Privacy Policy

Effective Date: April 4, 2026

Your privacy is critically important to us. At xcelera, we have a few fundamental principles:

We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information is stored by xcelera, and how it can be permanently deleted.
We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.
We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

Scope of This Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use:

The xcelera web application: xcelera.dev (and any subdomains);
Our Services: Any other performance monitoring tools, reports, or features we provide through our website or application (for example, automated Lighthouse testing).

Throughout this Privacy Policy, we’ll refer to our website, application, and other products and services collectively as "Services." If you have questions about how your information is handled, or if you would like to know more about the entity responsible for your data, please see the "Data Controller" section below.

Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so - for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.

We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let's go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It's probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:

Basic Account Information: To set up your xcelera account, we require an email address and a password. You may optionally provide a name or alias, but this is not required to use the service.
Payment and Billing Information: If you subscribe to a paid plan, you will provide additional information to our third-party payment processor, such as your name, billing address, and credit card information. We maintain a record of your subscription status and purchase history, but we do not store your full credit card details on our servers.
Audit and Configuration Data: We collect the information you provide to power our performance tools. This includes the URLs you wish to audit, any specific page definitions or configurations you create, and the performance goals you set for your pages.
Authentication Data: To perform audits on restricted or "logged-in" areas of your website, you may provide us with temporary authentication identifiers, such as session cookies or header values. We use this information solely to execute the specific tests you request. These values are handled as sensitive data, encrypted while in our system, and are used within ephemeral environments that are destroyed after the test is complete.
Communications with Us: If you reach out for support, provide feedback, or respond to a survey, we store a copy of that communication so we can assist you and improve xcelera. This includes emails or any support forms you submit through the application.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

Log Information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers and servers typically make available. This includes your browser type, IP address, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, and operating system. We collect this when you use our Services - for example, when you configure a new page or trigger a performance audit.
Transactional Information: When you subscribe to a paid plan, we collect information about the transaction, such as the plan type, purchase price, and the date of the transaction.
Usage Information: We collect information about how you interact with xcelera to help us improve the product. This includes actions taken within your dashboard (e.g., adding a URL to track, modifying audit configurations, or viewing a report). We also collect technical data about your device, such as screen size and browser version, to ensure the application renders correctly.
Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We use this to understand the geographic distribution of our users and to help identify potential unauthorized access to your account. We do not collect precise GPS location data.
Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor's computer, and that the visitor's browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. We use cookies to keep you logged in to your account and to remember your preferences (such as your preferred performance metrics or dashboard layout). If you do not wish to have cookies placed on your computer, you should set your browser to refuse cookies before using xcelera, with the drawback that certain features of the service may not function properly without them.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information about you from other sources. For example:

Third Party Login: If you create or log in to your xcelera account through another service (like Google or Github) we'll receive associated login information (e.g. a connection token, your username, your email address)
Payment Processor Information: If you subscribe to a paid plan, we receive information from our payment processor (Stripe) relating to your transaction, such as your billing email, the last four digits of your card, and your subscription status. We use this to manage your account and provide you with access to our premium features.

The information we receive depends on which services you use or authorize and what options are available.

How and Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you for the purposes listed below:

To provide our Services. For example, to set up and maintain your account, execute performance audits on your behalf, process subscription payments, and provide customer support.
To ensure quality and improve xcelera. For example, by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our dashboard so we can fix bugs, create new performance visualization features, and make the tool easier to use.
To protect our Services and our users. For example, by detecting security incidents, protecting against malicious or fraudulent activity, and complying with our legal obligations.
To fix and debug problems. For example, by monitoring application logs to repair and prevent performance regressions or service interruptions.
To communicate with you. For example, by emailing you to respond to a support request, sharing tips on improving your Lighthouse scores, or keeping you up to date on new features. You can opt out of marketing communications at any time, though we will still send you essential account-related updates.
To customize your experience. For example, to remember your dashboard preferences or provide relevant notifications regarding your saved performance page definitions.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

If you are located in the European Union or the United Kingdom, our legal grounds for processing information about you under data protection laws are as follows:

Contractual Necessity: The use is necessary to fulfill our commitments to you under our Terms of Service or other agreements, or is necessary to administer your account - for example, to enable the xcelera dashboard on your device, execute the performance audits you request, or process payments for a subscription plan.
Legal Obligation: The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation, such as maintaining financial records for tax purposes or responding to a valid legal request.
Vital Interests: In rare cases, the use may be necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person (e.g., in a security emergency).
Legitimate Interests: We have a legitimate interest in using your information to:
- Provide, update, and safeguard our Services;
- Improve xcelera so that we can offer a better user experience;
- Communicate with you regarding your account or the service;
- Monitor and prevent technical problems or security issues;
- Personalize your experience (such as remembering your dashboard layout).
Consent: You have given us your consent - for example, before you opt-in to specific marketing communications. You may withdraw this consent at any time.

Cookies

We use a small number of cookies to make xcelera work. A cookie is a small text file stored on your device:

Strictly Necessary Cookies: These are essential for you to browse the website and use its features. For example, we use a session cookie to keep you logged in and Sentry cookies to help us identify and fix technical errors (debugging).
Functional Cookies: These allow the website to remember choices you make, such as your preferred theme (light/dark mode), timezone, or color scheme, to provide a more personalized experience.

Do we use tracking or advertising cookies?

No. We do not use any cookies for third-party advertising, cross-site tracking, or marketing analytics. Because we only use cookies that are necessary for the service to function or to remember your preferences, we do not display a cookie consent banner.

How to control cookies:

You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of xcelera may not function properly if you do.

We share information about you in limited circumstances, and only with appropriate safeguards on your privacy. These are described below:

Third-Party Vendors: We may share information about you with vendors who need that information to provide their services to us or to you. This includes:
- Payment Processors: Such as Stripe, which processes your credit card and billing information.
- Technical Operations & Debugging: Such as Sentry, which helps us identify and fix software errors.
- Cloud Infrastructure: Services that provide the hosting and database infrastructure necessary to run xcelera.
- Communication Tools: Services that allow us to send you account-related emails or support responses. We only share information with third-party vendors who provide documented privacy and security commitments that align with our standards (such as through a Data Processing Agreement).
Legal and Regulatory Requirements: We may disclose information about you if we are legally required to do so, such as in response to a court order, valid legal request, or to comply with applicable laws.
To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of xcelera, third parties, or the public at large.
Business Transfers: In the event of a merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, user information would likely be one of the assets transferred. If this happens, this Privacy Policy will continue to apply to your information.
With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction.
Aggregated or De-identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For example, we may publish aggregate statistics about the average performance scores across all sites audited by xcelera.

How Long We Keep Information

We generally discard information about you when it's no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it - described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information - and we're not legally required to keep it.

For example, we keep web server logs that record information about a visitor to the xcelera website, like the visitor's IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyze traffic and investigate issues if something goes wrong on one of our websites.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

To enhance the security of your account, we encourage you to enable our advanced security settings, like Multi Factor Authentication (MFA).

Our Services are not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13 (or 16 in certain jurisdictions). If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so we can delete it.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services - for example, subscription plans - may not be accessible.
Opt out of marketing communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional communications from us. Just follow the instructions in those communications or let us know. If you opt out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
Set your browser to reject cookies: At this time, xcelera does not respond to "do not track" signals. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies. Please note that xcelera requires cookies for core functionality, such as user authentication. If you choose to reject cookies, you will not be able to log in to your account or access your performance reports.
Close your account: While we’d be sad to see you go, you can close your account if you no longer want to use our Services. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account - for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including some US states and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the "GDPR"), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, you have the following rights:

Access & Portability: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you in a machine-readable format.
Correction & Deletion: Request that we update inaccurate data or delete your personal information entirely.
Object & Limit: Object to our processing of your data or request that we limit how we use it.
Complaints: You have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

US Privacy Laws

Laws in some US states require us to provide residents with additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. You’ll find that information in this section (if you are a California resident, please note that this is the Notice at Collection we are required to provide you under California law). We collect the following categories of personal information:

Identifiers: Such as your name, email address, and IP address.
Commercial Information: Your billing information and subscription history.
Network Activity: Information on how you interact with xcelera (e.g., performance audit history).
Professional Information: Your company or team name, if provided.

We collect personal information from the sources and for the business and commercial purposes described in the How and Why We Use Information section. And we share this information with the categories of third parties described in the Sharing Information section. We retain this information for the length of time described in our How Long We Keep Information section.

We do not sell your personal information. Because we do not sell your data or use third-party tracking for advertising, we do not provide a “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link. We also respect the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal. We do not disclose personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

Exercising Your Rights

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data directly within your xcelera account settings. If you cannot find what you need, please contact us on our support form.

To protect your security, we must verify your identity before fulfilling a request. If you are an account holder, you must contact us from the email address associated with your account.

Appeals

If we deny a request to exercise one of these rights (for example, if we cannot verify your identity or are legally required to keep certain data), we will notify you in writing. You may appeal our decision by responding to our denial email. If your appeal is denied and you are in a US state with applicable privacy laws, you may refer the matter to your state’s Attorney General.

Controllers and Responsible Companies

Zac Smith (trading as xcelera) is the controller of your personal information, which means we are the entity responsible for processing that information. xcelera is owned and operated in New Zealand. For the purposes of global data protection laws (including the GDPR and the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020), we are the primary organization responsible for the collection and use of your data.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please contact us through our web form. This is the fastest way to get a response to your inquiry.

For the purposes of the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, the Privacy Officer for xcelera can be reached at https://xcelera.dev/support

Other Things You Should Know (Keep Reading!)

Transferring Information

Because xcelera’s services are offered worldwide, the information about you that we process may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside your home country - including in New Zealand and the United States (where our hosting and payment providers are located).

When we transfer information about you to entities outside the European Economic Area (EEA) or your home jurisdiction, we take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable law. These measures include using European Commission-approved standard contractual arrangements with third-party data processors. You can ask us for more information about these safeguards via our contact form.

Third-Party Software and Services

If you choose to use third-party services integrated with xcelera - such as Stripe for payment processing or any third-party plugins you choose to enable - please keep in mind that interacting with them means providing information about yourself to those third parties. For example, Stripe handles your billing data in accordance with their own privacy policy. We don't own or control these third parties, and they have their own rules about information collection and use, which we encourage you to review before using their services.

Attribution

Portions of these Terms of Service are based on the Legalmattic terms by Automattic, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, xcelera may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. xcelera encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (like sending you a notification through email). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.

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