Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

This Privacy Policy explains how Free Website NI collects and uses personal information when you visit this website, submit our website request form, use our contact form, or otherwise get in touch. We are the data controller for the information described in this policy.

2. Information We Collect

We collect information you choose to give us. What we collect depends on where you are in the process:

Initial request form (homepage)

Kept deliberately short — at this stage we only ask for:

• Your business or organisation name.
• Your email address.

Contact form

• Your name, email address, and the content of your message.

Later, during onboarding (accepted requests only)

If we accept your initial request, we'll ask for further information needed to actually design and build your website. Depending on your project, this may include:

• Additional contact details (e.g. phone number).
• Business or organisation information (what you do, services, areas covered, and similar).
• Website content you provide (text, page content).
• Your logo.
• Photos and other images.
• Documents or files you send us.
• Testimonials you choose to share.
• Domain information, if you'd like help connecting a domain you own.
• Links to your social media profiles.
• Records of our communications with you during this process.

3. Technical Information & Cookies

This website does not currently use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies. Like most websites, our hosting infrastructure may automatically log basic technical information for security and reliability purposes — for example, IP address, browser type, and pages requested — through standard web server logs. We don't currently use this information to identify individual visitors.

This site loads web fonts from Google Fonts, script libraries from a third-party content delivery network, and — on the homepage request form — Google reCAPTCHA, to display and function correctly. Loading these resources means your browser connects directly to those third parties' servers, which may process your IP address and other technical information as part of delivering that content, subject to their own privacy policies. See Section 4 for reCAPTCHA specifically.

If we introduce analytics, advertising or non-essential cookies in future, we'll update this section and, where required, ask for your consent first.

4. reCAPTCHA

The homepage request form uses Google reCAPTCHA to help prevent automated/bot submissions. When you interact with the reCAPTCHA widget, Google collects technical and interaction information (which may include your IP address, browser and device information, and how you interact with the page) to assess whether the submission is likely to be genuine. This processing is carried out by Google, subject to Google's own Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

5. How We Use Your Information

• To assess and respond to your website request, including deciding whether we can take it on (see our Terms).
• To design, build and prepare your website, including using the content, links and preferences you've supplied.
• To communicate with you about your request, your website, or (if applicable) your Managed Website plan.
• To respond to general enquiries submitted through the contact form.
• To help protect the homepage request form against automated/bot submissions, using reCAPTCHA (see Section 4).
• To keep records for reasonable business, accounting and legal purposes.
• To maintain the security and proper functioning of our own website and systems.

6. Our Lawful Basis for Processing

Under UK GDPR, we rely on the following lawful bases, depending on the situation:

• Contract / steps prior to a contract — processing your request, building your website, and providing the Managed Website plan if you take it.
• Legitimate interests — responding to general enquiries, keeping records, maintaining the security of our systems, and protecting our forms against bots/abuse via reCAPTCHA, where this doesn't override your own rights and interests.
• Consent — for anything where we specifically ask for your consent (for example, if we ever introduce optional marketing communications or non-essential cookies). You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligation — where we need to keep or disclose information to comply with the law.

7. Who We Share Information With

We do not sell your personal information. We may share it with the following service providers and organisations where necessary to operate our website, provide our services or comply with the law:

• Our website hosting provider, which hosts the Free Website NI website and runs the server-side function used to process and validate website-request submissions.
• Our cloud database provider, which stores information submitted through the website-request form.
• Our content-delivery and security provider, which hosts customer websites and provides related infrastructure, security, DNS and content-delivery services. This provider may process technical information such as IP addresses and website requests when visitors access a customer website.
• Google, which provides reCAPTCHA to protect our forms against automated or fraudulent submissions and Google Fonts for website typography. See Sections 3 and 4 for more information.
• Domain registrars and DNS providers, where you ask us to help register, connect, configure or manage a domain for your website. Only the information reasonably necessary to provide that assistance will be shared.
• Professional advisers, such as accountants, solicitors or insurers, where sharing the information is reasonably necessary to obtain professional advice, maintain business records or protect our legal interests.
• Law enforcement agencies, courts, regulators or public authorities, where disclosure is required by law or is reasonably necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal rights.

These providers may process information on our behalf only where necessary to provide their services. We do not currently use personal information collected through this website for third-party advertising or unrelated marketing purposes.

If we connect the contact form, introduce website analytics, begin processing Managed Website plan payments or use additional service providers, we will update this Privacy Policy to explain which providers are involved and how they use personal information.

8. International Transfers

Where a service provider we use (see Section 7) stores or processes information outside the UK, we'll only use providers who offer appropriate safeguards required under UK GDPR (such as an adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses). Our hosting, database and content-delivery providers may process information outside the UK through their global infrastructure, subject to appropriate safeguards required under UK data-protection law.

9. How Long We Keep Information

• If your website request doesn't go ahead, we'll keep your information for a reasonable period afterwards in case you get back in touch, then delete or anonymise it.
• If we build and/or host a website for you, we keep the related information for as long as we provide the service to you, and for a reasonable period afterwards for record-keeping, accounting and legal purposes.
• General contact-form enquiries are kept for a reasonable period needed to deal with your query, then deleted or archived.

10. Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to protect the information you give us. No method of storage or transmission over the internet is 100% secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security. See also Section 9 of our Terms regarding security and backups for hosted websites.

11. Your Rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you (right of access).
• Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information (right to rectification).
• Ask us to delete your information in certain circumstances (right to erasure).
• Ask us to restrict how we use your information in certain circumstances.
• Object to processing based on legitimate interests, in certain circumstances.
• Ask for your information in a portable format, in certain circumstances (right to data portability).
• Withdraw consent at any time, where we're relying on consent.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in Section 15. We'll respond within the timeframes required by UK GDPR.

12. Complaints (ICO)

We'd appreciate the chance to address any concerns directly first — please contact us using the details below. You also have the right to complain to the UK's data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), at ico.org.uk or by calling 0303 123 1113.

13. Children's Information

Our Services are intended for business owners and representatives, not children. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, for example to reflect changes to our processes or the service providers we use. The version published on this page is the version that applies.

15. Contact Us

Questions about this policy, or requests relating to your personal information, can be sent to hello@freewebsiteni.com, or via our contact page.