Privacy Policy.
In Plain Words.

This website, sawasites.com, is run by Sawa Sites, part of Sawa Films. We decide what the site collects and how it is used, so we are responsible for your details.

For anything about your details, email us at hi@sawafilms.com.

We only receive personal details when you type them into one of these forms and press send:

• Contact form: your name, email, company or brand (optional), project type and message.
• Start Your Site form: the options you choose (business type, goals, branding, style and languages), any links you add, your name, your WhatsApp number and any notes.
• Kickoff form, after payment: your name, email, business name, what your business and site are about, and how you prefer to be contacted.
• Newsletter, on the blog: your email address, the page you signed up on, the language you were reading in, and the date.

Nothing you type into a form is sent before you press send. The Start Your Site form only notes which options you tap, as explained under Visit Records.

• To reply to you about your request, by email or on WhatsApp.
• To prepare your quote, then plan, build and hand over your website.
• If you become a client, to keep the project, invoice and payment records we need to run the work.
• To send you the newsletter, if you signed up for it. Your address is used for nothing else.

• Requests and client work: to answer what you asked for and to carry out the work you hired us for.
• Newsletter: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by asking us to take you off the list.
• Visit records, error reports and spam counts: our legitimate interest in keeping the site working, safe and useful, kept as light as described under Visit Records.

A few outside services do part of the work. Each one receives only what it needs:

• FormSubmit (formsubmit.co): delivers the contact, Start Your Site and kickoff forms to our inbox at hi@sawafilms.com. Your browser sends these forms to FormSubmit directly, so FormSubmit also receives your IP address and browser details.
• Railway: hosts this website and the server that receives what you send.
• Upstash: the database where requests, client records, the newsletter list and visit records are stored.
• The email service we send the newsletter with: when we send the newsletter, the addresses on our list go to that service, only so it can deliver the newsletter.
• Telegram or a similar alert tool: when we have alerts switched on, each new request arrives there as an instant alert with the same details you sent.
• Stripe: handles payments, as explained under Payments.
• Google Fonts and Other Demo Services: most of the demo websites in our portfolio, the pages under sawasites.com/work, load their fonts from Google, two load photos from Unsplash, and one asks ipapi.co for your country to choose its language. Opening a demo shares your IP address and browser details with those services. The rest of this site serves its own fonts and images.

Some of these services are based outside your country, including in the United States, so your details may be handled there.

To see which pages help people and where they get stuck, the site keeps its own simple record of each visit. It uses no cookies, and the site loads no advertising or social media trackers. A visit record holds:

• A random visit ID, kept in your browser tab's session storage. It is not a cookie, and it disappears when you close the tab.
• The pages you open, how long the site stays on your screen, and the website that sent you here.
• Your device type (phone, tablet or computer), your browser and its language, and a rough location (a country or city) taken from your browser's language setting or time zone, never from your IP address.
• Taps on key buttons and links, such as Start, email or WhatsApp, and whether you started filling in the contact form (not what you typed).
• In the Start Your Site form, the step you reached, the options you tapped, and whether the links field has something in it. Nothing you type into the name, number, links or notes fields is recorded unless you press send.

Your IP address is not saved in these records. If you send a request, we link it to the record of that visit, so we can see how you found us.

Each visit record is deleted automatically after 35 days. Daily totals, which count visits without telling them apart, are kept for 90 days.

If a page breaks in your browser, the site sends us the error message, the page address and your browser details (its name, version and operating system) so we can fix it. We keep the latest 300 of these reports.

To block spam and abuse, the site counts requests from each IP address for up to an hour. The count then expires, and your IP address is never saved with your message.

If you pay for a website, you pay on Stripe's own checkout page. Your card details go to Stripe and never reach us.

Stripe tells us the name and email on the payment, the amount and the currency, so we can match the payment to your project. Stripe handles the payment itself under its own privacy policy.

• Requests, messages and client records: in our database and our inbox until you ask us to delete them.
• Newsletter address: until you unsubscribe.
• Visit records: 35 days, then deleted automatically. Daily totals are kept for 90 days.
• Error reports: the latest 300.
• Backups: the site keeps its 14 most recent daily backups, so a deleted record can remain in a backup until that backup is replaced.
• Admin activity log: when we move a request or project to a new stage, start a project, or delete a record or a newsletter address, our log of admin actions keeps a line with the name, business name or email on it. The log keeps its latest 2,000 entries, and the backups above include it.

Email hi@sawafilms.com and tell us what you need. You can ask us to:

• Show you the details we hold about you.
• Correct anything that is wrong.
• Delete your details from our database, our inbox and our alert messages.
• Take you off the newsletter.

You can also browse the whole site without sending us anything. A visit record on its own does not include your name or any way to contact you.

If you are unhappy with how we handled your details, you can also complain to the data protection authority where you live.

If the way this site handles your details changes, we will update this page and the date at the top.