Running a platform as feature-rich as Openprovider means power and choice: sometimes, some of the most helpful tools hide in plain sight.
This guide brings the best time-savers, revenue helpers, and safety features into one place, so you can manage portfolios at scale with less friction and more control.
They’re not ranked from ‘best’ to ‘number 10’ or vice versa. The nice thing about such features is that each of them could be very valuable to a specific selection of our customers. Knowing that, who am I to judge their value?
Reseller in the whois
Wouldn’t it be great if you would be listed in the whois record of a domain name, as being the provider for that domain? Even if you register it through a company like Openprovider? For .nl domains, that is possible! Registry SIDN supports the use of a “reseller contact”. This can be you, but you can also choose to list your customer. By setting reseller contacts for your .nl domains, you increase the exposure of your company.
You can set a default reseller contact for all your domains, or you can choose a specific contact for a selection of your domains. Find an example of the new whois output and more details about this feature in our original news item. In the future, we may extend this feature to other extensions as well, as long as the registry supports it.
Reduce frequency of renewal reminder e-mails
A long time ago, when Openprovider started, our customers were small and our biggest customers had maybe 100 domains under management. Our daily renewal reminders were very useful, our customers were happy with it. Over time, our customers grew. Managing thousands or even tens of thousands of domains automatically leads to renewals every day. We found – by our own experience as well – that these automatic reminders don’t get a lot of attention anymore if they are received every day again.
That’s why we introduced customization of their frequency. By receiving these warnings only once a week or even once every two weeks, the level of attention increases. Find this feature in your account settings!
SSL wizard
Choosing the right SSL certificate is always a difficult question. You need to know the customer’s requirements, but far too often the customer doesn’t know himself!
To help you help your customers, we have created a SSL help guide to drive your clients toward the right choice.
Access Premium SSLs here and start reselling digital trust, not just safety.
To pay or not to pay VAT?
A small note on paying VAT: being a Dutch company, Openprovider is obliged to charge VAT to customers that are VAT liable (Dutch customers and customers from within the European Union without a valid VAT number). If you are based in the European Union and have a valid VAT number, check if this VAT number is present in your account details. Only then, we can exempt you from VAT on our invoices!
Balance and billing controls
Set smart low-balance warnings so you never get caught out. You can define multiple watermarks (for example, a “notify” at €1,000 and an “urgent” at €100) and you’ll receive an email when your balance drops below each one. Check the costs & payment forecast to see expected renewal spend for the next 12 months, and retrieve your live balance via our api if you want to sync it with your own tools. Prefer a simpler workflow? Many partners top up a “plenty” amount once a month, then replenish whenever the monthly invoice arrives; just keep an eye on your balance to avoid interruptions.
Custom invoice information
If finance needs a PO number or department note on the invoice, add it once under custom invoice information fields and we’ll include it as a separate note on every invoice.
Find your prices
Our public price page shows regular tier prices. To see your personal prices per operation, click into a product on that page. Members can also view a full list of cost prices under the membership menu. you can fetch prices automatically (and in your own currency) through our api.
Nameserver groups
One of the most ancient concepts in Openprovider is the “nameserver group”. After 15 years, I can safely admit: we’ve stolen this great idea from DNS Belgium because we liked it so much! At the same time, we have improved it to support all extensions instead of only .be.
Knowing that most customers deal with only one set of nameservers, or at least a selected number, why would you need to enter the same nameservers over and over again? What if something changes? When you want to add a third nameserver to your cluster, for example? If you are using our nameserver groups, you can do this in just one simple action rather than updating all your hundreds of domains manually. Once changed, Openprovider will update each single domain name linked to that nameserver group.
This mass change happens in the background, allowing you to continue in Openprovider. Once all domains have been updated, you will receive a report by e-mail listing the update results.
Manage your nameserver groups through the “DNS Management” menu.
Different contact types
When signing up to Openprovider you provide your contact details. These data are used to create the default administrative contact. This is the main contact for your account. However, Openprovider supports more contact types: a technical contact that will receive e-mails on technical topics like status updates and a billing contact that will receive all finance-related communication like payment confirmations and invoices. These additional contacts can be configured through the Reseller Control Panel.
For extra protection, enable our layered security options (including user-level 2FA and IP whitelisting). You’ll find a full walkthrough in our security guide.
Business e-mail personalisation and white labeling
Format the e-mails that Openprovider sends to your customers exactly the way you want: in your own style, with your own words, sent from your own e-mail address.
Automated validation of DV certificates
If you have ever ordered an SSL certificate for a customer of a customer of a customer (in short: for somebody outside your direct control), you know how frustrating the e-mail validation can be: people ignoring e-mails, not having provided the right e-mail address, outdated whois records, … Luckily it’s possible to do the validation without having to rely on e-mails: you can do so through the DNS or web hosting. Read more in our news item (valid for all brands, not only Comodo).
Do you want to get rich on SSL certificates? Read our white paper for inspiration!
Sorting your pre-registrations
Assume that you pre-registered 100 domains in a new gTLD.
Then, one of your best customers calls you and wants that-one-great-name and TLD.
Normally, pre-registrations are processed in the same order as they have been ordered. Wouldn’t it be nice if you can push your customer’s great domain name to the top of this queue?
That’s possible! Just check the Sort pre-registrations page in your control panel. Sorting pre-registrations is possible as soon as the domains have been prepared for the General Availability (GA) , normally at least a month before the GA date.
Want early demand signals on new TLDs without building a form from scratch? Drop our pre-registration widget on your site. It’s a two-step form you can style with simple CSS.
Reserved transactions
Why is there sometimes a difference between the transaction lines on the invoice and those in the control panel? The answer is simple: we only include completed transactions on the invoice. A .com transfer, for example, is not realtime: after ordering it, it can succeed or fail. As long as there is no final status, the transaction is “reserved”: the money is deducted from your account but not ready for invoicing yet. As soon as the transfer succeeds, the transaction will be marked “completed” and will arrive on the next invoice. If it fails, we will refund the amount and you will see a credit line in your online transaction overview (but not on the invoice). Reserved transactions are used for all asynchronous operations, including some non-realtime registrations (.dk, .sr, .mk, …), many transfers and SSL certificate orders.
You can review your reserved transactions anytime in your control panel.
API
Ever wanted to update a bunch of domains or register dozens of domains at once? Doing so through the control panel can take a serious amount of time.
However, you can automate it! Openprovider provides a powerful automated interface (API) that allows you to do everything that you can do in the control panel as well – but without manual interaction.
Prefer off-the-shelf instead of custom api work? plug us into your stack with our ready-made modular integrations, like the ones for Plesk, WHMCS, Hostbill, Hostfact, Atomia, and Blesta.
Conclusions – learn more and get help fast
Search our knowledge base for instant answers, keep an eye on our social channels for product news and maintenance updates, and contact us for direct Q&A with our sales and product owners.
