Privacy Policy

Creative Designer Directory (“we”, “us”, “our”) operates creativedesignerdirectory.com — a directory of Showit designers and creative service providers. Our contact address is hello@creativedesignerdirectory.com.

Designer accounts

When you purchase a listing, we collect your name, email address, business name, website URL, location, bio, profile photo, services, and any other information you add to your profile. Payment is processed by Stripe — we never see or store your card details.

Free user accounts

When you create a free account to save wishlists, we collect your name, email address, and your stated service interests and budget range.

Server-side analytics

We record page views, profile views, comparison events, and wishlist saves in our own database. This data is tied to session identifiers, not personal identifiers, and uses no cookies or third-party scripts.

Google Analytics (only with your consent)

If you accept analytics cookies on our cookie banner, we load Google Analytics 4, which records the pages you visit, approximate location derived from your IP address, device and browser type, and how you arrived at the site. Google Analytics is not loaded at all unless you opt in, and we have disabled its advertising features — ad storage and ad personalisation are permanently denied, so your data is never used to target you with ads.

Google reviews

Designers can connect their Google Business listing by giving us their Google Place ID. The Place ID is the only Google data we store. We do not copy, sync or keep Google review content in our database.

When you view a designer's profile, your browser asks our server for that designer's current Google rating and reviews. Our server requests them from the Google Places API using the stored Place ID, passes them straight to your browser, and keeps nothing. Reviewer names, profile photos, ratings, review text and dates all come directly from Google and are shown live — we cannot edit, filter, reorder or retain them. Google decides which reviews are shown and in what order.

Because this request is made by our server, Google does not receive your IP address or set cookies on your device as a result of it. Google's handling of the review data itself is governed by the Google Privacy Policy.

• Contract performance — processing your listing purchase, providing access to your dashboard, and displaying your profile to visitors.
• Legitimate interest — understanding how visitors use the directory (aggregate analytics) to improve it.
• Consent — sending marketing emails (you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in each email), and loading Google Analytics (you can decline on the cookie banner, and nothing is loaded unless you actively accept).

• Active accounts: for the lifetime of your account.
• Deleted accounts: we remove personal data within 30 days of account deletion. Aggregate analytics data is retained indefinitely in anonymised form.
• Payment records: 7 years (legal requirement).

We share data with the following services only to the extent necessary to operate the site:

• Stripe — payment processing. Stripe is the data controller for payment data. See stripe.com/privacy.
• Resend — transactional email (receipts, password resets, notifications). Data processed in the EU/US.
• Supabase — database and authentication infrastructure, hosted on AWS (us-east-1 by default).
• Vercel — hosting and edge delivery. Vercel may process request logs including IP addresses.
• Google Maps Platform (Places API) — used only to fetch public Google ratings and reviews, live, for designers who have connected a Google Place ID. We store only the Place ID; review content is never retained. Requests are made server-side, so Google receives no personal data about you from this feature. Governed by the Google Privacy Policy and the Google Maps Platform Terms of Service.
• Google Analytics — website analytics, loaded only for visitors who accept analytics cookies. Data may be processed in the US. See policies.google.com/privacy.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal data. We do not use any advertising networks or behavioural tracking tools.

We use essential cookies required for login and secure payment processing, plus Google Analytics cookies if — and only if — you accept them on our cookie banner. We never use advertising or retargeting cookies. See our Cookie Policy for a full list.

If you are in the European Economic Area or UK, you have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Erasure — request deletion of your personal data.
• Portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format.
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interest.
• Correction — ask us to correct inaccurate data.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at hello@creativedesignerdirectory.com. We will respond within 30 days.

We do not sell personal information. California residents have the right to:

• Know what personal information we collect and how it is used.
• Request deletion of personal information.
• Not be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

To submit a request, email hello@creativedesignerdirectory.com with the subject line “CCPA Request”.

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated by email to account holders. Continued use of the site after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Questions about this policy? Email us at hello@creativedesignerdirectory.com.