This Privacy Policy explains what information BakeFlow ("BakeFlow", "we", "us", or "our") collects when you use the BakeFlow website at bakeflow.us and the related application (together, the "Service"), how we use it, and the choices you have. It forms part of our Terms of Service.
The short version: we collect what we need to run the Service and we don't sell your personal information. We advertise BakeFlow on Facebook and Instagram, so our own marketing pages carry Meta's advertising pixel — but it never runs on a bakery's storefront, and never inside the app once you're signed in (section 5 explains this in full). Payments are handled by payment processors — card numbers never touch our servers.
1. Who this policy covers
Two kinds of people use BakeFlow, and we hold different information about each:
- Bakers — people who create a BakeFlow account to run a bakery.
- Customers — people who order from a bakery's public storefront page. If you ordered from a bakery through BakeFlow, the bakery you ordered from is the merchant you dealt with; BakeFlow processes your details on its behalf so it can fulfill your order.
- Visitors — people reading our marketing pages who haven't signed up. We hold almost nothing about you, but this is the group our advertising measurement (section 5) applies to, so it's worth knowing it exists.
2. What we collect
Account information (bakers). Your email address, a password (stored only as a salted hash — we cannot read it), your name if you provide one, and, if you sign in with Google, the name and email address Google shares with us. We never see your Google password.
Your bakery's content (bakers). What you enter to use the Service: ingredients and their prices, recipes, supplies, customers, orders, production runs, storefront products, settings, and any photos you upload. This is your data; we store and display it to run the Service for you.
Order information (customers). When you place a storefront order: your email address (required, so you and the bakery get order updates), your name and phone number if you provide them, your pickup date, and what you ordered. This is shared with the bakery you ordered from — that's what it's for.
Payment information. Handled by our payment processors. Subscription billing and storefront card payments run on Stripe; a bakery may also connect its own PayPal/Venmo account, in which case those payments run on PayPal. We receive confirmation that a payment happened (amount, status, an identifier) but never your card number.
Usage data. We run our own self-hosted analytics (Umami) to understand which features get used — page views and feature events (for example, "a recipe was created"). It does not use cookies, does not follow you across other websites, and event names never include your content. We also keep ordinary server logs (IP address, request path, timestamp) for security and debugging, retained briefly.
Advertising measurement. Separately from the above, our public marketing and sign-up pages use Meta's advertising pixel so we can tell which ads bring bakers to BakeFlow. This is the one place we share data with a third party for advertising, it is limited to a specific short list of pages, and it is described in full in section 5.
3. Cookies
We use a small number of first-party cookies, all functional:
- a session cookie that keeps you signed in;
- a cart cookie per storefront that remembers what a customer added before checkout;
- two short-lived, one-shot cookies used to record that an action you just completed succeeded (each carries only an event name, never personal data, and expires within seconds).
Your light/dark theme choice is kept in your own browser's storage and never sent to us.
Advertising cookies. On the specific marketing and sign-up pages listed in section 5, Meta's pixel may set or read Meta's own cookies. These are the only cookies on the Service used for advertising, and they are the only ones set by a company other than us. They are never present on a bakery's storefront pages, on order-status pages, or inside the app once you are signed in.
4. How we use information
To provide and improve the Service: signing you in, storing your bakery's data, processing orders and payments, sending the emails the Service needs (password resets, order confirmations and status updates, receipts), keeping the Service secure, and understanding which features matter. We also measure our own advertising, as described in section 5.
We do not sell personal information. We do not share your bakery's content, your customers, or your orders with anyone for their own marketing — the only advertising-related sharing we do is the page-level pixel activity in section 5, and your bakery's data is never part of it.
5. Advertising and the Meta Pixel
We advertise BakeFlow on Facebook and Instagram. To know which ads actually bring bakers to us, some of our pages include the Meta Pixel, a piece of measurement code provided by Meta Platforms, Inc.
Where it runs. Only on these public pages:
- our home page at bakeflow.us;
- our pricing page;
- our comparison pages (for example, the Bake Diary comparison);
- the log-in and sign-up pages;
- the single page you land on immediately after creating an account.
Where it does not run — this is the important part. The pixel is not present on:
- any bakery's storefront page. If you came here to order a cake from a home baker, no advertising code runs on the pages you visit. You are that bakery's customer, not an audience for our advertising, and we don't treat you like one.
- order-status pages, where a customer tracks an order they placed.
- the application itself, once you are signed in and working on your bakery — apart from the one landing page noted above.
- our administrative pages.
What it tells Meta. That a browser viewed one of the pages listed above, which of those pages it was, and whether a sign-up was started or completed. As with any request your browser makes to another company, Meta also receives your IP address and basic browser information, and it can read its own cookies if you have a Facebook or Instagram account.
What it does not tell Meta. We do not send Meta your name, email address, phone number, password, or anything from inside your bakery — no recipes, ingredients, prices, customers, or orders. Meta offers a feature that automatically collects contact details typed into forms; we have deliberately turned it off.
Why we do it. Advertising is how a small product finds the bakers who need it. Without measurement we would be paying for ads with no idea whether they work.
Your choices. You can stop the pixel from loading with any ad- or tracker-blocking browser extension, or with a browser that blocks third-party tracking by default — the Service works normally either way, and nothing about your account or a bakery's storefront depends on it. You can also adjust how Meta uses your data in your Facebook or Instagram ad preferences. And you can simply avoid it: the pages listed above are the only ones it appears on.
For California residents. Sending these signals to Meta for advertising counts as "sharing" personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising under California law. You have the right to opt out. The browser controls above take effect immediately; you can also email us at the address in section 12 and we will honor the request.
6. Who we share information with
Only the service providers it takes to run BakeFlow, each bound to use it solely to provide their service to us: our hosting provider (servers and backups), Stripe and — where a bakery connects it — PayPal for payments, and Resend for delivering transactional email. Storefront order details are shared with the bakery you ordered from, as described above. We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect the Service and its users.
Separately from those providers, Meta receives the limited page-view information described in section 5 when you visit one of our marketing or sign-up pages, and uses it under its own privacy policy. Meta is the only recipient in this list that receives anything for advertising purposes.
7. Data retention and deletion
Your bakery's data stays as long as your account does. Archived items (recipes, ingredients, customers) are hidden, not deleted, so they can be restored. If you want your account and its data deleted, email us at the address below and we will delete it, subject to records we must keep (for example, invoices and payment records where required). Backups age out on a rolling schedule.
8. Security
All traffic to the Service is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Passwords are stored as salted hashes. Access to production systems is restricted and key-based. No system is perfectly secure, but we take the care you'd expect with your business's data.
9. Your choices and rights
You can read and edit your bakery's data in the app, and export or correct your account details at any time. Depending on where you live, you may have legal rights to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your personal information — email us and we will honor them. If you ordered from a bakery and want your details corrected or removed, you can contact the bakery or us; we will help either way.
To opt out of the advertising measurement described in section 5, see "Your choices" there — the quickest route is a browser or extension that blocks third-party tracking, which takes effect immediately and needs nothing from us.
10. Children
The Service is for adults (18+). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
11. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy materially, we will update the effective date at the top and, for significant changes, tell bakers by email or in the app. The current version always lives at this page.
12. Contact
Questions or requests about your data: [email protected].