Zéfyx

Founded in 2008 in Ardèche, France, Zéfyx is a web design agency led by a team of five, three of whom are trained developers. For 18 years, it has been designing websites and web applications for a variety of clients across multiple sectors, including tourism, local businesses, public authorities, and nonprofits.

Zéfyx’s hallmark is its autonomy; where many agencies assemble off-the-shelf tools, Zéfyx codes its own, starting with its own CMS. This developer culture goes hand in hand with a refusal to lock its clients in. The company always registers domain names in their name, never its own, and keeps their data hosted in France for added sovereignty. The domain name is considered the birth certificate of a project, the starting point for everything.

This autonomy has a trade-off, as Zéfyx only has a small team. As the client portfolio grows, managing domain names becomes a pressure point. Once past several hundred, tracking them becomes difficult to manage on a human scale, when you have to verify that a site is working correctly, check DNS zone consistency, domain name validity, and more.

These constraints call for a clear response: a partner that is capable of streamlining daily domain management, coupled with a responsive contact who is familiar with the company and its challenges.

Having used OVHcloud for its infrastructure since it was founded, Zéfyx joined the Domain Name Reseller Programme as soon as it launched. It found exactly what it was looking for: a catalogue of over 900 extensions, preferential rates that it can pass on to its clients, and premium support, provided by a team that knows Zéfyx and treats its requests as a priority.

“We benefit from the quality of OVHcloud services and the programme’s rates, with the added bonus of having a real customer relationship, with agents who eventually get to know us.”
Sébastien Coget, founder of Zéfyx

But it is the OVHcloud API that is becoming the real engine. The agency uses it to build its own tools, tailored for a portfolio that has become too vast for manual monitoring. These software programmes continuously monitor whether the websites and domains are running properly, archive every DNS zone modification to keep a history of them, and spot coveted domains so that an order can be issued as soon as a name becomes free. Domain registration is still managed manually via the control panel, with automation taking over for everything else.

“This API is truly a central element that opens up a wealth of new possibilities. When you have several hundred domain names, it becomes impossible to track them manually.”
Sébastien Coget, founder of Zéfyx

This combination of the programme’s API and in-house software transforms this task into almost automated tracking. What’s more, Zéfyx is constantly looking to improve its services. When one of their self-developed features, such as the DNS zone history, becomes available at OVHcloud, the company retires its own in favour of a native solution.

However, Zéfyx does not only use OVHcloud for domain name management. The agency hosts most of its clients’ websites on Public Cloud instances, sized according to the type of project, and also uses a CDN for tourism sites open to an international audience. It also manages its clients’ email addresses via our MX Plan, Pro Email, Hosted Exchange or Zimbra solutions. Plus, the whole system is protected by a redundant backup strategy. As a matter of ethics, the agency even stores a copy with another French provider, a freedom made possible by OVHcloud’s open policy, which allows its clients to create their own infrastructure without ever locking them in.

The impact can primarily be measured in time and hassle saved. In short, as Sébastien Coget says, it gives them peace of mind.

• Resilience by design: at Zéfyx, redundancy is a continuous architectural choice, providing the company with a solid disaster recovery plan that’s ready for any eventuality.
• A controlled volume with a constant headcount: five people manage more than 600 domain names, 700 email addresses and 400 active projects.
• A relationship of trust: the quick responses from premium support have strengthened the bond between OVHcloud and Zéfyx, as well as between the agency and its clients.
• Lasting loyalty: nearly 95% of its domain names are renewed each year and some client relationships date back to the agency’s beginnings 18 years ago, without ever forcing their clients to commit.

Over the years, Zéfyx has seen OVHcloud constantly enhance its services. But beyond the tools, it is the relationship that has become essential: far from restricting the agency’s autonomy, it has become the foundation that allows it to build a solid service for its clients.

“It is this entire ecosystem that we have been able to build around OVHcloud that allows us to have a robust and reliable product. And that’s also what leads our clients to trust us.”
Sébastien Coget, founder of Zéfyx