1. Two roles: our data vs. your data
Account & site data (your registration, login, billing, support and usage of our website): we are the controller.
Customer Data (the clients, contacts, notes, sales, cases, documents and messages your company stores in its workspace): your company is the controller and we are the processor: we only handle it on your instructions to provide the Service. Individuals whose details are held in a customer's workspace should direct privacy requests to that customer; we will assist them.
2. What we collect
| Category | Examples | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Registration & contact | Company name, your name, email, phone, business address, current CRM, plan and deployment choices, acceptance of the Terms (time + version), and the IP address the form was sent from | You (invite request form) |
| Account & login | Email, hashed password, role, workspace membership, login timestamps | You / your administrator |
| Billing | Plan, seats, invoices, usage counts (e.g. SMS sent, database size); payment card details are handled by our payment processor, not stored by us | Your use of the Service |
| Licensing & devices | License key, a hashed machine fingerprint (hardware identifiers), OS/platform, app version, check-in times | Desktop application |
| Technical & diagnostics | IP address, browser/user-agent, pages requested, error reports and stack traces (with personal data scrubbed where possible) | Automatic |
| Communications with us | Support requests, contact-form messages, referral and partner applications, bug reports, emails, and Help conversations (see section 4), with the IP address each form or Help request was sent from | You |
| Customer Data | Whatever your company chooses to store in its workspace, including messages sent to your clients via the Service | Your company (processor role) |
3. How we use it
- Provide, operate, secure and support the Service and your workspace.
- Provision accounts and send transactional email (invitations, password links, invoices, usage and trial notices).
- Bill for plans and add-ons; prevent fraud and abuse; enforce our Terms and license.
- Diagnose errors, monitor performance and improve the product (aggregate, de-identified where possible).
- Respond to your requests and, with your consent or where permitted, tell you about product updates. You can opt out of marketing at any time.
- Comply with legal obligations.
Legal bases (where GDPR applies): performance of a contract, our legitimate interests (running and securing the Service), consent (marketing, non-essential cookies if any), and legal obligation. We do not sell personal information and do not use Customer Data for advertising or to train models.
4. Help and the TechieCRM Assistant
The Help button on www.techiecrm.com and client.techiecrm.com opens a chat with the TechieCRM Help Desk. This section explains what Help keeps, who can read it and how long we keep it.
What Help keeps
- If you are not signed in: your question and every message in the chat, with the time each was sent; the name you type, if you give one (otherwise you are shown as "Visitor"); the email address you type, if you give one; and the address of the page you asked from. The name and email address are optional.
- If you are signed in: your question and every message in the chat, with the time each was sent, and the address of the page you asked from. The Help Desk sees the name on your account (or your email address, if your account has no name) and the name of your workspace, so we know who is asking.
- Your IP address: we record the IP address you asked from with your request, the way a phone call or a letter shows where it came from. The Help Desk sees it, so we know where a request came from and can deal with misuse. Help also stores a scrambled form of it (a keyed hash, which cannot be turned back into the address), used only to limit how many questions one connection can send without signing in (3 an hour), and so the Help Desk can block someone who misuses Help (for 24 hours unless they choose a different length, at most 365 days).
- A cookie: if you ask without signing in, Help sets a cookie
(
sm_visitor) so the chat can recognise you when you come back. It holds a random code; we store only a scrambled form of that code. Your browser deletes the cookie after 30 days. - The progress of your request: when it was opened, which Help Desk member took it and when, and when it was resolved.
The TechieCRM Assistant
When you ask a question, the TechieCRM Assistant may answer first, in the same chat. It finds its answer by matching your question against TechieCRM's own help sheets, which are written from our user manual, and it does this on TechieCRM's own servers. Your question is not sent to any outside AI service. The Assistant uses only your question and whether you are signed in (which decides which help sheets it may show you). Its answer is saved in your conversation like any other message, together with which help sheet it used and how closely it matched. If you choose "No, this doesn't help, can a person answer?", we record when you did. The Help Desk is told about every question, whether or not the Assistant answered it.
When the Help Desk answers instead
When the TechieCRM Assistant could not answer your question, or you asked for a person, and a member of our Help Desk answered it, the Help Desk may turn that answer (not your details) into a new help answer, which the TechieCRM Assistant then gives to other TechieCRM users and website visitors who ask something similar. Nothing is used until a TechieCRM Help Desk administrator has reviewed it and removed personal details: your name, email address, phone number, workspace or company name and any of your data. For that review your question is kept with the draft answer only as long as your Help conversation is kept, and it is deleted with the conversation.
Who can read your Help conversation
You, and TechieCRM staff on our Help Desk. People in your own workspace cannot see your Help conversations. If you leave an email address, the only Help Desk member who can see it in the Help Desk is the one who takes your question; if nobody was online when you asked, it is also in the email described below. Our system administrators can see stored Help records when they need to, to run and secure the Service.
When nobody is online
If no Help Desk member is online when you ask, we send one email to our Help Desk mailbox, helpdesk@techiecrm.com. It contains your name (or "Visitor"), whether you are a website visitor or a TechieCRM user, the email address you left (if any), the page you asked from, the IP address you asked from, the first line of your question, and a link that opens the conversation for a Help Desk member signed in to client.techiecrm.com. The link stops working after 7 days. The email is sent through our email provider and stays in our Help Desk mailbox: the deletion described below does not remove it. If you want it deleted, ask us (see section 9).
How long we keep it
- If you were not signed in: we delete your Help conversation, with everything kept about it (the messages, the request, the name and email address you gave, the IP address you asked from and its scrambled form), 90 days after its last message. A new message from either side starts the 90 days again. Deletion runs every day, so it happens within about a day of that date. Your remaining visitor details (name, scrambled IP address and scrambled cookie code) are deleted once none of your Help conversations are left and you have not used Help for 90 days.
- If you were signed in: your Help conversations, with the IP address you asked from, are kept with your account and are not deleted on a schedule. If you want one deleted, ask us (see section 9).
- Blocks are deleted once they end. Records of how many questions a connection sent recently, and of who has Help open, are deleted after a day.
- Copies in our database backups roll off on the backup schedule in section 7.
Help is separate from the Messenger module, where people in a workspace message each other. Those messages are part of your company's Customer Data (section 1), not Help, and the Help deletion schedule does not apply to them.
5. Who we share it with (sub-processors)
We use a small number of service providers to run TechieCRM. They may process personal information only on our instructions:
| Provider | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Railway (hosting) | Application hosting, PostgreSQL and MongoDB databases, backups |
| Our email provider (SMTP) | Sending transactional email from admin@techiecrm.com, and the Help Desk email described in section 4 |
| Twilio | SMS numbers and message delivery (only if your workspace enables the SMS add-on) |
| Error monitoring (e.g. Sentry) | Crash and error reports for reliability |
| Payment processor | Card processing for subscriptions (when online payments are enabled) |
| Domain / DNS registrar | Serving techiecrm.com |
We may also disclose information if required by law, to protect rights and safety, or as part of a merger or acquisition (with notice). We will update this list as providers change.
6. Where data is stored
Our production systems are hosted in data centres in the United States (US-West). If you are outside the US your information is transferred there; we rely on our providers' contractual safeguards. Customers requiring in-country hosting can choose the local-server or desktop deployment options, where Customer Data stays on infrastructure you control.
7. Retention
- Registration requests that are not provisioned: up to 12 months, then deleted.
- Account and billing records: for the life of the account and as required for tax/accounting (typically 7 years for invoices).
- Customer Data: while your workspace is active, plus 30 days after termination for export, then deleted from live systems; backups roll off on their schedule (daily/weekly/monthly, up to ~90 days).
- Help conversations: a conversation from someone who was not signed in is deleted 90 days after its last message; see section 4.
- IP addresses recorded with registration requests, contact-form messages, referral and partner applications, bug reports and web form entries: kept for 1 year. The IP address of a Help request is kept as long as its conversation (section 4).
- Logs and diagnostics: short rolling windows (typically ≤ 90 days).
8. Security
All traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS; HSTS enabled). Passwords are stored hashed. Each customer workspace is an isolated database. Credentials your workspace stores for its own integrations (e.g. your outbound email account) are encrypted at rest. Access to production is limited to authorised personnel. Managed database backups run daily/weekly/monthly. No system is perfectly secure; if we become aware of a breach affecting your information we will notify you as required by law.
9. Your rights & choices
Depending on where you live you may have the right to access, correct, export, restrict or delete your personal information, to withdraw consent, and to complain to a privacy regulator (in Canada, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner). To exercise these rights email admin@techiecrm.com. Workspace administrators can update most account details directly in the Service. For information held in a customer's workspace, contact that customer; we will support them in responding. For a Help conversation you had without signing in, tell us the name or email address you used and roughly when, so we can find it.
10. Cookie notice
TechieCRM uses only strictly necessary cookies:
| Cookie | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
sessionid | Keeps you signed in to the portal | Session / up to 2 weeks |
csrftoken | Protects forms against cross-site request forgery | 1 year |
sm_visitor | Lets the Help chat recognise you when you ask for help without signing in (set only when you ask) | 30 days |
tc_cookie_notice (local storage) | Remembers that you dismissed the cookie notice | Persistent |
We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies. Because these cookies are essential, they do not require consent; you can block them in your browser but the portal will not work without them. Session storage is used to remember UI state (e.g. which menu sections are open, and the state of the Help panel).
11. Email & SMS communications
We send transactional messages needed to run your account (invitations, password links, invoices, usage notices). Product or marketing emails are optional and include an unsubscribe link. Messages your company sends to its clients through the Service (email from your own identity, SMS via your rented number) are your responsibility, including consent and opt-out handling under CASL/TCPA and similar laws; the Service records those messages in your workspace.
12. Children
The Service is for businesses and is not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect their personal information.
13. Changes
We may update this policy. Material changes will be announced to workspace administrators by email or in-app before they take effect; the "last updated" date above always reflects the current version.
14. Contact
Privacy questions or requests: admin@techiecrm.com or via our contact page.