VISAV

What VISAV does

VISAV Limited is a privately held UK web services company founded in 1998 as Robin Hood Limited and formally incorporated as VISAV Limited on 14 August 2002, headquartered at Sherwood Business Centre in Nottingham. The company operates a portfolio of four distinct subscription-based digital products built on its proprietary VISAV CMS platform (originally developed in-house circa 2000 to enable non-technical users to update websites without HTML knowledge). Its core product is Neighbourhood Alert, an advanced community messaging system serving 42+ partner organisations including UK police forces, fire & rescue, local authorities, Police and Crime Commissioners, and Neighbourhood Watch groups, with 840,000+ registered members receiving over 10 million emails per month. Supporting products include Meal Selector (an online school meals ordering platform deployed across five UK regions via Chartwells), Email Hosting (personalised encrypted email for 150+ private clients averaging 10M+ emails monthly), and bespoke Web Design/CMS builds for businesses.

The business model is anchored in recurring subscription and managed-service revenue across government, education, SMB, and community segments. VISAV sells enterprise solutions (Neighbourhood Alert, custom CMS builds) through direct, consultation-based field sales, with booking links provided to the Managing Director and Product Director; consumer/SMB products (Meal Selector, Email Hosting) operate as self-service platforms with quote-based domain and mailbox purchasing. The company maintains no external institutional investment and operates with a small team of approximately 15 staff across technical, support, and administrative functions. Pricing is not publicly disclosed and is negotiated per engagement.

Operational scale is best evidenced by usage rather than revenue: Neighbourhood Alert processed 55 million emails in H1 2020 and peaked at 11.2 million in March 2020 during the Coronavirus pandemic. Beyond core SaaS, VISAV has built a distinctive community-engagement profile through sponsorships and partnerships with the National Neighbourhood Watch Conference (2022 headline sponsor), knife crime awareness programmes across Nottinghamshire schools, the Mesopotamia food bank (~320 individuals fed weekly), and Chartwells for school meals - positioning the firm as a stakeholder-embedded supplier in UK public safety and community infrastructure rather than a generic web services vendor.

Name

VISAV

Legal name

VISAV Limited

Website

https://visav.co.uk

Company type

Private

Founded year

2002

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

VISAV Limited is a UK private web services firm operating the Neighbourhood Alert community messaging platform for 42+ police forces, local authorities and Neighbourhood Watch groups, plus Meal Selector school meals software, encrypted email hosting, and bespoke CMS website builds on its proprietary content management system.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Nottingham

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Web Design, Development and Hosting: Professional CMS builds where the team designs website look-and-feel and structure, then enables customers to update their own websites. Includes hosting services.
2. Email Hosting: Personalised email address hosting on company domains. Services over 150 private clients with millions of emails delivered monthly.
3. Neighbourhood Alert: Community messaging system solution for police forces, local authorities and Neighbourhood Watch. Revenue from 42+ partner organisations across England & Wales.
4. Meal Selector: Online school meals ordering platform for parents. Services schools in Dorset, North East Lincolnshire, Lincolnshire, West Sussex and Wiltshire & Swindon.
5. Domain Services: Domain purchase and renewal services for customers, including quotes for specific domains.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

VISAV develops, sells, and supports proprietary software platforms — including the Neighbourhood Alert community messaging system, the Meal Selector school meal ordering service, encrypted email hosting, and a proprietary CMS — while also delivering bespoke web design, development, hosting, and on-site/online IT support services to UK businesses, police forces, local authorities, schools, and Neighbourhood Watch organisations.

Product overview

VISAV is a multi-product web services company offering four distinct products: Neighbourhood Alert (advanced community messaging system for police, local authorities and Neighbourhood Watch), Meal Selector (online school meal ordering platform), Email Hosting (personalised email addresses with encryption), and Web Design/CMS (professional website building and hosting). The company was founded in 1998 as Robin Hood Limited and developed its proprietary CMS platform VISAV (Virtual Internet Solutions that Add Value) internally. Neighbourhood Alert serves over 10,000 police, fire, local authority, and volunteer administrators across 42 partner organisations, delivering millions of safety alerts nationwide.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Neighbourhood Alert: Advanced community messaging system solution for police forces, local authorities and Neighbourhood Watch.
• Meal Selector

Products and services

• Neighbourhood Alert Advanced community messaging system solution for UK police forces, local authorities, and Neighbourhood Watch organisations. Enables nationwide safety alert delivery averaging over 10 million emails per month across 42+ partner organisations and 840,000+ registered members.
• Meal Selector Online school meal ordering platform enabling parents to order their children's school meals online with ease. Currently serving selected schools in Dorset, North East Lincolnshire, Lincolnshire, West Sussex and Wiltshire & Swindon via catering partner Chartwells.
• Email Hosting
• Web Design / CMS Builds

Quantifiable outcome

• 55 million emails delivered to 840,000+ registered members in first half of 2020
• +5 more outcomes

Named customers5 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Nine partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• Alison Cope (Knife Crime Awareness Speaker)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 19 May 2025VISAV funds powerful knife crime awareness talks delivered by Alison Cope in Nottinghamshire schools. Alison lost her son to knife crime in 2013 and delivers impactful sessions to students in Years 8-11. VISAV funds sessions across schools at no cost to enable early intervention.
• National Neighbourhood WatchcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 May 2022VISAV was the headline sponsor for the 2022 National Neighbourhood Watch Conference in London. Committed to sponsoring ongoing data protection training costs for Neighbourhood Watch Coordinators for 12 months to ensure GDPR compliance.
• Sherwood Business CentreminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 April 2020Sherwood Business Centre sponsored the Sherwood Sunset Calendar Project. Project collected sunset photos from July 2019 to June 2020 for a charity calendar.
• Amazon RingminorOthers · 1 March 2020Amazon Ring donated video doorbells to VISAV to help distribute to vulnerable residents in the community. VISAV passed doorbells to PCSO Nathan Duffus for distribution to burglary victims.
• The Marcellus Baz Foundation (Switch Up Programme)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerVISAV partners with The Marcellus Baz Foundation supporting Switch Up, an award-winning programme providing mentoring to young people at risk of involvement in crime. VISAV provides monthly financial contribution supporting dedicated mentors. Also supported the National Community Engagement Conference.
• Mesopotamia Food BankcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerLong-term financial commitment to Mesopotamia food bank supporting weekly food distribution to approximately 320 individuals in need. VISAV provides monthly contributions enabling food purchases (800kg/month), plus administrative and technical support and hundreds of hours of volunteer time.
• ChartwellsminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerVISAV provides the Meal Selector platform for Chartwells to enable parents to order school meals online. Service currently available in schools across Dorset, North East Lincolnshire, Lincolnshire, West Sussex and Wiltshire & Swindon.
• Sherwood Business CentreminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerVISAV is located at Sherwood Business Centre. Co-funded the Sherwood Tree of Knowledge mosaic project (£12,000 from VISAV of £25,000 total budget). Hosts Sherwood Food Exchange on premises.
• NottsWatch (Nottinghamshire Neighbourhood Watch)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerMike Douglas, Product Director, is a trustee of NottsWatch. VISAV provides match funding support and partners on community initiatives including Mesopotamia support through NottsWatch.

Scale indicators10 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Sendinblue (Brevo): European-headquartered email marketing, transactional email and SMS platform serving SMBs and enterprises. Overlaps with VISAV's email hosting and bulk messaging capabilities at a much larger scale.
• Mailchimp (Intuit): Global email marketing and transactional email platform. Competes with VISAV's email hosting service for SMBs on ease-of-use, automation and pricing power, though lacking VISAV's bespoke UK police/community integrations.
• Everbridge: Global critical event management and mass notification platform serving public safety, government and enterprises. Competes with Neighbourhood Alert in the broader mass-notification space but at significantly larger scale and with multi-channel capabilities.
• BlackBerry AtHoc: Critical event management and mass notification platform used by government and emergency services globally. Competes with VISAV in the public-safety alerting category with broader multi-channel functionality.

Regional players

• CriticalArc: Australia/UK-headquartered safety, mass-notification and emergency response platform used by universities and communities. Comparable to VISAV's Neighbourhood Alert in community-safety alerting but with different primary verticals.

Direct peers

• School Gateway (Tucasi): UK school payments and parent communication platform covering meals, trips and messaging. A direct alternative to VISAV's Meal Selector within schools and an indirect competitor for school-side communications more broadly.
• GOV.UK Notify: Free UK government mass-notification service used by police forces, local authorities and other public bodies to send emails and SMS. Directly competes with VISAV's Neighbourhood Alert for the same UK public-sector community messaging use case.
• PageOne Communications: UK-based provider of critical messaging and paging solutions to emergency services, police and government. Overlaps with VISAV in providing reliable alerting and communication channels to UK public safety customers.
• ParentPay: UK market leader in school payments, meals and parent communication, used by the majority of English schools. Directly comparable to VISAV's Meal Selector product and competes for the same school and local-authority buyers.

Emerging players

• Netigate: European employee and stakeholder feedback/survey platform with public-sector deployments. Overlaps with VISAV's communication and engagement tooling for police forces and local authorities, but focuses on surveys rather than alerts.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about VISAV