Privacy

What Plain Estimate records, and for how long. Last updated 31 August 2026.

If someone sent you an approval link

The page shows a copy of the estimate or invoice they published. When you open it, we store a one-way hash of your IP address, your browser's user agent, and the time. Enough to tell the sender their document was opened, not enough to identify you from our records.

If you approve and sign, we additionally store the name you type, an email address if you give one, the signature you draw, a fingerprint of the exact document you signed, your IP address and your user agent. That set exists so the signature can be shown to mean something later: without it, a signature proves nothing about what was agreed or by whom.

If you request changes instead, we store your comment and nothing else.

How long it is kept

Approval links expire on a date the sender chooses, at most a year out. An expired link that nobody signed is deleted, snapshot and all, thirty days later. Records of who opened a link are deleted after ninety days.

Signed documents are kept while the sender's account exists, because the signature and the document it belongs to are the record of an agreement between you and them. To have one removed, ask the business that sent it. It is their record, and they can revoke the link at any time.

If you use Plain Estimate to send documents

Your estimates, invoices, clients and prices are stored in your own browser and are not sent anywhere. Two things leave your device, and only when you choose them: a document you publish to an approval link, and, if you create an account, whatever syncs between your devices.

Signing in is through another service you already have: Google, Microsoft or Facebook. We never see a password, so there is nothing here to guess or to leak. What we receive from them is an address, a display name, and an identifier for the account. Nothing else, and nothing is posted or read on your behalf. An account here stores that, plus whatever you sync, and what is synced is encrypted before it is written down.

Deleting your account and everything in it

You can do this yourself, at any time, without asking us.

In the app, open Settings and choose Delete account. That removes the account, the documents synced to it, and the sign-in devices registered against it. It is immediate and it cannot be undone, so take a backup first if you want to keep the work.

Your documents are on your own device as well, and deleting the account does not touch those. To remove them too, clear this site's data in your browser, which is the only copy left once the account has gone.

One thing is deliberately kept: a document a client has already signed. The signature and the document it belongs to are the record of an agreement between you and them, and only one of you is asking for it to go. If you need one removed, the business or the client on the other side of it can revoke the link at any time.

If you would rather we did it, write to hello@plainestimate.com from the address on the account and we will remove it within thirty days.

What these public pages measure

This part is about the pages you are reading now, not about the app. The two are separate and deliberately so.

The landing page, the guides and these information pages use Google Analytics, to count visits and see which guides people actually read, and Microsoft Clarity, which records how a page is used so we can see where a layout is confusing. Both set cookies. Neither runs until you have been asked.

Asking is done by a consent manager (InMobi Choice, a Google certified one). Until it has a decision from you, analytics storage is set to denied and Clarity is not loaded at all, which means no request is made to it and no cookie is set. If you decline, that stays true. You can change your mind at any time using Privacy settings at the bottom of any page, and withdrawing is meant to be exactly as easy as agreeing.

The app does not do any of that

There is no analytics, no session recording and no third party script of any kind inside the app itself, and there will not be. The reason is simple enough to state: session recording would capture your customer's name, their address and your prices as you type them, and send that to somebody else. Everything else on this page would be a lie if we did that.

The same applies to the page a client opens to read and sign a document. It carries nothing that measures anything.

What we do know about app usage comes from the server, and only from the things that pass through it: how many accounts exist, how many documents were published as links, how many were opened, how many were signed. Not what is in them, and nothing at all about a document that was never published.

Who runs this

Plain Estimate is operated by BrightScale Labs Limited, registered in England and Wales. The registered particulars, including the ICO registration and an address for enquiries, are on the company page.

The usual caveat

This describes how the software behaves. It is not legal advice, and a business using Plain Estimate with real customers should have its own privacy notice reviewed.