This is the current published policy. See all policies in our Legal Center.
Adaptive Web Hosting — Privacy & Cookie Policy
Effective Date: January 1, 2025
Last Updated: November 7, 2026
> Changes on November 7, 2026: this policy now names the analytics, advertising and other services our website uses, explains how our AI chat assistant and contact form use OpenAI, says how long we keep each kind of data, and corrects what we said about "sharing" under California law.
This policy explains what personal information Adaptive Web Hosting ("Adaptive," "we," "us," or "our") collects when you visit adaptivewebhosting.com, use our client area at cp.adaptivewebhosting.com, or use our hosting, email and domain services (together, the "Services"); how we use it; who receives it; how long we keep it; and the choices you have.
1. Who We Are
Adaptive Web Hosting, a Massachusetts company, is the controller of the personal information described in this policy. To reach us, open a support ticket from your client area at cp.adaptivewebhosting.com, or email [email protected].
For the data you store on our servers as part of your own websites, applications, databases and mailboxes, you are the controller and we act as your processor under our Data Processing Agreement.
2. Information We Collect
Information you give us
- Account and contact details: name, email address, postal address, phone number, company, username and password.
- Billing details: billing address, tax ID and payment details. Card and PayPal payments are processed by our payment providers; we do not store full card numbers.
- Messages: support tickets, emails, contact-form messages, and conversations with the chat assistant on our website.
- Domain registration details you provide for domains you register or transfer through us.
Information collected automatically
- Website visits: pages viewed, the page that referred you, time on page, browser, device and operating system, and an identifier for your browser kept in your browser's storage.
- IP address and approximate location: we record the IP address of each visit and look it up with an IP-location service to estimate city, region, country and network.
- Server and security logs: requests to our website and client area, errors and security events.
- Cookies and similar technologies, described in Section 5.
Information from others
- Fraud screening: when you place an order, our checkout checks the order (IP address, email address and billing details) with FraudLabs Pro to prevent fraud.
- Payment providers: whether a payment succeeded and limited card details, such as the card type and last four digits.
3. How We Use It
- To provide the Services: accounts, billing, renewals, support and domain registration.
- To keep the Services secure: preventing fraud and abuse and blocking attacks.
- To understand and improve our website: which pages people visit and how they use them.
- To measure and run our advertising: whether our ads lead to sign-ups and purchases, and showing our ads to people who visited our site, with your consent where the law requires it.
- To communicate with you: service, billing and security notices, and marketing emails, which you can unsubscribe from at any time.
- To meet legal obligations: tax, accounting and lawful requests from authorities.
4. Legal Bases (EEA, UK and Switzerland)
- Contract: to provide the Services you ordered.
- Legitimate interests: security, fraud prevention, answering messages sent through our contact form, and improving our website, balanced against your rights.
- Consent: analytics and advertising cookies, session recordings and marketing emails where consent is required. You can withdraw consent at any time.
- Legal obligation: tax, accounting and lawful requests.
5. Cookies, Analytics and Advertising
Our website loads the following tools through Google Tag Manager. Each may set cookies or similar identifiers in your browser.
- Google Analytics (Google LLC) measures how visitors use the site: pages viewed, time on page, approximate location and device.
- Google Ads (Google LLC) measures whether our ads lead to sign-ups and purchases, and lets us show our ads to people who visited our site (remarketing). You can manage ad personalisation at adssettings.google.com.
- Microsoft Advertising (Microsoft Corporation) measures whether our Bing ads lead to sign-ups and purchases, and supports remarketing. You can manage ad personalisation at account.microsoft.com/privacy/ad-settings.
- Microsoft Clarity (Microsoft Corporation) records how visitors move, click and scroll on our pages (session recordings and heatmaps) so we can improve them.
Your choices. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland these tools wait for your consent: none of them sets cookies until you choose "Accept All". Elsewhere they load by default, and you can turn them off at any time with "Reject All" in Cookie Preferences at the bottom of every page. We treat a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser as "Reject All". Strictly necessary cookies, which keep you signed in and protect forms and checkout, are always on. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings.
6. AI Chat Assistant and Contact Form
Chat assistant. The chat assistant on our website answers questions using our published pages. What you type is sent to OpenAI, which generates the replies. We keep chat transcripts so we can follow up when you ask us to and to review and improve the assistant's answers. Please do not enter passwords, card numbers or other sensitive information in the chat.
Contact form. When you send a message through the contact form on our website, your name, email address, company, subject and message are sent to OpenAI, which sorts the message by topic and urgency and drafts a reply. If your email address matches an account in our client area, OpenAI also receives a short summary of that account: whether you are a client, the account's status, how many active services it has, and whether two-factor authentication is on for your login. No passwords, payment details or other account records are sent. Each draft is checked automatically before it is sent, for example that any price or link in it matches our website. A draft that fails a check is held for our team, and you receive a short acknowledgement instead. Our team receives a copy of every message and of any reply. Please do not include passwords, card numbers or other sensitive information in your message.
7. Who Receives Your Information
We do not sell personal information for money. We share it with service providers that work for us, and where the law requires:
- Hosting and infrastructure: Amazon Web Services, in the United States.
- Website delivery and security: Cloudflare, which carries traffic to our website and protects our forms against abuse.
- Payments and fraud screening: Stripe, PayPal and FraudLabs Pro.
- Domain registration: our registrar partners, ResellerClub (PublicDomainRegistry) and eNom, and the domain registries, as ICANN rules require.
- Email: the providers that deliver our emails and host our business email.
- Analytics and advertising: Google and Microsoft (Section 5).
- AI chat and contact-form replies: OpenAI (Section 6).
- IP location: an IP-location service that estimates location from an IP address.
- Others when required: professional advisers, authorities and courts when the law requires it, and a buyer of our business if it is sold, who must honour this policy.
California residents. When you allow advertising cookies, Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising receive information about your visit so we can show you our ads on other sites. California law may treat this as "sharing" personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. To opt out, choose "Reject All" in Cookie Preferences or turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser. We do not sell personal information for money, and we do not use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you.
8. International Transfers
We are based in the United States, and our servers are in the United States (AWS, Northern Virginia). If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, your information is transferred to the United States. Where required, these transfers rely on safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
9. How Long We Keep It
- Account, service and support records: while your account is open and for up to 2 years after it closes.
- Contact-form messages from people without an account in our client area: 1 year, then deleted automatically. Messages from account holders are kept with their support records.
- Billing and tax records: up to 7 years.
- Website visit records, including IP addresses: 180 days.
- Chat transcripts: up to 1 year after the conversation ends.
- Server and security logs: 90 days.
- IP address and browser details from our website offer pop-up: 1 year.
10. Security
We protect information with encryption in transit (TLS), role-based access controls, monitoring and backups. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.
11. Your Rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct or delete your personal information, to receive a copy of it, to object to or restrict how we use it, to withdraw consent, and to opt out of targeted advertising. To make a request, open a support ticket from your client area at cp.adaptivewebhosting.com or email [email protected]. We will verify your identity before acting on a request, and we will not treat you differently for exercising your rights. If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, you can also complain to your data protection authority.
12. Children
Our Services are not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.
13. Changes to This Policy
We update this policy when our practices change. The "Last Updated" date above shows the latest version. For material changes, we notify account holders by email or with a notice on our website at least 15 days before the change takes effect.
14. Contact
The fastest way to reach us is to open a support ticket from your client area at cp.adaptivewebhosting.com. If you cannot log in, email [email protected].
