Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

We collect personally identifiable information when you voluntarily provide it, including when you purchase a subscription, set up your account, or add team members. This includes:

• First and last name
• Business email address
• Company name
• Job title
• Billing information (processed and stored by Stripe — we do not store payment card data)

When you add team members to your Design Better Teams subscription, we also collect their first name, last name, and business email address for the purpose of providing them access to the subscription.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To provision and manage your team subscription
• To send transactional emails (account setup, renewal reminders, billing confirmations)
• To deliver Design Better podcast episodes, newsletters, and content to your team
• To enable your team to use the Design Better Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations
• To contact you about changes to your subscription or our services
• To comply with legal obligations

We do not use your information for advertising, profiling, or sale to third parties.

3. Third-Party Services

We use the following trusted third-party services to operate Design Better Teams. Each processes your data only as needed to provide their service:

• Stripe — payment processing and subscription management. Your payment card data is transmitted directly to Stripe and never stored on our servers. See stripe.com/privacy.
• Substack — delivery of podcast episodes and newsletters to team members. Member email addresses are imported to Substack to provision access. See substack.com/privacy.
• Slack / Microsoft Teams — if your team installs our workspace integration, we receive workspace identifiers and channel information to deliver content. We do not read private messages.
• Resend — transactional email delivery.
• Neon (PostgreSQL) — secure cloud database hosting for subscription and account data.
• Vercel — application hosting and infrastructure.

4. Team Member Data

Team admins are responsible for ensuring they have appropriate authorization to provide team member email addresses to us. By adding a member to your subscription, you confirm that the individual has consented to receiving Design Better content and that sharing their information with us is permitted under your organization's policies. We use team member data only to provision and maintain their subscription access — we do not market to team members without their separate consent.

5. Data Retention

We retain your account and subscription data for as long as your subscription is active and for a reasonable period afterward to support billing records, legal obligations, and service continuity. You may request deletion of your data at any time by contacting us (see Section 9). Note that we may retain certain information as required by law or for legitimate business purposes such as fraud prevention and billing record-keeping.

6. Automatically Collected Information

Our systems automatically collect certain technical information to operate the service, including IP addresses, browser type, pages visited, and access timestamps. This information is used for security, performance monitoring, and aggregate usage analytics. It is not sold or shared with third parties for advertising purposes.

7. Security

All data is transmitted over SSL/TLS encryption. Passwords are hashed using bcrypt and never stored in plain text. Payment data is handled exclusively by Stripe and never touches our servers. We use industry-standard cloud infrastructure with access controls to protect your information.

8. Children Under 13

Design Better Teams is a business-to-business service intended for professional use. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 13.

9. Your Rights & Data Deletion

You have the right to access, correct, or request deletion of your personal information. To exercise these rights, contact us at teams@thecuriositydepartment.com.

Deletion requests may not be fulfilled in full where retention is required to complete transactions, comply with legal obligations, support security investigations, or maintain billing records as required by applicable law.

10. Communications

By creating an account you agree to receive transactional emails related to your subscription (account setup, billing, renewal reminders). You may opt out of non-essential communications at any time by contacting us or clicking unsubscribe in any email. Transactional emails required to maintain your subscription cannot be opted out of while your subscription is active.

11. External Links

Our service may contain links to third-party websites. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of those sites. We encourage you to review their privacy policies before providing any personal information.

12. Changes to This Policy

We reserve the right to modify this policy at any time. When we make material changes, we will notify you via email or a notice on this page. Continued use of the service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

13. Contact