What we collect when you register
To create and operate your account we store:
- Your username and email address.
- Your first and last name, if you choose to give them. Both are optional and are only used to address you better.
- The date and time you confirmed your email address.
- Your password, stored only as a bcrypt hash. We never hold it in a form we can read.
- Your interface language preference.
- If you enable two-factor authentication, the secret used to generate your codes.
- An internal account identifier (a UUID).
Confirming your email address
When you register we send a confirmation link to the address you gave us, and the account cannot be used until you open it. The link is valid for one hour and can be reissued.
We do this to keep one person to one account. Without it, the resource limits described in our Acceptable Use Policy could be sidestepped by registering repeatedly with throwaway addresses, at the expense of everyone else using the service.
We record the time your address was confirmed. If you never confirm it, the account stays unusable and holds nothing but the details you entered at signup.
What we collect while you use the service
The panel keeps an activity log of significant actions on your account — signing in, changing settings, starting and stopping your server, managing files and API keys, signing in over SFTP and the files read or downloaded that way, and changes and exports made in the database explorer. Each entry records the event, the time, and the IP address it came from.
We also store the files you upload, the environment variables you configure, and the console output your project produces. These are held so the service can function; see "Your code and your data" in our Terms of Service for how we treat them.
If you create a database, we store what you put in it, along with its name, its connection details and how much of its quota it uses.
To prevent abuse, your files are checked automatically and your server's resource use, such as CPU, network traffic and disk activity, is measured. When a check flags something, a record of it is kept, and it may be reviewed by a person.
If you buy a paid server or database
Payments are handled by Stripe. When you first order a paid server or a paid database plan we give Stripe your email address, your username and your internal account identifier, so that it can match your payments to your account.
Your card details, and anything else the checkout asks you for, go directly to Stripe. We never see or store your card details.
We keep what we need to run your subscription: your Stripe customer reference, which servers and databases are on which plan and their status, renewal and suspension dates, your orders, and any refunds.
Stripe is also required to keep payment records itself, for example to prevent fraud and to meet financial regulations. It holds that data under its own privacy policy, which is available at stripe.com/privacy.
If you pay in cryptocurrency, the payment is handled by Plisio. We send Plisio the amount, a description of what you are buying (such as your server's name) and an order number, but not your email address or anything else about your account. Plisio's payment page may ask you for an email address so it can send you a receipt; that goes to Plisio.
If we offer you a free month of a paid plan, we record when it was offered, whether and how you used it, and, if you used it by card, Stripe's fingerprint of that card: a code Stripe makes from the card number that is the same for every copy of one card, but from which the number cannot be worked out. We use it only to keep the offer to one per card.
For each crypto payment we keep the amount and length you chose, its status, the cryptocurrency and amount you sent, and the details Plisio sends us about it, such as its transaction references and, if you gave Plisio one, your email address. Plisio holds what it collects under its own privacy policy, which is available at plisio.net.
If you use referrals or account credit
If you join the referral programme, we record that you joined, when, and the date of the referral terms you accepted, and give your account a referral code. If you sign up through someone's referral link or code, we record which account referred you and when.
To work out rewards, we record what earned each one: the referred account, the server or database, and for a monthly reward the payment, how much was paid and how much was refunded. We keep the history of your account credit: each change, its amount, what it was for and when.
The person who referred you is never told who you are. They see how many accounts signed up through them and what each reward was for (such as "a first server"), but not your username, email address or anything else about you. Our staff can see who referred whom, to run the programme and to stop misuse.
Our lawful basis is the performance of our contract with you (the referral terms and these terms), and our legitimate interest in preventing misuse of the programme.
If you use application monitoring
Monitoring is opt-in. Nothing is collected from your code until you create a monitoring project, make a key and call init() in your code with it, and our SDKs do nothing at all until then. Separately, while monitoring is offered, each server's resource history, its CPU, memory and network use measured from outside it every minute, is recorded so the panel can chart it for you.
Once you set it up, we store what your code sends: metric values and their names and tags, error reports with their messages, stack traces and context, events, slow operations, the name, environment and version of your app, and for a website, page paths, browser errors and page-speed measurements. Our SDKs do not send request bodies, headers, cookies, query strings or IP addresses, and the browser SDK sets no cookies and records no user identifiers.
If what your app sends includes personal data about the people who use it, you decide what is sent and why, and we process it on your behalf, only to store it and show it to you. You can change or drop anything before it leaves your app, and you should keep personal data out of error messages and context.
Monitoring data is kept for a limited time that depends on its kind, from days for minute-by-minute detail and individual events to about a year for daily summaries, and is then deleted automatically. Deleting a project deletes everything it collected. The monitoring docs list the exact periods.
If you report abuse to us
When you email [email protected], we keep your email address, your message, its email headers and the attachments we can safely store, together with what our staff note about the report and what they decide. Attachments we cannot safely store are listed by name, type and size only.
We send you one automatic reply with a reference and a private link to a page about your report. Anyone with that link can see whether the report is open or closed, what you wrote, and any short notes our staff add for you. It never shows who the reported customer is or anything about their account, and we do not email you again after that first reply. We do not send it to mailing lists, to bounces or to other automatic replies.
We use the report to identify the server, node or account concerned, and only staff who handle abuse can read it. If we ask a customer to fix something, we tell them what we need them to change, and never your email address. We do not otherwise share your report, unless the law requires us to.
If you are the customer a report is about, the report, what we asked you to do and your replies are kept with it.
Emails we send you
We send three kinds of email, and you can see and change which you receive in your account settings:
- Account and service emails, such as security alerts, billing, suspensions, changes to these policies and anything else about your account or your money. These are always sent, whatever your email settings, because they are part of providing the service.
- Product and feedback emails: an occasional request for a review or for feedback. These are on unless you turn them off, and we rely on our legitimate interest in hearing what customers think of the service.
- Offers and news: new plans, price changes and offers. These are only sent if you have opted in, and you can withdraw that consent at any time.
Analytics
We use Umami for website analytics. We host it ourselves on our own infrastructure, so this data is not shared with a third-party analytics provider.
Umami does not use cookies and does not build a profile of you across sites. It records aggregate page views, referrer, approximate country, and general device and browser type. It does not store your IP address.
Advertising
This website carries advertising from Google AdSense, which is how the hosting is paid for. Google is an independent controller of the data it collects through those ad units.
Google may set cookies and similar identifiers in your browser to measure ad performance and, where you have consented, to personalise the ads you see. Our Cookie Policy covers this in more detail, including how to opt out.
Advertising is shown on our public pages and inside the panel. It is not shown on the sign-in, registration or password screens, it is never placed within a form, and it is not shown in the administrative area.
Spam protection
Our login, registration and password reset forms are protected by a captcha to prevent automated abuse: Google reCAPTCHA or Cloudflare Turnstile, whichever we have switched on. The provider processes your IP address and interaction data for this purpose, subject to its own privacy policy.
Turnstile looks at signals from your browser, such as your IP address, your browser and its connection details, usually without asking you to do anything. Cloudflare also uses those signals, as an independent controller, to improve its bot detection.
Why we are allowed to process it
Under the UK GDPR we rely on the following lawful bases:
- Performance of a contract — for your account details, your files, your subscriptions and payments, account and service emails, and everything needed to actually run your project.
- Legitimate interests — for activity logs, automated abuse checks, handling abuse reports, product and feedback emails, the captcha and analytics, where our interest is keeping the service secure, preventing abuse, and understanding how the site is used. We have considered your rights and consider this proportionate.
- Consent — for offers and news emails, advertising cookies and any other non-essential cookie. You can withdraw that consent at any time.
- Legal obligation — where we must retain or disclose information to comply with the law, such as keeping a record of the payments we receive for tax purposes.
International transfers
Google, Cloudflare, Stripe and Discord process data outside the UK, including in the United States. Those transfers rely on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum and the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, or on an adequacy decision where one applies.
Plisio also processes data outside the UK. We share with it only what is needed to take a crypto payment, as described above.
How long we keep it
Account details are kept for as long as your account exists. When you delete your account, your account record, your files, your databases, your monitoring projects and our records of your subscriptions, orders and refunds are deleted with it, and we stop storing your data. Stripe may keep the payment records it holds under its own retention rules.
A crypto invoice nothing was paid on, because it was cancelled or expired, is deleted after 7 days. A paid invoice, or one we reviewed and settled, is deleted 90 days after it was paid or settled, or later while a referral reward still depends on it. A payment we are still reviewing is kept until it is settled. The details Plisio sent about a payment are deleted with your account, if that comes first.
When a paid invoice is deleted, we keep a bare record of the payment for six years, as our record of income: the amount, the cryptocurrency, the dates and Plisio's transaction references. It contains nothing that links it to you, your account or your server.
When you delete your account, our record of a free month offer you used stays, no longer linked to you, so the same card cannot be used for the offer again: it holds only the card's fingerprint, the dates and how it was paid.
Your account credit history and the referral rewards you earned are deleted with your account. If you were referred, the link to the account that referred you is removed when either account is deleted; rewards the other person already earned from you stay on their account, no longer linked to you.
Any operational backup that includes your files is deleted within two weeks of being taken, so a copy can outlast your account by at most that long.
Records made by our automated abuse checks are kept only as long as needed to deal with what was flagged and to enforce any action taken.
An abuse report, its attachments and the reporter's email address are deleted one year after the case is closed. A short record of what we decided is kept after that, so we can enforce it. Mail sent to the abuse address that we could not use, such as blank messages, spam and bounces, is deleted after 30 days. Our staff can delete a report sooner, and when they do, all of it goes at once.
Activity log entries, including the IP addresses in them, are automatically deleted after 90 days.
We may retain a minimal record of accounts terminated for serious abuse, in order to enforce the ban. Our lawful basis for this is our legitimate interest in protecting the service and its users.
Keeping it secure
Passwords are hashed with bcrypt and never stored in readable form. Two-factor authentication is available on every account. Traffic to the panel is encrypted in transit, and session cookies are marked HttpOnly so they cannot be read by scripts in your browser.
No service can promise perfect security, but if a breach occurs that is likely to affect your rights we will notify you.
Your rights
Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you, and receive a copy of it.
- Have inaccurate data corrected.
- Have your data erased, and to delete your account at any time.
- Restrict or object to how we process your data, including our reliance on legitimate interests.
- Receive your data in a portable, machine-readable format.
- Withdraw consent at any time where we rely on it, without affecting processing already carried out.
How to exercise them, and how to complain
Email [email protected]. We aim to respond within a week. The legal deadline is one month, which can be extended by up to two further months for a complex request; if we need that extra time we will tell you within the first month.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would appreciate the chance to put it right first, so please contact us before you do.
Children
The service is not intended for children under 13. If you believe a child under that age has given us personal data, contact [email protected] and we will delete it.
Changes
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page. If a change is significant, we will also tell you through the panel or by email before it takes effect.