Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

Alpine Studio is a web design, development and software studio based in Queenstown, New Zealand, run by Gert Annion. We operate this website at alpinestudio.co.nz and our live software demo at demo.alpinestudio.co.nz, and provide web design, development, SEO, custom software and ongoing maintenance services to New Zealand businesses.

For any privacy-related questions, contact us at sales@alpinestudio.co.nz.

2. Information We Collect

We collect personal information in three ways: what you give us yourself (through the contact form, the free audit, the live demo or by email), technical data collected automatically when you visit this website, and public information about businesses we may contact (see below). The contact form collects:

• Your name
• Email address
• Phone number (optional)
• Details about your project or enquiry, the service you chose and the page you sent the form from

The form emails these to our inbox through Cloudflare Email Sending, or through Web3Forms if that fails (see Section 4). This website does not keep its own copy.

We also automatically collect limited technical data when you visit our website, including your IP address, browser type, device type, pages visited, and time spent on each page. This data is collected via Google Analytics 4 (see Section 4). To stop abuse, the contact form and the free audit also count the requests made from each IP address, and each count is deleted automatically within an hour.

Free website audit

If you use our free website audit at alpinestudio.co.nz/audit, we record:

• The website address you entered, and the scores and findings the audit produced
• The country your request came from
• The date and time the audit ran

We do not store your IP address against an audit. You do not need to give us an email address or any other detail to run an audit or to read your results in full. If you then choose to ask us to walk you through the report, the name, email address, phone number and business name you give us are recorded alongside that audit, and emailed to us through Cloudflare Email Sending, or through Web3Forms if that fails, so we can reply to you.

The audit only reads the website address you give us, in the same way a search engine does. It does not change anything on that site and does not submit anything to it. Please only run it on a website you own or are responsible for.

Live demo

Our live demo at demo.alpinestudio.co.nz builds a sample app from the website you type in. In short, as the demo itself says: “We read your public home page once, for your name, logo and colour. Your demo is private and deleted after 24 hours, and we keep a note of the website you entered.” In more detail:

What we read. We load the home page of the website you enter once, the way a search engine would, and pick out the business name, logo and main colour. To get the logo we may also load the site’s icon or logo image, and we guess the kind of business from the words on the page. Nothing on that site is changed. If you type a business name instead of a website, nothing is read.

Your private demo. Your demo holds that name, logo and colour, the sample customers and jobs, and anything you type into it. Only your browser can open it, through a cookie (see Section 5), along with any phone you link to it with its QR code and anyone you send a view-only link to (below). It closes 24 hours after you start it, and the hourly clean-up then deletes it and everything in it.

“Show someone”. You can make a view-only link to your demo and send it yourself, for example to a business partner: anyone with it sees your demo, including anything you typed into it, but can’t change anything or send the “Want this for your business?” form. The link works until your demo closes or you press Stop sharing, and we note when it is opened, but nothing about who opened it.

The notes we keep. When you open the demo, even if you type nothing, we note the visit, once per browser session: the website that sent you, if any, any campaign tags in the link (utm tags), the country and region your request came from, and whether you were on a phone, tablet or computer. For each website or business name you enter, we also note when it was entered, what was typed and the website it led to, and the business name, colour and kind of business the demo found. We note steps you take in the demo too, such as starting and finishing the tour and using “What would mine cost?”, with the options ticked. These notes never include your IP address, your browser details (user agent), or your demo’s cookie or its own ID: the notes from one demo are linked by a coded key instead. They are kept in the demo’s own database and in Studio OS, our own studio software, so we can see how the demo is used and improve it. We never use them to contact the business whose website was entered, and websites entered in the demo are never added to the list of businesses we may contact (see below).

“Want this for your business?” If you send this form, we keep the name, business, phone number or email address and note you give us, where in the demo you sent it from, what you made in the demo (the kind of business, name and colour) and the options you ticked in “What would mine cost?”, linked to the notes of your visit. It is kept in the demo’s own database and in Studio OS, and emailed to us at sales@alpinestudio.co.nz through Cloudflare. We use these details only to reply to you. They are never added to a mailing list, used for marketing, or added to the list of businesses we may contact.

Notifications, only if you turn them on. The demo can send sample alerts, such as a new enquiry, to your own phone. If you turn them on, your phone’s push address is saved in your demo and deleted with it, and alerts go only to the phone or browser that turned them on (see Section 4).

On your device. The demo saves a few things in your browser’s own storage: whether this visit has been noted (until you close the browser), whether you have seen the tour, your light or dark choice, and a copy of your sample business so it still opens without signal. Clearing the demo’s site data in your browser removes them.

Stopping abuse. To stop the demo being misused, it counts the visits, demos, website reads and messages from each internet (IP) address (for the newer IPv6 kind, by the block of addresses one home or phone is given). These counts are kept apart from the notes and deleted automatically within a day.

Businesses we may contact

Studio OS, our own studio software, keeps a list of New Zealand businesses that may want our help with a website. It is built from public business listings (Google Maps and OpenStreetMap) and from each business’s own website. For each business it holds the name, trade, town and website, the phone number it lists, its Instagram account if it publishes one, and the email address it publishes on its own website, with the page that address appears on. It also holds our notes of any call or email. Websites typed into our live demo are never added to this list.

We may email that published address: a short first email about the business’s website, and at most one follow-up if there is no reply. The first email may include a link to our live demo. If it is opened, the demo keeps its usual notes (see Live demo above), which show that the visit came from our email. Each email is saved as a draft and sent by Gert from his own mailbox, one at a time. Nothing is sent automatically. We may also ring the phone number the business lists.

Every email says who it is from and includes an unsubscribe link, and replying “no thanks” works too. Either way, that email address is marked do-not-contact for good, whichever listing it appears on, and we keep that mark so it keeps working.

To check that a business is independent and based in New Zealand, and to write the first email, we send Anthropic’s Claude the business’s name, trade, town and website address, the domain of its email address, the title and description of its homepage, and the main findings of our audit of its website. To sort replies, we send Claude the text of the reply.

To have your business taken off the list, email us at sales@alpinestudio.co.nz. We delete its record and keep only a coded (hashed) copy of its name, phone number, email address and listing reference, used only so that it is not added again. Emails already sent stay in our mailbox, and our nightly backups hold the old record until they are deleted after 30 days.

Our clients

For our clients, Studio OS keeps a client record: contact names and details, the work, quotes, invoices and the care plan. It also reads the emails between a client and us in our Zoho mailbox, so the record stays current. For each email it keeps the subject, the sender, the date and a one-line summary written by Anthropic’s Claude. Claude may also suggest a change to the record, such as a job to do or an invoice paid, and nothing changes until Gert approves it. To do this, Claude is sent the client’s name and contact name, their open jobs, unpaid invoices and quoted care plans, the one-line summaries of their earlier emails, and for each new email its date, its subject and up to 2,000 characters of its text, leaving out the earlier emails it quotes. Claude is not sent the sender’s or recipient’s email address. Card and bank account numbers, and lines that look like a password, PIN or login, are removed from the text first, as far as we can detect them. An email address or other detail typed into the subject or the text may still be sent. The email itself stays in the mailbox.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Respond to your enquiry and discuss your project
• Provide our web design, development, software and maintenance services
• Send project updates and communicate about ongoing work
• Keep our client records up to date
• Contact businesses that may want our help, by email or phone, as described in Section 2
• See how our live demo is used, and reply to people who ask us about it
• Improve our website and understand how visitors use it (via analytics)
• Comply with our legal obligations

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes.

4. Third-Party Services

These providers receive personal information from us to provide their service, and may store or process it outside New Zealand.

Google Analytics 4

This website uses Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to understand how visitors use the site. GA4 collects data such as pages visited, time on site, browser and device type, and approximate location (country/region level). This data is processed by Google LLC and may be stored on servers outside New Zealand. Our live demo does not use Google Analytics.

GA4 uses cookies (including _ga and _ga_*) to distinguish unique visitors. These cookies persist for up to 2 years. You can opt out of GA4 tracking by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Cloudflare also measures visits and page speed on this website (not the live demo) with Cloudflare Web Analytics. It uses no cookies or other storage on your device, and does not try to identify you. It records the page visited, the website that sent you, your browser, operating system and type of device, your country, and how quickly the page loaded. See the Cloudflare Privacy Policy.

Web3Forms

Our contact form, and the request for a walkthrough of a free audit report, are emailed to us through Cloudflare Email Sending (see Cloudflare below). For now, Web3Forms (web3forms.com) is the backup: only if Cloudflare cannot send one of these messages, the details you entered are sent to Web3Forms' servers instead, and forwarded from there to our email inbox. Web3Forms does not store your submission data beyond the delivery of the email notification. For more information, see the Web3Forms Privacy Policy.

Zoho Mail

Our email is hosted by Zoho, in its Australian data centre. Emails you send us, messages sent from our live demo, our replies, and the drafts and emails described in Section 2 are stored there. See the Zoho Privacy Policy.

Anthropic

Studio OS uses Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, to check businesses and write the emails to them, to sort their replies, and to summarise client emails, as described in Section 2. The text it is sent is processed by Anthropic and may be processed outside New Zealand. See the Anthropic Privacy Policy.

Google PageSpeed Insights

The speed section of our free website audit is measured by Google's PageSpeed Insights API. When you run an audit, the website address you entered is sent to Google so it can load and measure that page. No personal information is sent with it. This data is processed by Google LLC and may be stored on servers outside New Zealand.

Cloudflare

This website, our live demo and Studio OS are hosted on Cloudflare's global edge network. Cloudflare processes network requests and may log limited technical data (IP address, request metadata) for security and performance purposes. The Studio OS database and its nightly backups, the saved audit reports, and the live demo and its database are stored with Cloudflare, and Cloudflare Email Sending delivers the messages sent from our contact form, the free audit’s walkthrough request and the live demo to our inbox. See the Cloudflare Privacy Policy.

Push services (live demo)

If you turn on notifications in our live demo, the alerts are delivered through your browser’s own push service, such as Apple’s, Google’s or Mozilla’s, which may be outside New Zealand. Each alert is encrypted, so the push service cannot read it.

5. Cookies

This website uses cookies. Cookies are small text files stored on your device. We use the following types:

You can manage or delete cookies through your browser settings. Note that disabling cookies may affect website functionality. Most browsers allow you to refuse new cookies, delete existing cookies, and receive warnings before a cookie is stored.

6. Data Retention

We retain personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purpose for which it was collected or as required by law:

• Enquiry emails: retained for 2 years from receipt, then deleted
• Client project files and communications: retained for 5 years from project completion
• Client email summaries in Studio OS: deleted automatically after 400 days
• Google Analytics data: retained for 14 months (as configured in our GA4 property)
• Free website audit reports: the full report is kept for 30 days so the link to it keeps working, then deleted automatically
• Free website audit records: the address audited, the scores, and any contact details you chose to give us are retained for 2 years, then deleted
• Businesses on our contact list: a business we have never called, emailed or made notes on, and have no call booked with, is deleted automatically 2 years after its record last changed. A business we have emailed or rung may be kept as the record of that contact until it asks us to remove it. An opt-out is kept for good, so it keeps working
• Request counts used to stop abuse: deleted automatically within an hour
• Live demo: each demo, and everything in it, is deleted by the hourly clean-up once it is 24 hours old
• Live demo notes (visits, the websites entered and how the demo was used): deleted after 12 months, from the demo and from Studio OS
• Messages sent from the live demo’s “Want this for your business?” form: deleted from the demo and from Studio OS after 2 years. The email copy in our inbox is kept as an enquiry email (above)
• Live demo request counts used to stop abuse: deleted automatically within a day
• Nightly backups of the Studio OS database: kept for 30 days, then deleted automatically
• Cloudflare also keeps a rolling history of up to 30 days of our databases, the live demo’s included (Cloudflare D1 Time Travel), so anything deleted from them could still be restored within that time, and not after it

7. Your Rights Under the NZ Privacy Act 2020

Under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, you have the right to:

• Request access to the personal information we hold about you
• Request correction of personal information that is inaccurate or out of date
• Ask us to stop using your personal information for certain purposes
• Make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner if you believe we have breached your privacy rights

You can also ask us to delete personal information we hold about you, and we will, except where the law requires us to keep it or, as Section 2 explains, where we keep a coded opt-out so that it keeps working. For the live demo, tell us the website or business name you entered and roughly when, and we will find your demo, its notes and any message you sent from it.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at sales@alpinestudio.co.nz. We will respond within 20 working days as required by the Privacy Act 2020.

8. Security

We take reasonable steps to protect the personal information we hold from unauthorised access, use, modification, or disclosure. Our website is served over HTTPS with TLS encryption. Contact form data is sent from your browser over HTTPS, then passed to Cloudflare Email Sending, or to Web3Forms if that fails, to reach our inbox. We do not store payment information. All payment-related transactions are handled by the client directly.

9. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page indicates when the policy was last revised. We encourage you to review this page periodically.

10. Contact

For any questions, requests, or complaints regarding this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices:

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.