For how long have you been using fluxiom?

We've been on board with the service since February 2007. At the time, we signed up for a Basic account, which offered everything we needed, without breaking the bank. We are still on the same plan today, and have accompanied the service as features and quotas kept increasing. We now have twelve active users on the account, not counting public pages, of course.

You keep lots of data in fluxiom, then?

We do not currently use fluxiom as an archive because we like to stay focused on data that is fresh and useful. However we do have about 2 GBs of data stored in our account on an everyday basis. This being said, we really do not need to measure: the great thing with our plan is that we can accept large RAW files from our photographer without giving it a second thought. That makes fluxiom a great staging and exchange platform.

 Front and foremost, we chose fluxiom because it was simple and had no learning-curve, beyond a few minutes of self-paced experimentation.

Why did you choose fluxiom originally?

One of our key missions, here at rot grün blau is to keep things simple and approachable for our clients. We know communication can be daunting, and we want to accompany them to the best of our abilities so that they can focus on their message and their project — instead of the red tape and the problems.

Front and foremost, we chose fluxiom because it was simple and had no learning-curve, beyond a few minutes of self-paced experimentation — and that's for the administrative part, the public pages are even simpler. Team training for fluxiom took the better part of 10 minutes two years ago, and we've been rolling with it since.

Pretty much everybody has heard of FTP but few people know what it does, and fewer still can actually use it. Getting it out of the equation was a big boost for the business, and allowed us to focus on the creative instead of providing technical support to frustrated clients and dealing with firewall problems.

Were you worried about security when jumping on the cloud?

Many agencies have one big whoppin’ FTP server with an "in folder" where every client can see the files of every other client. That's not security! The alternative, of course, is to manage FTP accounts by hand, creating separate user names and passwords for users, assigning them to groups, and then giving each group a space on the server. Seriously, who has time for that, and how many users are going to remember yet another set of credentials to send you something?

fluxiom neatly separates client submissions from deliveries, and ensures no two clients see each other’s data. Since the team is closely-knit, we don’t spend our days tweaking access privileges but they’re here if we need to grant limited access to the account to some users — for example an intern or a contractor. The best part is that it’s all automated.

  fluxiom neatly separates client submissions from deliveries, and ensures no two clients see each other’s data.

fluxiom is mostly an inbound tool for you, then?

Inbound and outbound. "Transfer" is the keyword, really.

Since print-ready files are always heavy — a simple PDF can weigh over 10 MB, which is over most attachment limits —, we use fluxiom sharing, from download links to stages, depending on the scope of a project. That prevents inboxes from being clogged, it automates the delivery process, and we can control the validity of links over time, which is impossible in an email.

We use the dropbox to receive files too. That way, everyone in the team can review the files before accepting them, and everybody gets notified of new arrivals: it unclogs the email pipes and it makes our workflow more adaptable at the same time. While the arrival of files for the communication part of our business is predictable, a service like "Wir drucken auf Leinwand" with its public-facing product pages, is not. The flexibility fluxiom affords us really makes a difference here.

fluxiom saves money and aggravation, then?

Definitely, it's in our Top-5 of anti-ageing remedies! It's not the most glamorous part of the business but a large part of what we do entails managing and tracking data. Any help in that area is invaluable!

Do you use the branding features?

Of course! Our job is branding, so we have to put our best foot forwards at every step of the process. Beyond aesthetics, though, branding also creates a continuity between fluxiom and the sites we manage directly, which helps keep the process simpler for our clients: there is no jarring transition to be dealt with.

Also, we find the design of fluxiom as a whole, even the administrative parts, fits our aesthetics and business very well. The desktop-like approach to a web interface is quite unique, and we find it is a natural fit for our computing habits.

Do we take it your clients adapt to fluxiom easily?

I'd say they don't really notice fluxiom, and that's the best compliment we can pay to the technology. Yes, they do accept it quite well. Of course, we do get the odd question, but it's part of using the web.