Privacy Policy

Plain-English summary: we hold your guest list so we can seat it, we don't sell anything to anyone, and the answers guests give about who they'd rather not sit with are never shown to the organiser.

1. Who this covers

This policy covers two groups: organisers who hold a SeatingSorted account, and guests who fill in an RSVP form we host on an organiser's behalf.

For guest data, the organiser is the data controller and SeatingSorted is the processor — they decide who is invited and why; we only store and process it to run the seating.

2. What we collect from organisers

• Your email address and password (hashed — we never store it in readable form)
• Your name, if you choose to add one
• Event details you enter: name, venue, dates, floor plan, crews, questions
• Payment records — which events you paid for and when. Card details go directly to our payment provider and never reach our servers
• Basic server logs (IP address, timestamps) kept for security and debugging

3. What we collect from guests

• The name the organiser put on the guest list, and an email if they provided one
• Whether the guest is attending, and any plus-one or children they bring
• Conversation topics they select
• Who they'd like to sit near, and who they'd rather not sit near

4. The confidential answers

This one matters, so it gets its own section. When a guest names people they'd like to sit near, or people they'd rather not sit near, those two answers are never shown to the organiser. They are used only as inputs to the seating solver.

If the resulting plan breaks one of those requests, the organiser is told that a conflict exists at a table so they can fix it, but not who asked for it or about whom. Couples and children-with-an-adult are treated differently and are visible to the organiser, because they're seating logistics rather than confidences — the RSVP form says so at the point of asking.

5. What we don't do

We don't sell personal data. We don't share it with advertisers. We don't use guest lists or event content to train machine-learning models. We don't send marketing email to guests.

6. Who we share it with

Only what running the service requires:

• Our hosting and database provider — stores the data on our instructions
• Paddle — takes payments. They are the merchant of record, meaning they are the seller for the transaction and handle billing and sales tax themselves. They collect your name, email, billing country and card details directly; we receive only a record that an event was paid for. Their own privacy policy governs what they hold
• Google Analytics — website usage, described in section 10

We may disclose data if legally required to. We don't share guest lists or RSVP answers with anyone beyond the hosting needed to store them.

7. How long we keep it

Event data is kept while your account exists so you can revisit past events. Delete an event and its guest list, RSVPs, and constraints are removed with it. Delete your account and we remove your personal data within 30 days, except records we must retain for tax purposes.

8. Security

Passwords are hashed. Traffic is served over HTTPS. Access to production data is limited to those who need it to operate the service. No system is perfectly secure, and we'll notify affected users promptly if a breach occurs.

9. Your rights

You can request a copy of your data, correct it, or ask us to delete it. Guests should contact the organiser who invited them first, since they control the guest list; if that isn't possible, contact us and we'll help. Where GDPR applies you also have the right to complain to your local supervisory authority.

10. Cookies and analytics

We set a session cookie to keep you logged in, and a cookie on the RSVP form to remember which guest you identified as. Both are necessary for the site to work.

We also use Google Analytics to understand how people find and use the site — which pages they visit, roughly where in the world they are, and which browser they use. It sets its own cookies and shares that information with Google, who act as our analytics provider. We use it to improve the product, not to advertise to you, and we do not sell it or use it to build an advertising profile.

Nothing is loaded from Google unless you agree to it. The first time you visit we ask, and if you decline, no analytics script is requested and no analytics cookie is set — the site works exactly the same either way. Your choice is remembered in your browser, and clearing your site data will make us ask again.

You can also opt out with Google's browser add-on, or by blocking analytics cookies in your browser. Nothing on the site stops working if you do.

11. Contact

Privacy questions: privacy@seatingsorted.com.