Privacy policy

Apparus (“Apparus,” “we,” “us”) operates the Apparus CRM website and service. [To confirm: legal entity name and registered address]

Apparus CRM is a customer relationship management tool for small businesses. Businesses use it to keep track of leads, contacts, notes, and follow-up tasks. This policy explains what information we handle, why, who helps us process it, and the choices you have.

In short: we collect what we need to run the service, we don't sell personal information, we don't use your records for advertising, and AI features only process a record when someone in your workspace asks them to.

• Visitors to our public website, including people who send us a message through the contact form.
• Users who create an account and belong to one or more workspaces.
• People whose details are stored in a workspace, such as a business's leads and customers. The business that owns the workspace decides what it records and why, and we process those records on its behalf to provide the service. If your details are in a business's workspace, please contact that business first; we will help them respond.

Account information

• Your name, email address, and preferred time zone.
• Your password, which is handled by our authentication provider. We never see or store it in readable form.
• The workspaces you belong to, your role in each (owner, admin, or member), and invitations you send or receive (the invitee's email address and role).
• When you agreed to our terms of service and this privacy policy as you created your account, and which version of each you agreed to.
• Workspace settings such as the workspace name, business type, industry template, default currency, and time zone.
• The answers to the setup questions when you create a workspace: how many people will use it, the kind of business, your role, and what you want to do first. Every member of the workspace can see them; only its owner can change them.

Notification settings

• Your choices: when the daily follow-up summary arrives, how long before a due time reminders arrive, and which notifications each workspace sends you.
• For each browser where you turn on push notifications: the address its push service gave it, the keys used to encrypt notifications for it, a label such as "Chrome on macOS", and the sign-in it belongs to. Signing out of that browser stops its notifications.
• A record of each reminder email and notification we sent you, kept for 45 days, so none is sent twice.
• In-app notifications that a workspace's automations send you (what happened and the lead it is about), kept for 90 days.
• Your choices for the Email buttons: which mail app they open, and whether they add your workspace's logging address in BCC.

CRM records you enter

Everything a workspace's users add: leads, contacts (for example names, email addresses, phone numbers, companies, and job titles), notes, tasks, tags, pipelines, and custom fields. These records may include personal information about the business's own customers and prospects. Users choose what to enter; the service does not require sensitive categories of information, and our terms ask users not to store them. This includes records imported from a CSV file, which are recorded as created by the person who imported them.

Automations

Workspace owners and admins can set up automations that change records when something happens, for example create a task when a lead is won. We keep each automation's settings and a record of its runs (when it ran, which lead or task it ran for, and what it did or why it did not). Changes an automation makes are shown in the record's history as made by that automation. Automations never send emails or messages to a workspace's customers or contacts.

Emails you log

Each workspace has a private logging address. When someone sends an email with that address in BCC, or forwards an email to it, we keep a copy of the email: who it was from and to (and copied to), the date and subject, its text, a cleaned copy of its formatting with anything that could run code removed, the names and sizes of its attachments (not the files), and whether the sending server's checks confirmed the sender. We keep only emails that show a member's sign-in address as the sender or a recipient, and link each to the workspace's contacts whose addresses appear in it and to their open leads. Logged emails may contain personal information about the people in them; they are part of the workspace's records. Apparus never sends emails to your contacts: the Email buttons open your own mail app.

Usage metadata

• Activity history inside a workspace, such as when a record was created, a stage changed, or a task was completed, and which user did it.
• AI request records: which AI feature was used, by whom, on which lead, when, the model, the number of tokens processed, and whether the request succeeded. These records do not contain the request's content or the AI's response. We use them to enforce plan limits.
• Operational logs: request identifiers, timestamps, error codes, and similar technical details used to keep the service running and secure. Our logging is designed to exclude record contents, passwords, and tokens.
• Rate-limit counters used to prevent abuse. For the contact form, the counter is keyed to a one-way hash of your IP address combined with a secret value that changes daily; we do not store the IP address itself.

Contact form messages

When you use the contact form we store your name, email address, chosen topic, and message. If you are signed in at the time, we also link the message to your account so we can help you more easily.

Billing information (once paid plans are available)

Paid plans are not yet available. When they are, payments will be processed by Stripe. We expect to store only the identifiers Stripe gives us (such as customer and subscription IDs), your plan, its status, and billing period dates. Card numbers are entered with Stripe and are not stored by us.

Cookies

We use cookies that are necessary to keep you signed in securely, and one that lasts at most 10 minutes while a new workspace is being set up. This version of Apparus CRM does not use advertising cookies or third-party analytics. Your browser also keeps a few things for the current tab only (session storage), such as whether the website's intro has played and the email address you just signed up with, so the confirmation link can be sent again in one click. They are never sent to us and are cleared when you close the tab. Until you clear this site's data, your browser also keeps which page tours it has offered you or you have taken, whether you turned page-tour offers off, and that it has shown you the “You're all set” message in a workspace (by your account's ID and the workspace's web address), so they are not shown again. These are never sent to us either. [To confirm before launch: final list of cookies and any analytics added later]

• To provide the service: authenticate you, show your workspace's records, and save your changes.
• To enforce plan limits, such as the number of members and monthly AI requests.
• To order a new workspace's setup checklist and suggest a plan from its setup answers. A suggestion never charges anything.
• To keep the service secure, prevent abuse, and investigate problems.
• To respond to messages you send us.
• To send account emails you trigger, such as email confirmation and password reset messages.
• To send the reminder emails, automation alerts, and push notifications you choose. Every one of these emails has a link to turn them off without signing in, and you can change them in your account settings.
• To add the emails your workspace logs to the matching contacts' and leads' history, and to run the automations a workspace sets up.
• To process payments once paid plans are available.

We do not sell personal information, we do not use CRM records for advertising, and we do not use your records to train AI models.

AI features (lead summaries, suggested next steps, conversation prep, and follow-up drafts) only run when a user in your workspace asks for one, and only if AI is enabled for that workspace. Workspace owners can turn AI off at any time.

• What is sent: a minimized copy of the lead the request is about, such as its title, stage, status, priority, and a limited number of recent notes, tasks, and timeline entries (which include the subjects of logged emails, never their content), plus general context about the workspace's industry template. For a follow-up draft, your display name is also sent, so the draft can be signed with it. Contact email addresses and phone numbers are left out, and we make a best-effort attempt to remove email addresses and phone numbers that appear in free text.
• Who processes it: OpenAI, our AI provider. According to the provider's API data-usage policy at the time of writing, data submitted through its API is not used to train its models by default, and may be retained by the provider for a limited period for abuse monitoring. [Verify the provider's current API data-usage and retention terms before launch]
• What we keep: only the AI request record described above. We do not store the request content or the AI's response separately. A draft is only kept if a user saves it into a record, for example by pasting it into a note.
• Human review: AI output is presented as a draft. Apparus never sends emails or messages on anyone's behalf. Users decide whether and how to use a draft.

We use the following providers to operate Apparus CRM. Each receives only what it needs for its role.

[To confirm before launch: hosting provider, data processing agreements with each provider, and the regions where each provider stores data]

• Inside your workspace. Records in a workspace are visible to that workspace's members. Other customers cannot see them.
• With service providers listed above, so they can perform their role for us.
• For legal reasons, when we believe in good faith that disclosure is required by law or necessary to protect the rights, safety, or property of our users, the public, or Apparus.
• In a business transfer, such as a merger or acquisition, subject to this policy's protections.
• With your permission, in any other case.

• Account information is kept while your account exists and deleted when you delete your account.
• Workspace records, including activity history and AI request records, are kept until a user deletes them or the workspace is deleted. Archived records are kept until they are deleted.
• Notification records (which reminder emails and notifications were sent) are kept for 45 days. A browser's push registration is removed when you turn push off for it, sign out of it, or its push service reports it gone. In-app notifications are kept for 90 days.
• Automation run records are kept for 30 days (100 days for automations that wait for a lead with no activity, so they do not run twice for the same quiet period).
• Logged emails are kept as long as a contact or lead they are linked to exists: deleting the last one deletes the email. An email that matched no contact waits up to 30 days to be matched, then is deleted. Deleting the workspace deletes them all.
• Contact form messages are kept as long as needed to respond and follow up. [To confirm: a fixed retention period, for example 24 months]
• Rate-limit counters only matter for their short time window and contain no raw IP addresses. [To confirm: scheduled cleanup of expired counters]
• Backups and logs kept by our providers may retain deleted information for a limited time. [To confirm: backup and log retention periods for each provider]

• Access and correction. You can view and update your profile and the records in your workspaces from within the app.
• Export. Workspace owners and admins can export leads, contacts, and tasks as CSV files.
• Workspace deletion. A workspace owner can delete the workspace, which permanently removes its records from our active database.
• Account deletion. You can delete your account. Workspaces where you are the only member are deleted with it; if you own a workspace that has other members, you will be asked to transfer ownership first.
• Other requests. For any other request about your information, use the contact form with the “Privacy or data request” topic or email us at the address below. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under local law, and we will respond to requests as applicable law requires. [Add jurisdiction-specific sections as advised by counsel]

We protect information with safeguards that include workspace isolation enforced by the database, server-side authorization checks on every change, encrypted connections, and narrowly scoped access keys. No system is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security. Read our security overview for details.

Apparus CRM is a business tool. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. [To confirm: minimum age for account holders]

Our providers may process information in countries other than the one you live in. [To confirm: data regions for the database and hosting provider, and transfer safeguards]

We will update this policy as the product changes. If we make material changes, we will let account holders know before they take effect, for example by email or with a notice in the app. [To confirm: notice method and period]

Questions about this policy: legal@example.com [placeholder address — replace before launch]. You can also use our contact form.