How visitor, account, and review information is handled.

Effective August 21, 2026. This plain-language privacy policy explains how Commerce Stack Guide handles visitor, subscriber, vendor, account, and review information.

Information you provide

Commerce Stack Guide may collect information you choose to submit, such as your name, email address, company, software details, listing corrections, affiliate program details, and contact messages.

Email subscriptions

When you submit an email signup form on a public page, your email address is sent directly to MailerLite, which may also process your IP address, form and originating-page information, consent status, and email delivery or engagement activity needed to provide its service. MailerLite sends the confirmation, requested guide-delivery message, and later newsletter emails. The forms use double opt-in, so your subscription is not active and the guide email is not sent until you confirm by email. Any email engagement reporting enabled in MailerLite is used to understand whether requested messages are delivered and useful.

Review accounts and sign-in

Reviewers sign in with a one-time email link through the Commerce Stack Guide account process. The managed sign-in provider processes the email address and creates an account identifier and secure session needed to identify the reviewer account. Commerce Stack Guide does not receive or store a site password because no password is used. Signing in does not by itself prove a purchase or product use.

Review submissions

A review may include a private account name, public display choice, job or professional context, company-size and industry bands, usage context, ratings, written experience, declarations, disclosed relationships, and invitation source. Drafts and submitted versions are kept private unless an approved review is deliberately published through the moderation process.

Public and private review information

A published review may show the reviewer's chosen public name or an anonymous label, selected professional and usage context, ratings, review text, relationship and invitation disclosures, and publication dates. Account email, private identity information, moderation notes, security signals, and internal investigation information are not part of the public review.

Moderation, safety, and fraud prevention

Review information is used to verify account control, moderate submissions, prevent duplicate or fraudulent activity, respond to reports, maintain accurate rating calculations, protect reviewers and the site, and meet legal obligations. Security controls may create a short-lived one-way network-abuse signal; routine records are designed not to retain raw IP addresses, authentication links, passwords, tokens, or review text in security logs.

Analytics

The site uses Google Analytics 4 to understand traffic and improve the directory. Google Analytics may use first-party cookies and process page URLs, referral sources, browser and operating-system information, device type, interactions, identifiers, and approximate location. Enhanced measurement records page views, scroll depth, outbound clicks, site-search activity, file downloads, embedded-video engagement, and form starts or submissions when those interactions occur. Commerce Stack Guide also records public content views, directory search activity such as query length, word count, category filters and result counts, affiliate, vendor, and free-guide link clicks, destination hostnames, newsletter-form submissions, and successful preparation of a vendor-submission email draft. Analytics events identify public content by type and slug and do not include directory search text, the email address, or other text entered into forms. Event-level and user-level Analytics data are retained for 14 months without resetting the user-retention period when a visitor returns; Google notes that most standard aggregated reporting is not affected by this setting. Google Signals and advertising-personalization signals are disabled in the site tag. Commerce Stack Guide does not intentionally send private review content, ratings, reviewer identifiers, or other sensitive form values through this analytics integration.

Affiliate links

Some outbound vendor links may be affiliate links, including links in downloadable buyer guides. Articles and profile pages use the site's affiliate disclosure treatment, while downloadable guides include a general disclosure within the document. The presence of partner-network technology does not mean that every vendor link is monetized or that Commerce Stack Guide has a relationship with every listed vendor.

Impact partner tracking

The site loads an owner-supplied Impact script for media-property verification and affiliate attribution. The script requests code from utt.impactcdn.com, can transform eligible outbound links, and records page impressions. If you follow an Impact-enabled link, Impact and the destination advertiser may process page, browser or device, network, click, and conversion information and may use cookies or similar technologies under their own privacy practices. Commerce Stack Guide does not send form field values through this script.

How information is used

Information may be used to respond to inquiries, review vendor submissions, improve directory content, measure site performance, send requested updates, and maintain accurate merchant-facing information.

Service providers

OpenAI Sites hosts the site and provides the review database. Supabase manages reviewer sign-in and account sessions. Resend processes the minimum recipient and delivery information needed to send one-time sign-in links and, if enabled, review-status messages. Google provides website analytics. MailerLite processes newsletter subscriptions, confirmation, automation, and delivery. Impact provides affiliate-attribution technology. These providers process information under their own terms and privacy practices as necessary to provide their services.

Review retention

The current review design normally expires an unsubmitted draft after 30 days. Withdrawn public content is scheduled for removal or irreversible redaction after 30 days, rejected review content after 180 days, ordinary security events after 90 days, and transactional-email metadata after 90 days. Longer restricted periods may apply to moderation actions, closed reports, serious security incidents, consent records, or a narrowly documented legal or security hold. Minimal audit or deletion records may remain after public content and private profile information are removed.

No sale of contact information

Commerce Stack Guide should not sell personal contact information. Vendor submissions may be edited, summarized, or published only where relevant to directory content and review processes.

Your choices

You can decline a newsletter subscription by not completing confirmation or unsubscribe through any newsletter. A signed-in reviewer may edit or abandon a draft before submission and may view the status of reviews connected to that account. After submission, a review is final and the account does not provide self-service editing, deletion, withdrawal, or export. Use the contact page for a legally required access, correction, deletion, or other privacy request; Commerce Stack Guide may require a reasonable identity check and may retain limited records where legally or operationally necessary.

Policy updates

This policy may change as the directory adds reviews, vendor workflows, sponsorships, email features, or other tools. Updates should remain written in clear, practical language.