Privacy Policy

Analytics we use

We use privacy-conscious analytics to understand which guides are useful: Google Analytics 4, PostHog (product analytics, served same-origin through our own /ingest proxy so it isn't blocked as a third-party tracker), and Vercel Analytics & Speed Insights for performance. These measure aggregate page usage; we don't build advertising profiles, and we run no ad-network or social pixels.

When a site search returns no results, we store the search term — with emails, numbers, and token-like strings automatically redacted — in aggregate so we can learn what content to add. These records carry no identifiers and are not linked to you.

We also keep our own first-party count of how often an affiliate link is shown and clicked — no cookie, no account, and no data beyond which page, which provider, and roughly where on the page. This runs whether or not you accept the analytics above, the same way it would if you had an ad blocker installed; it's how we compute clickthrough rate and isn't shared with anyone. See Affiliate links below for how that data ties into commissions.

Affiliate links

Some outbound links to VPS providers are affiliate links. If you click one and sign up, the destination provider may set its own cookies to attribute the referral, and we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Those cookies and any data you share are handled by that provider under their privacy policy, not ours. See our about page for how this affects (and doesn't affect) our recommendations.

Newsletter

If you subscribe to our newsletter, we store your email address to send you issues. We send the newsletter through SendGrid (a Twilio service), which processes your address on our behalf as our email provider and measures aggregate engagement — whether an issue was opened and whether its links were clicked — so we can tell which content is useful. We don't sell your address or use it to build advertising profiles. Every issue includes a one-click unsubscribe that deletes your address from our list.

Hosting and server logs

The site is hosted on Vercel. Like any web host, Vercel processes standard technical request data (such as IP address and user agent) to serve pages and protect the service. That processing is governed by Vercel's privacy policy. We don't combine that data with anything else or use it to identify you.

The site content and the aggregate counts described above (search terms with no results, affiliate link views and clicks) are stored in a Postgres database hosted by Neon. Neon processes that data on our behalf as our database provider; none of it carries a name, email, or other identifier.

Third parties we rely on

We never sell or share your personal data.

Retention: the aggregate, identifier-free records above (search terms with no results, affiliate link views and clicks) are kept indefinitely for trend analysis, not tied to any individual visit. We're evaluating a rolling deletion window for these tables; this page will say so once one is in place.

Your choices

You can browse without an account. On your first visit we ask before loading Google Analytics or PostHog — decline and neither one loads; the site works fully either way. That choice does not affect the identifier-free first-party counts described above (search terms with no results, affiliate link views and clicks) — those have no cookie to decline, the same way a server log has none.

Your choice is remembered on this device. To change it later, use the Change analytics choice link at the bottom of any page, which brings the notice back so you can pick again; browsers and privacy extensions can also block analytics scripts directly if you prefer. Questions? Email hello@selfhostatlas.com.

Changes

If we change what we collect, we'll update this page and its effective date before the change goes live.