Who We Are
A small group of award-winning professionals, hell-bent on getting the best digital marketing for our clients.
The Sonderlings
We're the geeks that don't actually sound like geeks. It's a strange disposition, but one that makes us quite a unique company. We do incredibly complex and technical jobs and make them sound like normal jobs.
We have over 30 years of experience in working with businesses and helping them achieve their goals online. We've won awards for our marketing innovation and our customer service.
Our team are fully remote across Devon, Dorset and Somerset. That gives us a fantastic advantage in that we can hire the top talent without worrying about location. It also means our service area is spread all the way across the South West; so we can take the time to actually meet our clients for a coffee and build a personal relationship.
Our Team Ethos
We know the internet and websites can be overly complex, and at times intimidating.
We want to make it simpler.
01 We’re geeks that don’t sound like geeks - we talk in normal lingo!
02 Our business success depends on your business succeeding
03 Building websites excites us
04 We love solving problems. We’re flexible and agile and adaptive
05 We’ve got strong opinions, but love to learn
06 We’re honest
Meet the Team
Just in case you haven't met up with us in person yet, here's our faces.
Rob Swan
Development & Tech Wizard
Rob Fellingham
Marketing & DESIGN Guru
Ange Swan
Design & Social Master
Jack Turner
Digital Dynamo
Steve Towells
Copy King
Brad Ellis
Software Ninjaneer
Charlie Head
SEO & Marketing Whizz
Alex Rowe
Chief Integrator
Brad couldn't make the photo shoot... poor guy.
A Short History
1999
The Beginning
More than 20 years ago - founding Director Rob Swan was commissioned to build his first commercial website, back when the web was for nerds, smartphones didn’t exist, and the hallways of domestic homes hummed with the beeps and clicks of dial-up modems.
Since those early days we’ve watched the internet grow and develop to becoming the beating heart of business and commerce that it has become today.
2004
Fuelled on Coffee
In 2004 Rob Swan established a solid track record of writing trend-setting articles for web design magazines, gained experience of running a successful small agency (we were once called ‘Fuelled on Coffee’, we do sometimes wish we'd kept it with our weekly coffee spend), and spent several years gaining experience working for a range of web design agencies and clients as a PHP developer.
2010
Training the Unemployed
Open Door Internet started with a staff of two to provide web design training and mentoring for the long term unemployed. The coffee-shop-based training scheme saw great success, and the web development arm of Open Door Internet continued to thrive – providing bespoke website and database solutions for customers.
2013
A new platform
Open Door Internet restructured to develop the pay-monthly website platform which now serves as the cornerstone of our technical offering.
This progressive platform opened the door to far more cost-effective client relationships, where our own business success was far more closely linked to the ongoing success of our clients.
2016
More Marketing Services
Rob Fellingham, our Marketing Director based in Seaton, joined the core team to drive the diversification of our online marketing offering. Rob saw that the company gained recognition as an official Google Partner and introduced a range of SEO and marketing offerings. During this period the Open Door Internet’s web and email servers moved from the USA to the UK, to ease the introduction of GDPR and future-proof our planned expansion.
2019
Expanding The Core Team
Open Door Internet continued to grow the core team, with Ange Swan joining us as our Digital Director, based near Minehead.
Our eCommerce platform now processes hundreds of thousands of pounds of online orders for local businesses every year, and Open Door Internet manages 150+ websites on our pay monthly website platform.
2020
The Strangest Of Years
The time was right to rebrand the company to Sonder Digital. Our fantastic admin area fondly became known as 'Envelope', and we launched our 'Canvas Mode', an intuitive website editor that lets you visually change your website as though it were a simple Word Document.
Becky (based between Torbay and Newton Abbot) joined the team early in 2020 as our Digital Marketing Manager. With a laser-like focus on growth strategies for small businesses, she helped expand and streamline our SEO services and how we offer them.
We also welcome Steve Towells as our copywriter - a fantastic writer, he improves our offering across the board. Later in the year, we were joined by Jack Turner, a fantastic Marketing Exec to help keep our growing client list on track.
We rounded off this strange year with some new awards:
Most Innovative Online Marketing Firm & DISTINCTION AWARD FOR CLIENT SERVICE EXCELLENCE
2021
Today...
Starting the year off strong - we've hired a new developer Brad Ellis to work with Rob Swan and make magic happen on our platform. Soon to be followed by Charlie Head, a fantastic marketer and writer and Alex Rowe who will be leading and managing some of our biggest accounts.
Updating page...