Privacy Policy

Hostavern is a trade name of Applied Ego Software LLC, a Missouri limited liability company. We decide how the personal data described here is used, and we’re responsible for it. For anything about your data, email hello@hostavern.com.

Your account. Your name, email address, and your password, which we store only as a one-way hash, so we never see it. If you sign in with a code, we send it to your email.

Signing in. For each device you’re signed in on, its IP address and the browser and device it reports, so you can see your signed-in devices and sign them out, and so we can spot sign-ins that aren’t you.

Orders and billing. What you order and what each server costs, and the IDs Stripe gives your customer record and subscriptions. Your card details and billing address go to Stripe, not to us; we see only what Stripe shows us, such as the card brand, its last four digits and when it expires. If you order without an account, we keep your email and the IP address the order came from, so one address can’t hold more than a couple of unpaid orders.

Your servers. Everything on them: worlds, files, settings, installed mods and plugins, backups, the game’s console output and crash reports. A record of what you and your server’s members change (its activity log), and the email addresses of people you invite.

What you send us. Emails and anything else you send when you ask for help.

When players join a server, the game itself records things like their Minecraft name, unique ID and IP address in the server’s logs and files. That data is part of the server: the server’s owner decides who plays and what’s kept, and we hold it for them as part of their server’s files and backups.

When an owner adds a player to the whitelist, operators or bans by name, we look the name up with Mojang to get the player’s ID.

We use your data to:

• run your servers and your account, and show you your dashboard;
• take payments, work out tax, and keep records the law requires;
• send you emails you need: sign-in codes, receipts, invites, and notices about your servers or these policies;
• keep the Service and its customers safe, and look into abuse or fraud;
• answer you when you contact us, and fix what goes wrong.

We don’t sell your data, we don’t show ads, and we don’t use advertising or analytics trackers. If we ever want to send you marketing emails, we’ll ask first, and you can stop them any time.

Where laws like the GDPR ask for our legal basis: running the Service you signed up for (contract), keeping records the law requires (legal obligation), and keeping the Service secure and working (our legitimate interests).

We keep only what the Service needs to work:

• a cookie that keeps you signed in to the dashboard;
• your cart, and your choices such as light or dark theme, saved in your own browser (not sent to us until you order);
• your place in checkout, saved in that browser tab and gone when you close it.

Stripe’s payment fields set their own cookies to prevent fraud; see Stripe’s privacy policy. We don’t use any other cookies.

We share data only with the companies that help us provide the Service, only what each needs, and they may use it only to do that work for us:

• Stripe: payments, tax and fraud prevention.
• OVHcloud: the machines your servers run on.
• Backblaze, through opencloudport: where backups are stored.
• Neon: our database.
• Vercel: hosting for this site and the dashboard.
• Cloudflare: our domain’s DNS, and the network opencloudport runs on.
• SendGrid: sending our emails.
• Modrinth and Mojang: when you search for or install add-ons, and look up players, as described above.

We’ll also share data if the law requires it, to protect people’s safety or our rights, or with a company that takes over the Service, which would have to keep to this policy.

Your account and billing data are kept in the United States. Your server’s files are kept on the machine in the region your server runs in, and its backups with our storage provider. If you’re outside the United States, your data is transferred there, with the protections the law requires for that.

• Your account: until you ask us to delete it.
• A server’s files: until you delete the server. A suspended server’s files are kept for at least 30 days, then may be deleted.
• Daily backups: 7 days. Backups you keep by hand: until you delete them or the server.
• Unpaid orders that were never paid for: removed, with the room they held, once they’re abandoned.
• Billing records: as long as tax and accounting laws require, usually several years, even after you close your account.

You can see and change most of your details yourself in the dashboard, and download your server’s files.

You can also ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, or stop or limit using it, and you can object to how we use it. Email hello@hostavern.com from the address on your account. We’ll answer within 30 days, and we won’t treat you differently for asking. To delete your account, email us: we’ll delete your servers, their backups and your account, and keep only the billing records the law requires.

If you’re in the EU, the UK or a US state with its own privacy law, you have these rights under that law, and you can complain to your local data protection authority. We’d appreciate the chance to sort it out with you first.

You must be 13 or over to have an account. We don’t knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has given us their details, email hello@hostavern.com and we’ll delete them.

We protect your data with care: passwords are stored only as hashes, card numbers never reach us, connections are encrypted, each server’s files are kept apart from other customers’, and backups are reached only through short-lived signed links. No system is perfectly secure, though. If a breach affects your data, we’ll tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

We may update this policy as the Service changes. The date at the top shows the latest version; if a change matters to you, we’ll email you before it takes effect. Questions: hello@hostavern.com.