Privacy Policy
The Catalyst Studio · Version 1 · Effective 10/13/2026
THE CATALYST STUDIO, LLC ("we", "us") builds and hosts websites for local businesses in the United States. This policy explains what personal information we collect about the businesses we contact, our clients and visitors to our own website, and what we do with it.
1. What we collect
About businesses we contact. Before contacting a business, we gather its public business information: name, address, phone number, hours, services, and links to its website or social media pages. Where the business publishes them, this includes its email address and the names of its owner or staff.
- Where it comes from: open business datasets (Foursquare OS Places and Overture Maps), public business directories, search results, and the business's own public pages, such as its Facebook Page, which a person reads.
- What we never do: guess email addresses, buy email lists, copy the business's photos, or publish a preview.
- What we do with it: build a preview website on our own computer, which is never published, and email the business screenshots of it.
- If the business replies: we keep our messages with it, and what it tells us on a call it asks for (for example, who decides for the shop).
About our clients. Your name, email address and phone number; your business information and the content you give us for your site; our messages with you; and records of your payments. Stripe processes payments. We never see or store your full card number.
From accounts you connect. If you connect your Facebook Page, we read only the business information we need for your website, such as hours, services and contact details.
Our emails contain no tracking pixels or tracked links, so we don't know whether you opened one. If you use the unsubscribe link, or reply asking us to stop in any words, we record your opt-out.
Visitors to our website. When you visit insidecatalyst.com, including our unsubscribe page, Cloudflare, which serves our site, receives your IP address, browser type and the pages you request, as any website's host does, and uses them to deliver and protect the site. We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which uses no cookies and doesn't track you across other websites. We don't use any of this to identify you.
Visitors to our clients' websites. Each client's site has its own privacy notice, in the client's name. We handle what its visitors send through it, such as contact or appointment requests, only to run the site for that client.
2. How we use it
- To email businesses about our service: one email and at most two follow-ups, stopping as soon as you reply or opt out
- To build, host and update our clients' websites
- To bill clients, answer messages, and hold calls a business asks for
- To honor opt-outs, and to keep records of where each email address came from and what we sent, so we can show we follow email law
- To keep our systems secure and meet our legal obligations
We don't use it for anything else.
3. Who we share it with
- Service providers that help us run the business: payments (Stripe), email delivery, email address verification (we send an address to a verification service to check that it can receive mail before we email it), video calls, mail handling (our mailing-address service), database and web hosting, code storage, backup storage, and search and AI tools we use to research public business information. They may use it only as our agreements with them allow. Stripe handles payment information under its own privacy policy.
- Authorities or others, when the law requires it, or to protect our rights or someone's safety.
- A new owner, if our business is sold or merged. They must honor this policy.
We don't sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising. We never sell, rent or give our email list or opt-out list to anyone. Our service providers handle addresses only to deliver our email, confirm an address can receive it, or store our records, and only on our instructions. Some service providers keep their own records of the services they provide to us, under their own privacy policies. We never sell or license information from Facebook.
4. How long we keep it
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Email addresses, people's names, our messages with the business and notes from calls, previews and screenshots for businesses that didn't become clients | Deleted from our systems 90 days after our last email or the business's last reply, whichever is later. If we never emailed, 90 days after we decided not to. Our service providers delete it under their own terms |
| Those businesses' public business details, where each email address came from, and what we sent | 5 years after our last email, as evidence we follow email law. After the 90 days, these records hold no email address or names, only a coded version of the address (a keyed hash). We can check whether a given address matches it, but we can't read the address from it |
| Opt-outs | The email address only, permanently, so we never email it again. If the opt-out arrives after we've deleted the address, we keep its keyed hash instead. The business's record also notes that it opted out |
| Clients' information and sites | While you're a client. After you leave, we keep a copy of your site for at least 90 days so we can restore it if you come back; after that we may delete it, and we delete it sooner if you ask. Payment records are kept as long as tax law requires |
| Information from your Facebook Page | When you disconnect it or stop being a client, we stop reading it and delete what we got from it within 30 days. Details you've confirmed to us for your site, such as your hours, are information you gave us, and stay with your site's copy |
5. Your choices
- Stop our emails: click the unsubscribe link in any of them, or reply asking us to stop. We'll stop within 5 business days.
- See, correct or delete your information: email us at [email protected]. We'll respond within 30 days. If you ask us to delete it, we keep only your email address on our opt-out list, so we never email you again, and any records the law requires us to keep.
- Disconnect Facebook: remove our app in your Facebook settings, or ask us to. To have us delete what we got from your Page sooner than the 30 days above, email us.
- "Do Not Track": we don't track you across other websites and don't let anyone else do so through insidecatalyst.com, so browser Do Not Track signals don't change anything here.
6. Security
We limit access to people who need it, use encrypted connections, and use service providers with their own security programs. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we'll tell you as the law requires.
7. Children
Our service is for businesses. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13.
8. Changes to this policy
The effective date at the top shows when this version took effect. Every version has its own permanent web address, and the current one is always at insidecatalyst.com/privacy. We'll email clients before any significant change takes effect.
Contact
THE CATALYST STUDIO, LLC · Mailing address: 963 N Convent St, Ste D #1050, Bourbonnais, IL 60914 · [email protected]