Brilliant.

Help

Everything here is written for someone who runs a pub, not someone who builds websites. If the answer you want is not on this page, email hello@brilliant.pub and a person will reply.

Signing in

There is no password to remember. Go to brilliant.pub, put in your email address, and we send you a link. Tap the link and you are in.

The link works for 15 minutes and only once. If it has expired, ask for another; there is no limit and nothing goes wrong if you ask several times.

If the email has not arrived after a couple of minutes, check your junk folder. If it is there, mark it "not junk" so the next one comes straight through.

Getting your site live

There are three steps, and the site only goes public at the end of all three.

  1. Claim your pub. Search for it in your account. We build a first draft from what is already listed publicly: your hours, your location, your photos from Google. Some of it will be wrong, and correcting it is the next step.
  2. Make it yours. Fix anything wrong, add your menu, what is on tap, what is on this week, and your own photos.
  3. Go live. Start the subscription, and do the two checks below.

Why is my site still not public?

Almost always one of two things, and both are in your account:

1. We have not verified you are the pub. We ring your pub's own listed phone number and read out a six digit code. Type that code into your account and you are confirmed. We only ring between 9am and 9pm.

This exists to protect you. Without it, anyone could claim your pub and put false information under its name.

2. You have not added a photo of your own. The photos on your draft came from your Google listing, and they belong to Google and to whoever took them, not to you. We will not publish a site built on them. One photo taken on your phone is enough to start.

Once both are done the site goes live on its own, usually within fifteen minutes. You do not have to press anything.

Changing things

Everything is edited from your account on your phone. Changes appear on your site within about fifteen minutes.

The things worth keeping current

Menus without typing

Take a photo of your menu or your tap list and we read it in for you. You check what we got and correct anything wrong before it saves. Taps read from a photo need a price adding before they will save.

I made a mess. Can I undo it?

Email us. We keep what your site looked like before, and we can put it back.

Using your own domain

Free, and you can do it whenever you like. Every pub also keeps its yourpub.brilliant.pub address forever, and that one never stops working.

  1. Put your domain into the "Your own domain" box in your account and press Connect. Just the name, like thecrownanchor.co.uk: no www, no https.
  2. We then show you two records to add. You add them where you bought the domain (GoDaddy, 123-reg, Namecheap, whoever took the money), on the page called DNS or DNS records.
  3. Save them and come back. Your account updates on its own when it is done.

It can take anything from a few minutes to a few hours to spread across the internet. Nothing is broken while you wait.

My domain company will not let me add one of the records

Some will not accept a CNAME on the bare name (shown as @). Look for a type called ALIAS or ANAME and use that instead, with the same "points to" value. If there is neither, add just the www record and email us: we will sort the rest out with you.

Your Google listing

Your website is half of being found. Your Google Business Profile is the other half, and it is the one most pubs have gaps in: missing hours, no description, the wrong categories, thin photos.

Your account runs an audit of it and shows you exactly what is missing, with the fix for each gap written out. Make the change in Google, then press "Re-run the audit" and watch the gap clear.

We do not make the changes for you and we never ask for your Google password. If one of the gaps will not shift, email us and we will walk you through it.

Your mailing list

Your site can collect regulars' email addresses, and the list is yours. You can send up to four emails a month to up to 2,000 people, included in what you already pay.

Every email we send for you carries a one-click unsubscribe, which is what the law requires and what keeps you out of trouble. People have to confirm their address before they ever receive anything, so the list stays clean.

There is deliberately no way to download the list as a file. It is there to be emailed from, not exported, and that is what we promised the people who joined it.

Billing

£15 a month plus VAT (€18 or $20 if you chose those), no setup fee. Nothing else to buy.

Everything about money is under Manage billing in your account, which opens Stripe, who take the payments. In there you can:

My payment failed

Usually an expired card or a bank wanting confirmation. Your site stays up. Update the card under Manage billing and everything goes back to normal automatically. We keep trying the card for about three weeks before the site comes down, and it comes straight back when you fix it.

Cancelling

Any time, in your account, or by replying to any email from us. There is no notice period and nothing to argue with.

Billing stops at the end of the period you have already paid for, and your site comes down then. Nothing is deleted. Your content, your photos and your mailing list stay here for 90 days, so if you come back within that time your site returns exactly as it was, at the same address.

If you want everything erased straight away, there is a "close your account" option underneath, or ask us and we will do it. That one is not reversible.

Still stuck?

Email hello@brilliant.pub. Tell us your pub's name and what you were trying to do. We would rather you asked early than spent an hour on it.

Email us