What Hearthstack collects, and why.

This covers the hearthstackstudio.com website itself — the project inquiry form at /start, analytics, and general browsing. It does not cover work built for a client, which is governed by that project’s own agreement.

The project form collects what you type in: name, business or organization, email, current website (if given), a starting-point selection, timeline, and your project note.

A few technical details are captured alongside it for spam prevention and to understand where inquiries come from: your submitting IP address, browser user agent, referring page, and any source or package tag on the link you clicked.

Solely to read and reply to your inquiry, and to keep the form usable by filtering out spam and duplicate submissions (via an invisible honeypot field, optional Cloudflare Turnstile verification, and short-window rate limiting).

Inquiries are stored in Hearthstack’s Payload CMS database. A copy is emailed to Taylor at the time of submission. If a CRM or automation webhook is configured for a given period, the same inquiry is also forwarded there — this is an internal routing tool, never a third-party marketing list.

If enabled, the site uses Plausible, a privacy-focused, cookie-free analytics tool, to see aggregate traffic and which calls-to-action get used. It does not use cross-site tracking cookies or sell data to advertisers.

Inquiries from people Hearthstack does not end up working with are kept only as long as useful for follow-up — generally no more than 12 months — and are deleted sooner on request. Records tied to an active or completed client engagement are kept as part of that project’s history.

Email [email protected] at any time to ask what’s on file about you, to correct it, or to have it deleted. If we haven’t started working together, it’s a quick, no-questions-asked deletion.