Since its launch earlier this summer, the word about online website building and business management service proQloud has been spreading amongst creative freelancers, and the proQloud community has been growing.
Designed to make building a website easy for freelancers and studios in the audio, film and broadcast industries, proQloud offers an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder, allowing users to get a site up and running quickly with their own branding, and leaving them more time to be creative. The results work equally well on all devices and importing audio files and videos for showreels is simple. For those wanting more from their website, a Qloud+ service gives users a suite of integrated business tools including unlimited file transfer, invoice management, an online order system and online payments.
"The thing I like the most about proQloud is the fact that I don't have to go through the process of getting a website developed, hosted, maintained, and optimised," comments Vijay Benegal, a Mumbai-based mix engineer, now signed up as a Qloud+ user, who mixes songs in 5.1 and stereo for use in Bollywood film productions and commercial releases of the associated soundtracks. When Vijay was introduced to proQloud, he had been planning to set up a website to promote his mixing services for some time, but as he admits, he had never got around to doing it. Now his site is active at http://vijaybenegal.studioqloud.com/
"Building our site — https://purplerainstudio.proqloud.com — has been great, as a lot of social networks are integrated into our web page, like Facebook and Twitter," adds Ashish Saksena, a sound engineer who owns Purple Rain Studios in Bandra, western Mumbai, and works on advertising, TV and live sound projects. "These days, a lot of our clients are looking for digital delivery of their content. With the delivery system built into proQloud, it has become a lot easier to send media files to our clients — and of course the privacy concern is also taken care of." Ashish has been using proQloud since early in the summer and has been impressed by the responsiveness of the UK-based team, who have incorporated several of his suggestions into the service since he signed up.
Adam Whittaker is a British producer and mix engineer, currently living and working in Hungary but working for clients all over the world. He was introduced to proQloud earlier this year at just the point when he had begun to think he needed to create a site for his services on the Internet, and is now a Qloud+ user, with his site at https://adam.proqloud.com. "I played around with various templates and a Wordpress site, but never thought the end result was that great; something was always missing. The major difference with proQloud is that it's designed as an end-to-end solution specifically for our industry, so there's no need to figure out how to embed music players, videos, add a shopping cart or any of that stuff — it's all in there." Adam also liked the quick and easy web design features proQloud offers, which let him set up what he needed quickly, so he could get back to work. "I'm not a web designer, so it's great to have proQloud, which makes it really simple to present a good-looking site. I like to mix records... not do graphic design!"
Finally, Adam has praise for the integrated invoicing and billing features in the Qloud+ service, which help keep his finances organised. "Like a lot of, um... 'creative' people, that's never been my focus, so it is great to be able to point people at the site and let them place orders, then get billed automatically. The whole nasty business side of things is just taken care of."
"We're very proud of what this service has achieved in the few months since we went live," comments Donal Whelan, proQloud's Managing Director. "We thought we might begin by spreading the word in Europe and in India, and we’ve had a really good takeup from both territories. The service is continuing to expand with more web site design templates being added regularly, and feedback from users like Vijay, Asish and Adam is also being incorporated every month. Watching our community grow so rapidly is very exciting, and we look forward to being of service to more creative professionals in the months ahead."
