This policy explains what Charc Studio LLC ("Charc", "we", "us") collects when you use Charc, why, and what you can do about it. The short version: we collect what the app needs to work, we do not sell it, we do not run advertising, and your manuscripts are yours.
1. What we collect
Account details. Your email address, the display name or pen name you choose, and a password, which we store only as a hash. If you make a writer profile public, the details you put on it are public too.
Your work. Everything you create in Charc: manuscripts, outlines, notes, characters, settings, images you upload, page designs, snapshots and version history. We store this to provide the service and for no other purpose.
Activity the app needs. Word counts and writing days for your progress and streaks, which projects you have open, your preferences, and who you have invited to which project.
Technical information. When your browser talks to our servers we see the usual request data — your IP address, browser type, and the pages requested — which our hosting provider logs for a short period. If something in the app goes wrong, it sends us an error report: what failed, where in the app, your browser, and your account id if you are signed in, so we can fix it. Raw error events are removed after 30 days.
Payment details. We do not see or store card numbers. Paid plans are processed by Lemon Squeezy, our merchant of record, who tell us which plan is active on your account and when it renews. Their privacy policy covers the payment itself.
2. How we use it
To run Charc: saving and syncing your work, keeping history and backups, rendering your exports, showing your profile and shared projects to the people you choose, sending the emails the service needs (verification, invitations, password resets, receipts), enforcing plan limits, and finding and fixing faults. We may also use aggregate, non-identifying figures — how many people exported a book this month — to understand how Charc is used. We do not use your content to train any model, and we do not sell or rent personal information to anyone.
3. Where it lives
Charc's servers are in the United States, hosted with DigitalOcean in New York. Encrypted backups of the whole database are replicated continuously to Cloudflare R2 storage. Traffic to charc.app passes through Cloudflare, which provides the connection security and protects the site from attacks. If you use Charc from outside the United States, your data is transferred there.
The app also keeps a full copy of your open projects in your browser's local storage, which is how it works offline. That copy stays on your device until you sign out, delete it, or clear your browser data.
4. Who else sees any of it
Only the services we need to run Charc, and only what each one needs:
- DigitalOcean — hosting. Holds the servers and their disks.
- Cloudflare — connection security, protection from abuse, and backup storage. Sees the traffic that reaches the site and may set its own functional cookies for that purpose.
- Lemon Squeezy — payments for paid plans, as merchant of record. Sees your email and billing details when you buy something.
- Resend — sends our email. Sees your email address and the message.
- Google Fonts — the app loads its reading typefaces from Google's servers, so Google receives your IP address when the fonts are fetched.
Beyond these, we share personal information only if the law requires it, or to protect the rights or safety of Charc or its users. There is no advertising on Charc and no advertising trackers in it.
5. Things you choose to make public
A public writer profile, a project you show on it, a share link, and a request for reader feedback are all visible to whoever you give them to, or to anyone if you make them public. Collaborators you invite see the project you invite them to, and can see who else is in it. What you share is under your control; withdraw it and it stops being shown, though we cannot recall copies others may already have made.
6. Cookies and local storage
Charc keeps you signed in with a token stored in your browser's local storage, not a tracking cookie. It stores your open projects and preferences there too. We do not use analytics cookies or third-party tracking. Our infrastructure providers may set functional cookies needed to deliver the site securely.
7. How long we keep things
- Your account and work — for as long as your account exists.
- Version history and automatic saves — according to your plan, as described on the pricing page. On the free plan, every save from the last 14 days and one a day for the 90 before that; paid plans keep more.
- Deleted projects — recoverable for 14 days on the free plan and one year on a paid plan, then permanently removed.
- A collaborator's working copy — 30 days after they leave a project, then removed.
- Error reports — raw events for 30 days.
- Server logs — a short rolling period, as kept by our hosting provider.
- Backups — replicated database copies are kept for disaster recovery for a limited period and then age out. They are not used to restore individual deleted accounts.
8. Your choices and rights
You can see and change your account details on the account page. You can export any project as a complete backup file at any time, and export your manuscripts in standard formats. You can delete your account from the account page; that deletes your projects and your account record from our live database, and the copies in backups age out on the schedule above.
Depending on where you live you may have further rights — to access, correct, port or erase your personal information, to object to or restrict certain processing, or to complain to a supervisory authority. Write to [email protected] and we will help; we do not charge for this and we will not treat you differently for asking. We do not sell personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of on that score.
9. Children
Charc is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has given us personal information, tell us and we will remove it.
10. Security
Connections to Charc are encrypted. Passwords are hashed, never stored in the clear. Access to production systems is limited to the people who run the service. No system is perfect, though: if we learn of a breach affecting your information, we will tell you and the authorities where the law requires it.
11. Changes to this policy
We will update this policy when what we do changes. For anything material we will let you know in the app or by email before it takes effect. The date at the top is the date of the current version.
12. Contact
Charc Studio LLC · [email protected]