Privacy Policy

1. Affiliate accounts, referrals and manual payments

Affiliate accounts store a verified email address, name, hashed password, session and one-use security-token hashes, notification preferences, program memberships and recorded terms acceptance. Program records include referral links and clicks, normalized Shopify app/shop/install identifiers, verification evidence, collected transactions, commissions and their adjustments.

Manual payment records include requests, encrypted recipient instructions and frozen payment details, private invoice or receipt files, external payment references, receipt confirmations and dispute decisions. HeyCrust records these facts; transfers take place outside the Service. Only the partner and workspace identities with current permission can access the relevant private payment records. Public listings and marketplace moderation do not expose bank details or invoice files.

Closing an affiliate account revokes sessions and security tokens, archives memberships, disables promotion and replaces the visible name and email. Financial and audit identifiers remain for outstanding obligations and disputes. An encrypted verified email and its lookup hash are retained for one-use recovery of that account's financial access. Recovered access permits statements, payment requests, recipient updates, receipt confirmation and disputes; it does not reactivate promotion.

The worker prunes removable click/export payloads and expired saved import responses after the configured period (90 days by default). Pending installation proofs and evidence held for an open claim or payment dispute are retained. Normalized transaction, commission, payment and audit history remains separate. Merchant contact redaction clears removable affiliate contact/evidence payloads while preserving accounting identifiers. Affiliate attribution does not store raw IP addresses.

Configured integrations may send listing-export queries to Google BigQuery, account and program email through Resend or the workspace's verified SMTP provider, and notifications to explicitly configured Slack/webhook destinations. Enabled partner Flow drafting uses Google Gemini with a limited partner/program context; recipient instructions and invoice bytes are excluded. Render hosts the application and database. A configured integration requires its credentials and access settings; configuration is not proof of a completed delivery.

2. Who we are

Crust (“Crust,” the “Service”) is a revenue-analytics and churn-intelligence product for Shopify app developers, operated by:

In this Privacy Policy, “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to NextGen Software LLC. “You” refers to the person or company that creates a Crust account (our “Customer”), and, where relevant, to visitors of our website at heycrust.com.

This Policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we use and share it, and the rights and choices you have. Crust is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Shopify Inc.

3. Our two roles: controller and processor

Data-protection laws such as the EU/UK GDPR distinguish between a “controller” (who decides why and how data is processed) and a “processor” (who processes data on a controller's instructions). Crust acts in both capacities:

• As a controller for the information relating to our Customers and their staff — for example, account credentials, billing plan status, Partner API tokens you connect, and analytics about how you use the Service.
• As a processor for the merchant and shop information that flows into Crust from your Shopify Partner organization and from your app's identify calls (for example, a merchant's store name, owner name, email, or country). For that data, you are the controller and Crust processes it only to provide the Service to you, in accordance with our Terms and, where applicable, a Data Processing Addendum (“DPA”).

Where we act as a processor, the controller (our Customer) is responsible for having a lawful basis to collect and share that merchant data with us and for responding to the relevant individuals' requests. We assist our Customers in meeting those obligations, including through the deletion tools described in Section 14.

4. Information we collect

a. Information you provide to us

• Account information — your name, company name, email address, and a hashed password.
• Shopify Partner credentials — your Partner organization ID and a Partner API access token, which we store encrypted at rest and use on a read-only basis. You can revoke this token in your Shopify Partner Dashboard at any time.
• Configuration — settings such as an optional Slack webhook URL for alerts and digests, and flow definitions with their message history.
• Communications — the content of messages you send us (for example, support emails to hello@heycrust.com).

b. Information we receive from the Shopify Partner API

When you connect your Partner token, we retrieve historical and ongoing data from Shopify's Partner API on your behalf, including: app install and uninstall events; subscription and one-time charge events; trial events; payout and transaction records; the shop domain and shop name associated with each event; and the free-text reason a merchant gives in Shopify's uninstall (exit) survey.

c. Merchant contact information (the identify API)

If you integrate our identify API, your application sends us contact details it obtains from the merchant's Shopify shop resource, which may include: the store's myshopify domain, owner name, email address, phone number, country, and Shopify plan. As explained in Section 2, we process this information as your processor.

d. Information collected automatically

• Usage and device data — pages viewed, actions taken, approximate location derived from IP address, browser type, device, and referring URLs.
• Cookies and similar technologies — see Section 6. We use Google Analytics and the Meta (Facebook) Pixel on our website and app.

e. Information processed by AI features

To classify churn reasons and draft win-back emails, we send certain data — such as exit-survey text and non-identifying context like a plan name, tenure, and stated reason — to our AI subprocessor, Google (Gemini). See Section 7.

5. How we use your information

We use personal information to:

• Provide, operate, and maintain the Service, including importing and deriving your metrics;
• Classify uninstall reasons and generate win-back email drafts using AI (Section 7);
• Send transactional messages (account verification, password resets, security notices) and, if enabled, Slack alerts and weekly digests;
• Authenticate you, secure the Service, prevent fraud and abuse, and enforce our Terms;
• Understand and improve how the Service is used, and develop new features;
• Measure and improve our marketing, including via Google Analytics and Meta (Section 6);
• Respond to your requests and provide support; and
• Comply with legal obligations and exercise or defend legal claims.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use merchant contact data you send us for our own purposes, for advertising, or to train AI models.

6. Legal bases for processing (EEA/UK)

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we process your personal information under the following legal bases:

• Performance of a contract — to provide the Service you signed up for and administer your account.
• Legitimate interests — to secure, analyze, and improve the Service and our marketing, where those interests are not overridden by your rights.
• Consent — for non-essential cookies and analytics/advertising technologies (Section 6), and for any optional communications. You may withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligation — where we must process information to comply with applicable law.

7. Cookies and tracking technologies

We and our providers use cookies, pixels, and similar technologies to run the Service, remember your session, and understand and improve engagement. We use:

• Strictly necessary cookies — required to authenticate you and keep you logged in. These cannot be switched off.
• Google Analytics — provided by Google, to measure website and product usage (pages, sessions, aggregate behavior). Google may set cookies and process usage and device data as described in its own policies.
• Meta Pixel — provided by Meta Platforms, to measure the performance of our advertising and understand how visitors arrive at our site. The pixel may set cookies and share event data with Meta.

Where required by law, we request your consent before setting non-essential cookies, and you can change your choices at any time. You can also control cookies through your browser settings, opt out of Google Analytics using Google's opt-out browser add-on, and manage ad preferences in your Meta account. Blocking cookies may affect how parts of the site work.

8. Artificial intelligence

Crust uses Google's Gemini models to (a) translate and classify free-text uninstall reasons into a set of standard categories, and (b) draft suggested win-back emails. To do this, we send the relevant text and limited context (such as a plan name, tenure, and stated reason) to Google as our subprocessor.

• We instruct our AI provider not to use your data to train its models, consistent with its enterprise API terms.
• AI-generated win-back drafts are suggestions. They are shown to you for review and are not sent to any merchant unless you choose to send them.
• We do not use AI to make decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about any individual without human involvement.

9. How we share information

We do not sell personal information. We share it only as described here:

Service providers (subprocessors)

We use trusted vendors to run the Service. They may process personal information only on our instructions:

An up-to-date list of subprocessors is available on request at hello@heycrust.com.

Other disclosures

• Legal and safety — to comply with law, respond to lawful requests, or protect the rights, property, and safety of Crust, our Customers, or others.
• Business transfers — in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, subject to this Policy.
• With your direction — for example, when you connect Crust to Slack or use the MCP integration to expose your metrics to an AI client you control.

10. International data transfers

We are based in the United States and use service providers located in the United States and other countries. If you access the Service from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States and other jurisdictions that may have different data-protection laws than your own. Where we transfer personal information from the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK Addendum) together with additional measures where needed.

11. Data retention

We keep personal information for as long as your account is active and as needed to provide the Service. A core purpose of Crust is to preserve analytics history that Shopify itself only retains for a limited window, so we retain derived events and metrics for the life of your account.

• You may delete individual merchant contact records at any time, including via the shop/redact deletion endpoint (Section 14).
• When you close your account, we delete or de-identify your personal information within a commercially reasonable period, except where we must retain it to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, or enforce our agreements.
• Aggregated or de-identified data that cannot reasonably be used to identify you may be retained.

12. Data security

We use technical and organizational measures designed to protect personal information, including encryption of sensitive credentials (such as Partner API tokens) at rest, encryption in transit (TLS), read-only access to Shopify data, access controls, and hashed passwords. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. You are responsible for keeping your account credentials and API keys confidential.

13. Your rights (GDPR and similar laws)

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you and receive a copy;
• Correct inaccurate or incomplete information;
• Delete your personal information (“right to be forgotten”);
• Restrict or object to certain processing, including processing based on legitimate interests;
• Data portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format (Crust also offers CSV export throughout the product);
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent; and
• Lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.

To exercise these rights, email hello@heycrust.com. We will respond within the timeframes required by applicable law. If your request concerns merchant data we process on a Customer's behalf, we will refer you to, or act on the instructions of, that Customer (the controller).

14. U.S. state privacy rights

If you are a resident of California or another U.S. state with a comprehensive privacy law, you may have the right to know, access, correct, and delete your personal information, and to appeal a denied request. You also have the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information and of targeted advertising.

We do not sell your personal information for money. Our use of advertising technologies such as the Meta Pixel may be considered “sharing” for cross-context behavioral advertising under some laws; where applicable, you can opt out through our cookie controls or by emailing hello@heycrust.com. We do not discriminate against you for exercising your rights.

15. Merchant data & data-subject requests

Some information in Crust relates to the merchants of our Customers, not to our Customers themselves. If you are a merchant and wish to exercise your rights over your data, please contact the app developer (our Customer) who collected it — they are the controller of that information.

To help Customers meet GDPR and Shopify obligations, Crust provides a deletion endpoint that a Customer's app can call from its shop/redact webhook handler to erase the corresponding merchant contact record from Crust. We process such deletion instructions promptly.

16. Children's privacy

Crust is a business tool intended for use by companies and their staff. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

17. Third-party services and links

The Service integrates with and links to third-party services (such as Shopify, Google, Meta, and Slack). Their handling of your information is governed by their own privacy policies, not this one. We encourage you to review them. We are not responsible for the practices of third parties.

18. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, notify you by email or in-product. Your continued use of the Service after an update means you accept the revised Policy.

19. How to contact us

For any question about this Policy or your personal information, or to exercise your rights, contact: