation of the policy.

We’ve developed a landing page for the new Transfer Policy where you can find additional information and FAQs regarding the coming changes.

Google Apps for Work Now Available Through Enom

August 31, 2016

Featured, News, Resellers

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Enom’s roadmap for the year has been focused on modernizing the user and developer experience. When we were founded almost 20 years ago, there was no such thing as a full online suite of productivity tools for business. Fortunately, in 2016, email, video chat, calendars, documents, spreadsheets, and cloud storage are all made to work together, and there’s one name that is trusted to integrate them all seamlessly: Google. That’s why we’re incredibly excited to announce that as of today, Google Apps for Work is availableto our retail customers (including a free, 14-day trial), and our reseller partners as a value-added service.

Google Apps is great for small businesses and teams looking for professional-grade productivity tools. Anyone that needs to collaborate on a project can do so in real time, on almost any device. Google Apps scales to the size of any operation, and grows as it grows.

Enom resellers will find that Google Apps represents a dependable monthly revenue stream as a value-added service. The entire suite can be marketed to complement a wide range of products, and adds reliable brand recognition to any reseller’s overall offering.

“Today’s announcement is a milestone event for Enom, Google, and our customers,” said Jason Silverstein, VP Product & Engineering at Enom. “Enom customers will be able to use and sell Google Apps and immediately start developing a full integration. This is also the first time Google’s Reseller API has been implemented to scale in this way, and we don’t take their trust lightly. It speaks to our ongoing commitment to put the right tools in front of our customers, and enable them to take their businesses online.”

What you get with Google Apps

Google Apps has communication, collaboration, and storage solutions for any size of project or business.

Communicate

Gmail – Professional email
Hangouts – Voice and video calls
Calendar – Scheduling for teams
Google+ – Social network for business

Collaborate

Docs – Real-time word processing
Sheets – Powerful spreadsheets
Forms – Surveys and forms
Slides – Beautiful presentations
Sites – Easy websites for teams

Store

Drive – Store, share, and sync

See the full list of features that come with each Google Apps monthly plan.

Throughout 2016, we have introduced a website redesign, a new Developer Hub, and several other improvements aimed at improving the Enom experience for modern users and developers. Our offering of Google Apps will be a major component of this year’s overall effort.

“Google Apps directly addresses customer requests we’ve received asking for productivity tools and targeted email options,” says Silverstein. “It’s perfectly in line with our mission to offer our customers more choices and professional tools, and we’re very pleased that it will be the gold standard of online productivity suites.”

Enom’s retail customers can sign up for a free, 14-day trial of Google Apps for Work now. Our resellers cancontact an Enom account representative to start offering Google Apps for Work to their customers, and learn more about Google Apps for Work integration at our Developer Hub.

New API Tokens Bring Added Security and Convenience

May 31, 2016

Developers, Resellers

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When we unveiled our 2016 roadmap, we committed ourselves to vastly improving the developer experience. With 80% of our domains under management coming through the API, we understand that anything we can do to streamline the platform will have a big impact down the line. Moreover, we want to make sure that the improvements make sense both for current customers and for developers that are new to Enom. The Developer Hub we announced last month (which is now live) was the first step, but we know delivering tangible improvements to the platform is the real objective. This is why we’re incredibly happy to announce the introduction of API tokens to Enom beginning June 1, 2016.

Separating passwords and tokens

API tokens are a big step forward in bringing the Enom development environment in line with modern expectations. The tokens insulate your enom.com credentials from your API credentials which yields several benefits to our developers. From a security standpoint, this is the preferred state of affairs, because it allows multiple users to work with the API without needing to share out the password for the entire account. No matter how large or small your team is, you can issue an individual token to each developer, or revoke the token if they no longer require it.

Additionally, by separating the two sets of credentials, you can rest assured that any API connections you develop on the platform will remain up and running, even if you change your password at enom.com. Simply replace any instance of your password with the token and the API calls will work as usual. As we continue rolling out new features, API tokens will ensure that each change to the platform leads to minimal disruption on your end.

Managing your API tokens

Considering how much API tokens can improve the overall development experience, they’re actually incredibly easy to implement and manage. All you have to do is login to your Enom account, then head over to https://www.enom.com/apitokens to generate or revoke an API token. By streamlining the process as much as possible, teams can scale and get up and running on the platform in no time.

Both new and returning users will find a helpful guide to the API commands for creating, deleting, and updating tokens at the new Developer Hub.

Customers have asked us for a platform that is more in line with their workflows, and API tokens deliver a flexibility and convenience to do just that. At the same time, we believe we’re offering a solution that improves the security of your operation, while maintaining the stability you’ve come to expect. Perhaps what’s most exciting about API tokens is that this is just the first of the new improvements we’ll be making to developer experience this year. We’re investing in this platform for the long term, and can’t wait to show you what’s next. Keep watching the blog for more.

Enom’s New Developer Hub

April 27, 2016

Developers, Resellers, Roadmap

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Since sharing our 2016 roadmap with you last month, we’ve been eager to introduce some of the improvements we’re making to the API integration experience for developers. For our current API customers, we want to streamline and enhance the API without requiring major changes that might interrupt their workflow. Meanwhile, we want to make it easier for new API customers to integrate Enom domains and services into their apps without having to learn the entire API catalogue back to front. To reach both of these audiences, we’re happy to announce the first detailed component of our 2016 roadmap: Enom’s new developer hub, coming in early June.

We’re set to massively improve the developer experience with features like API tokens—which we’ll be introducing soon in another post—that will bring our API in line with more modern expectations. But we also know that the best product features are still only as good as our customers’ ability to use them. Providing developers with comprehensive information is key, yet we are long past the time when simply providing a monolithic PDF will be sufficient. It’s time to empower developers with practical tools for the present day.

Documentation by ReadMe.io

The first part of this change means offering cleaner, more robust documentation. We’re happy to announce that we’re implementing the ReadMe.io platform to do just that. ReadMe will offer API developers a collaborative support experience with an intuitive UI, drilling down to specific answers without wading through the entirety of our catalogue of API commands. Ultimately, we want to create a living, breathing document that adapts to the changing needs of the modern API developer.

Aside from the documentation we provide, ReadMe.io supports collaboration among thriving developer communities used by major platforms like Mozilla, Box, and Yammer. While Enom’s dedicated customer and technical support teams are always ready to help, we also understand that sometimes, the quickest, most relevant advice will come from your peers. Whether you’re looking for detailed, step-by-step integration help, or want a succinct, self-service approach, the new developer hub will be a source for the best of both worlds.

Safe testing environments

We aren’t just stopping at documentation, though. Contemporary development involves much more prototyping and “playing around” than it used to. Integrating with our API is no different. The second piece of our developer hub update will use Postman, a platform that offers a safe environment to explore and test our APIs. Postman saves developers the worry by offering a secure sandbox to identify and preempt any potential snags before implementing the API on a live system.

Development teams from companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Verizon, and eBay use Postman to collaborate and share collections, document their process, and ultimately deliver stable APIs. We think this will be an invaluable tool for both new and existing API developers on the Enom platform as we roll out rest of the changes on our roadmap this year.

We understand that the developer experience and the customer experience are not one in the same. Throughout the year, we’re going to focus on turning that belief into concrete features to modernize the process of integration for API developers. An effective, flexible documentation and testing solution is absolutely necessary to make that happen, which is why we’re so excited to be introducing this API developer hub to you. Keep an eye out for these changes in early June along with the introduction to API tokens.

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