Privacy policy
What HostIdea collects when you read it, what it does not, where the data goes and how to ask us about it. Written for the site as it runs today and updated before anything changes.
Last updated
HostIdea is published by DM Research Labs, LLC. This page describes what the site collects when you use it. It is written for the site as it works today: no accounts, no advertising, no analytics. If any of that changes, this page and the cookie notice change first.
What we collect
Server logs. The site is hosted on Vercel. Like every web server, it records each request: the page requested, the time, your IP address and the browser’s user agent string. We use these logs only to keep the site running and to investigate errors or abuse. They are kept by the hosting provider for a short period as part of normal operation and are not combined with anything else.
Your theme choice. If you switch between light and dark mode, the choice is saved in your browser’s local storage under the key theme. It never leaves your browser.
Search. Site search runs entirely in your browser. Your search terms are not sent to us.
Email you send us. If you write to us, we keep the message for as long as we need it to answer you and to keep a record of corrections to published content.
Newsletter. The signup form on the home page is not connected to a provider yet; nothing you type into it is sent anywhere. When it is connected, this page will name the provider and what it stores before the form goes live.
What we do not collect
We set no advertising or tracking cookies, run no analytics, use no social media buttons that report back, and show no third-party advertising. Fonts and images are served from our own domain, so reading a page sends requests only to us and our hosting provider. The one exception is the “Prefer HostIdea in Google Search” button: nothing from Google loads until you click it, and from that point Google’s own privacy policy applies to what happens in its dialog.
Affiliate links
Links to hosting companies go through an address on this site (/go/ followed by the host’s name) and then to the host’s own website, which may set its own cookies and will know that you arrived from HostIdea. The host or its affiliate network may later tell us that a purchase happened and what commission it earned. We do not ask for, and do not accept, your name, email address or any other personal data from hosts about readers who buy through our links. Our disclosure explains the commissions.
Who else sees the data
Vercel hosts the site and therefore handles the server logs. GitHub stores the site’s source code and the published data files; it holds nothing about readers. We do not sell or share personal data with anyone else.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to our using it. Email the address on the contact page and we will answer within thirty days. Because we hold almost nothing about readers, the usual answer is that we have no record of you at all.
Children
The site is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under sixteen.
Changes
The date at the top of this page is the date of the last change. Material changes are noted on this page for at least thirty days after they take effect.