Privacy policy

1. About this policy

This policy explains how BirthGuide (“we”, “us”, “our”) collects, holds, uses and discloses your personal information when you use birthguide.com.au and the birth plan service (together, the “Service”).

BirthGuide is operated from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia by the sole trader entity FRACAZO. We handle personal information in line with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. Because birth preferences are health information, we hold ourselves to the full Privacy Act standard regardless of any small business exemption.

This policy describes what the product actually does today. We would rather tell you plainly than impress you vaguely. If anything is unclear, email [email protected].

2. Sensitive information and your consent

Your birth preferences, due date and anything you tell us about your pregnancy are health information, which the Privacy Act treats as sensitive information. We only collect it when you enter it yourself, and only to create your birth plan documents. By filling in the questionnaire you consent to us collecting and holding that information for that purpose. We never sell it, and we never use it for advertising.

3. What we collect, point by point

The birth plan questionnaire. Your name, your partner’s or support person’s name and phone number, your email address, your estimated due date, your hospital or care provider, and your birth preferences. Stored in our database so your plan and its documents can be generated, previewed and edited.

Save for later. If you save your progress, we store your email address and your answers so far, and send up to three reminder emails. Saved sessions are automatically deleted 90 days after they are created. Every email in the sequence has an unsubscribe link.

Purchases. Payment is processed by Stripe. We do not collect, store or ever see your card details. We receive a payment confirmation and store your payment status alongside your plan.

Paywall feedback. If you choose to tell us why you stopped at the payment step, we store your comment so we can make the product better. It is optional, we never reply to it, and it is stored with your saved plan. It is deleted together with that plan 90 days after you save it.

The post-birth follow-up. If you purchased a plan, we send one email a few weeks after your due date asking how the birth went. Replying is entirely optional; replies go to our inbox and are not added to any database.

The calculator tools. If you ask a calculator (due date, IVF due date or ovulation) to email you your result, we store your email address together with the dates you entered and the calculated result, and send you a single email. No follow-up emails are sent to that address.

The price tracker. If you subscribe to the Weekly Drop, we store your email address and send a welcome email plus one price digest a week. Every email has an unsubscribe link that stops them immediately.

The chat widget. See section 6, which covers this in detail because a third party processes chat messages.

The contact form. Your name, email and message are sent straight to our inbox as an email. They are not written to any database.

How you found us. We record the referring site, campaign parameters and the first page you landed on, using our own storage in your browser (not a third-party tracker). If you save a session or purchase, that source information is stored with it so we know which channels work.

Collected automatically. Like almost every website: device and browser type, IP address, pages visited and rough timing. See section 5 for the analytics tools involved.

4. Who processes your information

Every provider below is one we actually use, and this is what each one touches:

• Supabase (database): birth plans, saved sessions, chat conversations, calculator captures and price tracker subscriptions. Our database is hosted in Australia (AWS Sydney region).
• Stripe (payments): your email and payment details at checkout. Stripe is PCI DSS certified; card details never reach us.
• Resend (email delivery): sends every email we send, so it processes your email address and the contents of those emails, including plan PDFs attached to your purchase email.
• Google Gemini (chat widget): processes chat messages. Detail in section 6.
• Google Analytics 4 (analytics): usage events. Detail in section 5.
• Microsoft Clarity (session replay): interaction recordings. Detail in section 5.
• Vercel (hosting): serves the website and processes server logs including IP addresses.
• Cloudflare (DNS and security): processes web traffic data and IP addresses in front of the site.
• Zoho Mail (our inbox): holds email you send to [email protected], including contact form messages and replies to the post-birth follow-up.

We do not share your information with anyone else, and we do not sell it to anyone, full stop.

5. Analytics, session replay and cookies

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how the site is used (pages viewed, questionnaire progress, purchases). Our analytics code respects your browser’s Do Not Track setting: if it is on, we do not send analytics events.

We use Microsoft Clarity, which records how visitors interact with pages (clicks, scrolling, movement) as session replays and heatmaps. Microsoft may use this data for its own purposes as described in its privacy statement.

The source-attribution described in section 3 is first party: it lives in your browser’s session storage and a first-party cookie, and is not shared with any advertising network.

6. The chat widget and Google Gemini

The chat widget on this site is powered by Google Gemini on Google’s free API tier. When you send a chat message, the conversation (your messages and the assistant’s replies) is sent to Google to generate the response. Nothing else is sent: not your birth plan, not your questionnaire answers, not your browsing on the site.

Be aware of what the free tier means: under Google’s terms, conversations may be used by Google to improve its products and may be reviewed by human reviewers. Please do not share personal or health details in the chat that you would not want processed that way. The widget shows this warning too.

If you choose to give the assistant your email address, we store it with the conversation in our database so we can follow up. Conversations are also stored in our database to help us improve the assistant’s answers.

7. Overseas disclosure

Your plan data lives in Australia: our database is hosted in the AWS Sydney region. Some of the providers in section 4 process data overseas, mainly in the United States: Stripe, Resend, Google, Microsoft, Vercel and Cloudflare operate on United States or global infrastructure. By using the Service you consent to those disclosures. We choose established providers with recognised security practices, but overseas recipients are not bound by the Australian Privacy Principles in the same way we are.

8. How long we keep things

Honestly, and in plain terms:

• Saved sessions (save for later): deleted automatically 90 days after creation. This is the only automatic deletion in the product today.
• Birth plans: your edit link works for 6 months after purchase. The underlying data is retained after that until you ask us to delete it. We do not currently run automated deletion of plan data.
• Chat conversations, calculator captures and price tracker subscriptions: retained until you ask us to delete them (or, for the price tracker, you unsubscribe and then ask us to delete the address).
• Payment records: retained by Stripe and by us as required by Australian tax law, up to 7 years.
• Analytics: kept on Google’s and Microsoft’s retention schedules, not ours.

9. Access, correction and deletion

These work today as a documented manual process, handled by a person: email [email protected] and we will act on it. You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. We aim to respond within 30 days. We do not offer automated self-service export or deletion yet; if we build it, this policy will say so.

Some things you can do yourself right now: edit your plan with your edit link for 6 months after purchase, correct your delivery email from the plan page, and unsubscribe from any email sequence using the link in the email.

10. Security

Traffic to and from the site is encrypted (HTTPS). Our database enforces row-level security and is only written to by our own server-side code. Payments are handled by Stripe, so card details never touch our systems. No internet service can promise perfect security, and we will not pretend otherwise, but we keep the surface small: we collect only what the features above need.

If a data breach happens that is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and affected users as required by the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.

11. Complaints

If you think we have mishandled your personal information, contact us first at [email protected] and we will try to put it right. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au or 1300 363 992.

12. Changes to this policy

When the product changes what it collects, this policy changes with it, and the date at the top changes. Significant changes to what we collect will be flagged on the site, not buried here.

13. Contact

Privacy enquiries: [email protected]
BirthGuide, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia