Privacy Policy

Shipcast is a podcast production orchestration tool. We track whether your episodes ship on time — we don't edit audio, generate content, or store media files. This policy explains what data we collect, why, and what we do with it.

What we collect

• Email address — provided optionally when you sign up for a Pulse Check rescan. We use it to deliver your rescan results and, if you opt in, to notify you when Shipcast is available.
• Pain point survey response — an optional single-choice answer ("schedule," "assets," "tools," or "tracking") collected alongside email capture. Used to understand what podcast producers need most.
• RSS feed URLs — the publicly available feed URL you submit for analysis. We parse the public XML to generate your Pulse Check grade.
• IP address and user agent — collected automatically with each request. Used solely for rate limiting and abuse prevention. IP addresses are not stored in application logs.

How we use your data

• Rescan delivery — if you provide your email, we re-analyze your feed on your chosen schedule (7, 14, or 28 days) and email you the updated report.
• Product updates — when Shipcast launches, we may send you a single invitation email. You can unsubscribe at any time.
• Abuse prevention — IP addresses and user agents help us enforce rate limits and detect misuse.
• Aggregate insights — we analyze survey responses and feed data in aggregate to improve Shipcast. This data is never linked to individuals.

What we don't do

• We don't sell, rent, or share your personal data with advertisers.
• We don't send spam. You'll only hear from us about your rescan results and a one-time product launch notification.
• We don't store audio or video files. Shipcast is a metadata-only platform.
• We don't access your podcast hosting account, download numbers, or revenue data.
• We don't use private or authenticated APIs. We only parse publicly available RSS feeds.

Data retention

• Pulse Check reports expire after 30 days and are periodically removed from our systems. You can scan again anytime for a fresh grade.
• Email addresses are retained for 12 months from your last scan if you never convert to a paid account. After that, they are automatically deleted and removed from our email lists.
• Survey responses follow the same 12-month retention window as email addresses.
• Application logs (including anonymized IP data) are retained for 30 days and then automatically purged.

Third-party services

We use a small number of third-party services to operate Shipcast:

• Resend — transactional email delivery (rescan results, product updates). Resend processes your email address to deliver messages on our behalf. See Resend's privacy policy.
• Apple iTunes Search API — used to look up your podcast's category, artwork, and ratings from Apple Podcasts. This is a public API; no Apple account data is accessed.
• Vercel — application hosting. Vercel processes request metadata (IP, user agent) as part of standard web hosting. See Vercel's privacy policy.

We do not use analytics trackers, advertising pixels, or social media SDKs.

Your rights

Regardless of where you live, you can request the following at any time by emailing privacy@shipcast.app:

• Access — a copy of all personal data we hold about you.
• Deletion — removal of your email, survey response, and any associated report data.
• Correction — updates to any inaccurate personal data.
• Portability — your data in a machine-readable format.

We honor these rights under GDPR (UK), CCPA/CPRA (California), PIPEDA (Canada), and the Australian Privacy Act. We respond to all requests within 30 days.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Email us at privacy@shipcast.app.