Who we are
Ellsby is a calendar and coordination service for parents raising children across two homes. It's made by the Ellsby team (legal entity to be named here before release). You can reach us at hello@ellsby.com.
When this policy says "you," it means a parent or guardian using Ellsby. When it says "your family," it means the two parents who share an Ellsby family and the children they've entered.
What we collect
Almost everything in Ellsby is information you or your co-parent type in or upload on purpose. Here's the full list.
Your account
- Email address and name. If you sign in with Apple, Apple may give us a private relay address instead of your real one; that's fine with us.
- A sign-in identifier from our authentication provider so we can tell it's you.
Your family, entered by parents
- Your co-parent's name and email, so we can send them an invite.
- Your children's first names and dates of birth, and the schools they attend.
- Your custody schedule: the pattern, handoff times and places, holiday arrangements, and approved one-off changes.
- School calendars: days off and minimum days, per school.
- Events (title, time, place, which kids, notes) and requests between parents to change the schedule or an event, along with each parent's answer.
- Expenses and settlements: amounts, categories, who paid, who owes, and receipts if you attach them.
- Kid records: things like insurance details, doctors, school contacts, medical notes, and any files you attach.
Photos, documents, and pasted text
When you use the assistant, you may upload a photo (a school calendar, a flyer, a screenshot) or paste text (a message from a coach, an email). We keep the extracted result you confirm. See AI processing for what happens to the photo or text itself.
Your device
- A push notification token if you turn notifications on, so Apple can deliver them to your phone.
- App version, device model, and OS version, plus crash and error diagnostics when something goes wrong.
How you use Ellsby
We collect product analytics about adults' use of the app: which screens and features are used and when. See Analytics for exactly what is and isn't included.
Support
If you write to us or use "Help & Feedback" in the app, we keep the message and your contact details so we can respond.
How we use it
- To run the service. Working out who has the kids on a given day, showing the same calendar to both parents, sending notifications when something changes for you, keeping the expense ledger balanced, generating your calendar subscription feed.
- To read photos and text you give the assistant and turn them into proposed events or school days for you to confirm.
- To keep the service safe: preventing abuse, debugging problems, and making sure only your family can see your family's information.
- To improve Ellsby, using aggregate analytics about how features are used.
- To answer you when you contact us.
We do not sell personal information. We do not show advertising. We do not use your family's information to build profiles for anyone else.
AI processing
Ellsby's assistant uses a large language model from a third-party AI provider. When you paste text, upload a photo, or ask the assistant something, we send that content to our AI provider, along with limited context it needs to be useful: your children's first names, your schools, the outline of your custody schedule, and today's date. The provider returns what it found, and we show it to you as a proposal. Nothing is saved to your calendar until you confirm it.
- Our agreement with our AI provider does not allow them to use your content to train their models.
- We keep a log of assistant requests and results for up to 90 days so we can debug problems and improve accuracy. After that it's deleted automatically.
- We treat pasted text and photos as data to read, not instructions to follow. The assistant can only act within your own family's account.
Analytics
We use a third-party product-analytics service to understand how Ellsby is used. This is about adult accounts only. Specifically:
- We send events like "event created," "request approved," or "assistant used," with your account identifier, email, and name, so we can understand usage over time and follow up on problems.
- We send counts, such as how many kids and parents are in a family, to see how usage differs by household size.
- We do not send children's names or dates of birth, event titles or notes, messages, photos, records, or expense details to the analytics service.
- We do not use session replay or screen recording.
Who we share it with
The other parent in your family
This is the point of Ellsby, so it's worth being explicit: everything in your family's space is visible to both parents. The schedule, events, requests and answers, school days, expenses, kid records, and the history of who changed what. There is no private area within a family. If you add something to Ellsby, assume your co-parent can see it.
Service providers
We use a small number of companies to run Ellsby. They process data on our behalf and are not allowed to use it for their own purposes:
| Purpose | What they handle |
|---|---|
| Hosting, database, authentication, file storage | All service data, encrypted at rest |
| Application hosting | Runs the Ellsby server |
| Push notifications (Apple) | Your device token and the notification text |
| Email delivery | Your email address and the email content (invites, notifications) |
| AI provider | Content you give the assistant, as described above |
| Product analytics | Adult usage events, as described above |
Legal requirements
We'll disclose information if we're legally required to, for example by a valid court order. Where we're allowed to, we'll tell you first.
Nobody else
We don't sell or rent personal information, and we don't share it with advertisers or data brokers.
Storage and security
- All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit (TLS).
- Data is encrypted at rest by our hosting provider.
- Each family's data is isolated per family at the database level (row-level security). A request from one family cannot read another family's rows, even if our application code had a bug.
- Uploaded files are stored in private storage and reached only through short-lived signed links.
- Sensitive record contents (titles, notes, filenames) are kept out of our internal activity logs.
- Access to production systems is limited to the people who operate Ellsby, for support and debugging.
Our servers are in the United States. If you use Ellsby from elsewhere, your information is transferred to and processed there.
Retention and deletion
We keep your information for as long as your account is active. During the beta, deletion is a manual process:
- To delete your account, email hello@ellsby.com from the address on your account. We'll confirm it's you, then delete your account and personal information within 30 days.
- Because the family space is shared, some things you entered (an event on the shared calendar, an expense) may remain visible to the other parent after you leave. If both parents ask us to delete the family, we delete everything.
- Assistant logs are deleted automatically after 90 days. Backups roll off within about 30 days. Support emails are kept as long as we need them to help you.
Children's privacy
Ellsby is for adults. You must be 18 or older to have an account, and children don't have accounts or log in. Information about children (first names, dates of birth, schools, schedules, medical notes) is entered by their parents or guardians for the purpose of coordinating their care, and is visible only to those parents.
We don't knowingly collect information directly from children under 13 (the age covered by COPPA in the United States). If you believe a child has given us information directly, contact us and we'll delete it.
Your rights and choices
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
- Access or export the information we hold about you and your family. (You can also subscribe to your calendar from any calendar app at any time.)
- Correct something that's wrong. Most things you can fix yourself in the app.
- Delete your account and information, as described above.
- Turn off push notifications in your phone's settings, at any time.
Email hello@ellsby.com. We'll respond within 30 days and won't treat you differently for asking.
If you're in California
You have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use and share it (this policy), to request access or deletion, and to not be discriminated against for exercising those rights. We do not sell personal information and do not "share" it for cross-context behavioral advertising, so there's nothing to opt out of on that front.
If you're in the European Union or United Kingdom
Ellsby is currently offered in the United States, and your information is processed there. Where GDPR applies, our legal basis for processing is performing our contract with you (running the service you signed up for) and our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and improving it. You have the rights above plus the right to object to processing, to restrict it, and to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
Changes to this policy
We'll update this page when something changes and update the date at the top. For meaningful changes, we'll also tell you in the app or by email before they take effect.
Contact
Questions, requests, or concerns: hello@ellsby.com.