Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Hostly is a product of Vero Dawn, operated by Missy Ross in North Carolina, United States. Hostly is software for independent restaurants in the United States. It reads your restaurant's public Google reviews, uses AI to draft replies in your voice, and holds every draft until you approve it.

When this policy says "we" or "us," it means Vero Dawn operating Hostly. When it says "you," it means the restaurant owner or manager who uses Hostly.

Questions about any of this go to hello@verodawn.co.

2. What we collect

We keep this short on purpose. Here is the whole list.

Information you give us

• Your name and email address, so we can create your account and sign you in.
• Your phone number, optional. You do not have to give it.
• Your business name and address, so we can find the right Google listing.
• Your monthly revenue estimate, optional and self-reported. We use it to size the revenue-at-risk figure in your audit. If you skip it, we use a general industry estimate instead.

Information we collect about your business

• Your restaurant's public Google reviews, including the star rating, the review text, the date, and the reviewer display name as Google publishes it publicly.
• Your Google star rating, review counts, and related public listing details.
• The replies you approve and when you approved them.

Information we collect automatically

• Basic usage and technical data, such as sign-in times, pages used inside the app, and error logs. This is how we keep the service working and find bugs.

We do not collect your card number. See Payments below.

3. Why we collect it

• To run the service. Read your public reviews, draft replies, show you the queue, and hand you each approved reply to paste onto Google.
• To sign you in. We email you a sign-in code rather than making you remember a password.
• To send you what you asked for. Your audit report, your digests, and account notices.
• To size your estimates. Your revenue figure, if you give one, feeds the revenue-at-risk number.
• To bill you. Through our payment processor.
• To support you and improve the product. Fixing errors, answering your questions, making the software better.

That is it. We do not use your information to build advertising profiles, and we do not use it for anything you would not expect from the list above.

4. Review content and reviewer names

Reviews of your restaurant are published publicly on Google by the people who wrote them. Hostly reads that public content so it can draft a reply. That includes the reviewer's display name exactly as Google shows it publicly, because a good reply usually uses the person's first name.

We do not go looking for anything else about a reviewer. We do not try to identify them, find their email, or match them to other records. We only handle what Google already publishes on your listing.

5. How AI is used, and what we send to Anthropic

Plainly stated: review text is sent to Anthropic, the maker of the Claude API, for processing.

Hostly sends the text of your reviews, along with your brand voice settings and your business name, to Anthropic's Claude API. Claude does two jobs with it. First, it drafts a reply for you to consider. Second, it reads across your reviews to spot recurring themes, for example slow service on weekends or a dish that keeps getting praised.

Anthropic processes that text on our behalf so we can return a result to you. We do not use your data to train generalized AI models, and we do not permit our sub-processors to do so with data we send them.

Nothing is ever posted automatically. Every draft waits for your approval, and you can edit it or throw it away.

AI drafts can get things wrong. Read every draft before you approve it. Once you approve a reply, it is your reply.

7. Who we share information with

We use a small set of service providers, called sub-processors, to run Hostly. Each one only gets what it needs to do its job. Here is the full list and what each one does.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, if we need to protect someone's safety or our legal rights, or if Hostly is ever sold or merged. If ownership changes, we will tell you before your information moves to a new owner.

8. We do not sell your data

We do not sell your personal information, your business information, or your review data. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone, ever. We do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising either.

9. Payments

Hostly costs $99 per month per location. Billing runs through GoHighLevel using Stripe as the payment processor. When you enter your card details, they go straight to Stripe. Your card number never touches Hostly's servers and we never see it or store it. We see only what we need for billing, such as the last four digits, the card brand, and whether a payment succeeded.

10. How long we keep it

We keep your data while your account is active. If you cancel, we keep it for 30 days, so you can change your mind or ask for an export, and then we delete it.

We may keep a small amount of information longer where the law requires it, for example billing and tax records. We may also keep anonymous, aggregated statistics that cannot be traced back to you or your restaurant.

11. Your choices and your rights

Your data is yours. You can ask us to:

• Send you a copy of the information we hold about you and your restaurant.
• Correct anything that is wrong.
• Delete your data. We will delete it and confirm when it is done.
• Stop the review pull at any time. Cancel, or ask us to stop reading your public reviews, and we will.
• Stop marketing email. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link. Account and billing emails still have to reach you while you have an account.

To make any of these requests, email hello@verodawn.co. We aim to respond within a few business days and will not charge you for it. Deletion and export requests go to that same address and are executed within 30 days under our written internal procedure. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under state privacy laws, and we will honor those requests too. We will not treat you differently for exercising any of these rights.

12. Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our hosting and database providers. Access to production systems is limited to people who need it. We sign you in with a one-time emailed code rather than a stored password, which removes a common way accounts get broken into.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach affects your information, we will tell you promptly and tell you what we are doing about it.

13. Children

Hostly is a business tool for adults. It is not directed at anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect information from children. If we learn we have, we will delete it.

14. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top. If the change is significant, for example a new sub-processor or a new use of your data, we will email you at least 14 days before it takes effect. Continuing to use Hostly after a change means you accept the updated policy.

15. How to reach us

Hostly, a product of Vero Dawn
Attn: Missy Ross
North Carolina, United States
hello@verodawn.co

Write to us with any privacy question, and a real person will answer.