Legal
Privacy Policy
Effective 7 May 2026 · Last updated 7 May 2026
Vertica is designed to work without collecting more than the bare minimum we need to sell you a licence and validate it. Here's exactly what happens, in plain language.
What stays on your device
Everything you type into the calculator (tower configurations, crop selections, fixture choices, electricity and water rates, USDA zone, design wind speed, succession schedules) lives in your browser's local storage on your device. We do not send any of that to our servers. You can clear it from your browser at any time via your browser's site settings, and the dismissible "design was reset" banner tells you when a corrupted save was cleaned up.
What we collect
| When | What | Why |
|---|---|---|
| At purchase | Your email address, name, billing country (collected by LemonSqueezy) | To issue your licence key and a receipt. LemonSqueezy also uses the country for tax purposes. |
| At licence validation | Your licence key and a hashed identifier for your device | To confirm your licence is valid and hasn't exceeded its 3-device limit. |
| When the site loads | Aggregate visit data (page views, referrers, device class) via Vercel Web Analytics | To know whether the site is working and where users are coming from. No personal identifiers. No cookies. |
Vertica does not use any AI / language-model generation. There is no API call to Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or any other model provider. All calculations run in your browser using the formulas published in the source code and the Engineering-verifier audit doc.
Third parties
We use a small number of third parties. Each has their own privacy policy; we link them below.
- LemonSqueezy. Payments, licence keys, tax collection. Acts as the Merchant of Record. lemonsqueezy.com/privacy
- Vercel. Hosting + Vercel Web Analytics (cookie-less, aggregate). vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy
- Upstash. Redis-backed rate limiting on the licence-validation endpoint. We store only IP-keyed and licence-key-prefix-keyed counters, all with short TTLs. upstash.com privacy
- Google Fonts. Font files served from Google's CDN (Geist, Geist Mono). Google logs the request (IP, user-agent). No cookies are set. Google Fonts privacy FAQ
What we don't do
- We don't sell or rent your data. Not to advertisers, not to anyone.
- We don't use advertising cookies or tracking pixels.
- We don't use any AI / LLM provider for plan generation or content. Calculations are deterministic and run in your browser.
- We don't require an account. Your licence key replaces an account.
Your rights
Under GDPR (if you're in the EU/UK), POPIA (if you're in South Africa), or equivalent laws in your jurisdiction, you can request a copy of your data, request deletion, or request correction. Most of what we have is your purchase record at LemonSqueezy. You can request deletion via them directly, or by emailing us and we'll coordinate.
To clear everything the Service has stored in your browser, open your browser's site-data settings and clear local storage for this domain. That removes your saved tower designs, device identifier, and licence key from your device. If you've activated your licence, you can re-enter it from the paywall screen when you need it back.
Children
The Service is not directed at children under 13. We don't knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has provided information, email us and we'll delete it.
Changes
If this policy changes materially we'll post a note on the main site. The "Last updated" date above will change.
Contact
Privacy questions: urbanroot.contact@gmail.com · contact page.
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