privacy · updated 8 October 2026
Privacy, plainly.
Pencil is a booking page. To do that job it has to hold some personal data: the host's account, and the details people type in when they book. This page says what, why, and who else touches it. We don't sell data and we don't run ads.
What we keep
- Hosts: email address, name, handle, time zone, availability, event types, and billing status (plan, Stripe customer id). No passwords; you sign in with a link sent to your email.
- People who book: name, email, time zone, the time they picked, notes and answers to the host's questions. The host sees all of this; it is the point of the booking.
- Email records: which emails we sent for a booking and when, so reminders go out once.
- Abuse limits: request counters keyed by IP address or email, so sign-in and booking can't be hammered. They hold a count, nothing else.
Site statistics
Pencil counts page views and a few product events (such as “booking created” or “checkout started”) with its own first-party analytics, stored in our own data lake. It uses one first-party cookie, lake_id, a random visitor id. No third-party trackers, no advertising cookies, no cross-site profiles. Booking management links (/b/…) are never tracked, and sign-in tokens are scrubbed from anything recorded.
Statistics are on unless you opt out. Your choice is kept in the sk_consent cookie for 180 days; with it off, no statistics are collected from your browser, and our server checks it too.
Other cookies: sk_session keeps a host signed in (30 days, removed on sign-out), and the theme choice is kept in your browser's local storage.
Who processes it
- Cloudflare
- Hosting, database (D1) and request analytics. All Pencil data lives here.
- Resend
- Sends our email: sign-in links, confirmations with calendar invites, cancellations, reminders.
- Stripe
- Takes payment for paid plans. Card details go to Stripe directly; we only keep the customer and subscription ids.
How long
Account data stays until you delete your account. Bookings stay with the host's account so they can see their history; a host can cancel a booking at any time. Sign-in links expire after 15 minutes and work once. Billing records are kept as long as the law requires.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of your data, for it to be corrected, or for it to be deleted, and you can object to how we use it. If you booked with a host on Pencil, the host decides what happens to that booking; we'll pass your request on. Write to privacy@trypencil.app. If you're in the UK or EU you can also complain to your data protection authority (in the UK, the ICO).
Changes
If this changes in a way that matters, we'll email hosts before it takes effect. The date at the top is the latest version.