Forfront Limited

e-shot™ email marketing

e-shot™ is a secure email marketing platform trusted by a number of government organisations to deliver branded communications. With a user-friendly interface e-shot gives you extensive campaign and contact management tools along with integration and analytics capabilities.

Features

  • Email marketing
  • SMS marketing
  • Contact management and segmentation
  • Forms and preference centre
  • Dynamic content and personalisation
  • Deliverability tools
  • Integrations and API
  • Campaign reporting and analytics

Benefits

  • Single view of contact data and interactions
  • GDPR-compliant contact and preference management
  • Intelligent campaign segmentation and targeting
  • Easily design responsive emails
  • Optimised deliverability for public sector communication
  • Extensive reporting and analytics
  • Manage multiple brands or departments through one interface
  • Integrate with other key business systems

Pricing

£199 a licence a month

  • Education pricing available

Service documents

Framework

G-Cloud 12

Service ID

3 4 1 0 6 6 1 7 4 2 6 0 3 6 7

Contact

Forfront Limited Daniel Hare
Telephone: 020 3320 8777
Email: daniel.hare@forfront.com

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
No
Cloud deployment model
Hybrid cloud
Service constraints
We always proactively inform our customers of any scheduled maintenance or if there is an issue affecting the services both by e-mail and on the e-shot™ dashboard. In the case of peak time traffic overload, we apply contingency in the form of intelligent delivery procedures in order to protect the reputation of our customers’ domains and IPs.
System requirements
Requires internet access

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
Our Customer Success team will respond promptly during standard support hours. Monday - Friday, 8:30am - 6pm. Median first response time (Jan - June 2020) 3m 15s. Median time to close (Jan - June 2020) 1h 30m. Out of office hours support is also available for critical issues. Our team proactively monitor our systems 24/7.
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
Yes
Online ticketing support accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support
Web chat
Web chat support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support accessibility standard
WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
Web chat accessibility testing
We have not systematically undertaken testing of this nature
Onsite support
Yes, at extra cost
Support levels
All of our customers have access to remote support through our Customer Success team who deal with a full range of issues including technical support, training, advice, account management and administration.

Support is provided on the same basis to all customers and priority is given to issues that prevent a customer from using the software to complete a time sensitive task. Remote support is inclusive in all of our software subscriptions and we also provide proactive support to ensure customers can derive maximum benefit from using our solutions. Should a support requirement be deemed as consultancy, then additional charges may apply.

Our Customer Success team is backed up by our technical teams including Infrastructure, Deliverability and Development. Technical Account Management is provided by the Customer Success team and Cloud Support is provided by our Infrastructure team who continually monitor our solutions and solve issues proactively.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
Personal training via screen share and telephone. Additional online resources available with training videos and documentation. Ongoing Customer Success team on hand to provide the personal touch, all included.
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
Platform caters for all data export via user interface. You can export all contact data via csv files or use the API to export all data.
End-of-contract process
All data, reports and templates are available for extraction up until the date of leaving without charge. Once deadline has been reached, account is closed and archived. After this period the account will be deleted from the system and only an archived back up copy will be kept for the period required by data protection guidelines;

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari 9+
  • Opera
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service
Email and campaign authoring is only available on desktop service.

Mobile service is restricted to reporting and analytics.
Service interface
No
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
E-shot has a REST API that is accessible over HTTPS. API access is granted by a API key that can be restricted to specific sub-accounts and IP addresses where necessary. API key requests must be submitted by an authorised administrator via our support system. The appropriate login credentials are then supplied to the client who will use these credentials in all API requests made to e-shot™. Further documentation detailing the functionality available for the APIs can be found at: https://www.e-shot.net/assets/pdf/rest_api_guide.pdf. The REST API has full read and write capabilities over the main entities including contacts, campaigns, sources, groups and website activity.
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
  • Open API (also known as Swagger)
  • PDF
API sandbox or test environment
Yes
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
E-shot™ can be customised extensively to accommodate different needs with control over user management, branding, templates and sending identities. e-shot™ can also be set up into sub-accounts so that different organisational units can have their own customisations. Each e-shot™ sub-account can be white-labeled by a customer to have their own logo that appears on the UI and reports sent by the system. Individual users can customise reporting and analytics and certain elements of the UI. From an API perspective, customisation is extremely versatile with e-shot™ functions built into third party systems on a bespoke basis where needed.

Scaling

Independence of resources
The e-shot platform is housed on its own infrastructure in a secure UK data centre with scalable architecture and a significant headroom.

Each client data is stored on a separate database dedicated to the client.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
All interactions are tracked and reported in real time. Data is written to both the Campaign Report and the individual Activity Log of each contact.

Graphical presentation of opens, clicks, forwards, unsubscribes and bounces of every email campaign you send.

Build and save custom reports that can be configured with all the power of a SQL query from within our user interface. Saved custom reports can then be run with a single click and shared throughout your organisation.

All service usage metrics are also available via API integration.
Reporting types
  • API access
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Reports on request

Resellers

Supplier type
Not a reseller

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Other security clearance
Government security clearance
Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
United Kingdom
User control over data storage and processing locations
No
Datacentre security standards
Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
Penetration testing frequency
Less than once a year
Penetration testing approach
‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
Protecting data at rest
Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
Equipment disposal approach
In-house destruction process

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
Via user interface, API or integration
Data export formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data export formats
Via API or integration
Data import formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data import formats
  • Excel
  • Via API or integration

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
  • Private network or public sector network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Data protection within supplier network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
The platform operates a 99.9% availability with scheduled maintenance windows out of hours. Customers are immediately informed if there is an issue affecting services via e-mail and platform notification. If it is a high or crisis priority issue, the customers will be periodically updated with the status. All the time frames above are based on the working hours schedule 09:00 – 18:00 Monday to Friday excluding Public Holidays. Please refer to Forfront Service Level Agreement.pdf for full details.
Approach to resilience
High availability architecture
Outage reporting
Outages detected by our monitoring systems result in 24/7/365 notifications to the Operations Team. They would triage and if necessary escalate these issues.

Clients are notified in the dashboard and by email to the client's authorised administrator . Details of cause and mitigation available on request.

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Username and password.

Restriction based on IP can be implemented upon request.
Access restriction testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Management access authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
  • Other
Description of management access authentication
E-shot™ platform in Datacentre is accessed via dedicated/permanent Site to Site VPN only from office. This Site to Site VPN is protected by 3DES & AES128 encryption and 3DES & SHA1 authentication with pre-shared key. Access via this Site to Site VPN is further restricted at user level to only authorised personnel by 3rd party software with encrypted username password.

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
User-defined
Access to supplier activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
User-defined
How long system logs are stored for
At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
No
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
No
Other security certifications
Yes
Any other security certifications
Cyber Essentials

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
Yes
Security governance standards
Other
Other security governance standards
Cyber Essentials
Information security policies and processes
We are Cyber Essentials Compliant. We have implemented DevOps processes and practices. The website adheres to the OWASP standards for web security.

Only tested code is promoted from Development to UAT to Production via use of automated deployment system. It is not possible for code to be promoted to Production without first going to the Development and UAT environments.

We review our implemented policies annually.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change management approach
Ges requested to a system are written up into a UAC driven change request specification document, with supplied estimates for delivery. This takes into consideration standards agreed with the client; e.g. OWASP.

The deliverable components of a specification are created as tasks in our issue tracking system and assigned to a SPRINT delivery. Code changes are checked-in against a task to provide an audit that will be reviewed and tested.

Only the release management team can promote software to public facing environments. This is carried out using an automated delivery platform.
Vulnerability management type
Supplier-defined controls
Vulnerability management approach
Issues encountered by users of the system go to first line support who will triage the issue. Issues encountered by the application or monitoring facilities are triaged by the Operations Team. These issues can be received by: Text, Phone, Web Chat or Email.

Triaging takes into consideration the impact of an issue according to our definitions associated with Critical, High, Medium and Low priority issues.
E.g. Critical issues are where the system is unusable or cannot be used to carry out critical business functions and no work around exists.

The following is a link to our SLA:
http://www.forfront.com/ClientSupport/pdf/forfrontSLA.pdf
Protective monitoring type
Supplier-defined controls
Protective monitoring approach
Firewall logs and application notifications are monitored and Forfront can respond quickly to any incidents. Cloud security services including WAF OSWAP and DDoS protection.
Incident management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Incident management approach
Users may report incidents by phone, email or via chat. Once escalated, we have incident management processes which cover roles and responsibilities for incident handling. Updates will be usually be provided to affected customers in real time. Details of cause and mitigation are available on request to authorised administrator contacts.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
No

Pricing

Price
£199 a licence a month
Discount for educational organisations
Yes
Free trial available
No

Service documents