About
No showroom, and that is the point.
Composite front doors, supply only or fitted. We do not make them. What we do is publish the price, put the door on your own house, and measure the opening before anything is ordered.
- Trading name of
- Optima Online Solutions Ltd
- Company no.
- 13395947
- Doors
- Door-Stop International
- Area
- England and Wales
Who you are actually buying from
Portavelle is a trading name of Optima Online Solutions Ltd, company number 13395947. It is a small business run online. There is no trade counter to visit and no showroom, and the registered office is an office rather than a place where doors are kept.
The doors are made by Door-Stop International, who are one of the larger composite door manufacturers in the country and who supply a great many of the companies whose vans you see. We are a dealer. The door you get from us is the same door those companies fit, from the same factory, and the photographs on this site are the manufacturer’s own.
What we add
Two things worth paying for. The first is that you can see the door on your own house before you spend anything: send a photograph of the front and we put your specification into that picture, in your light, against your brick.
The second is the survey. A composite door is cut to size and cannot be altered afterwards, so getting the measurement wrong is expensive and the argument about whose fault it was helps nobody. Somebody comes out and measures it, and that is the number the door is made to.
A demonstration house rather than a customer’s. We have not fitted anybody yet and are not going to say otherwise.
Four things we do differently, and why each one is cheaper for you.
The price is on the page
Nearly everybody selling these doors makes you fill in a form and wait for a call. That is not a pricing process, it is a sales one, and the number that comes back depends on how you sounded on the phone. Ours is written down, the same for everybody, and it does not move because you asked twice.
Nothing to keep warm
There is no showroom, no yard and nobody on commission. That is not modesty, it is where the margin goes. A showroom is a building somebody has to pay for and it ends up in the price of the door, so we would rather spend it on showing you the door on a photograph of your own house.
We take the measurement
A composite door is cut to the number it is given. It cannot be planed on the doorstep and it cannot be sent back, so somebody comes out and measures the opening before anything is ordered. Plenty of firms take your measurement and let a wrong one be your problem. We would rather own it.
Say the awkward part
A dark door in full afternoon sun gets hot. Pale colours flatten the mouldings. Obscure glass hides shapes but not that somebody is home. Most of the glass designs are quoted rather than priced because a leaded panel and a plain sheet do not cost the same. All of that is on the site rather than in a phone call after you have ordered.
Where we are
We do not have a showroom or a yard, so there is nowhere to come and look at doors. Send a photograph of the front instead and see the door on your own house, which tells you more than a swatch on a trade counter would.
Start somewhere
Nothing here commits you to anything. The visualiser costs nothing to try and there is no form to fill in before you can see a price.