Privacy policy

The short version

5Quotes introduces you to developers. We collect what we need to do that and nothing we cannot justify.

Your name, email address and phone number are hidden from developers until you approve one. We do not sell your information, and we do not pass it to anyone you have not approved.

What you give us

When you post a project or register as a developer, you give us:

• Your email address, name and phone number
• Your company name, city and region
• Your project description, answers to the qualification questions, and anything you upload — files, links and detailed requirements
• Whether you want occasional marketing email, which is off unless you tick the box

What we record automatically

So we can keep the service working and understand where enquiries come from, we record:

• Your IP address, browser and the approximate location of your connection, against each sign-in
• The pages you view and the steps you complete in the project form
• The page you arrived on and the site that referred you
• Campaign and ad-click identifiers from the link you followed, such as utm_source, utm_campaign, gclid, gbraid, wbraid and msclkid

Cookies

Three of our own, all necessary to run the service:

• 5q_session — keeps you signed in
• 5q_anon — ties the pages you viewed before signing up to the project you eventually post
• 5q_site — remembers which country site you are on

Advertising

We advertise on Google. Their tag runs on this site and sets its own cookies so Google can tell when an advert led to someone posting a project, and can show our adverts to people who have visited before.

That means Google receives your IP address and the pages you viewed here. It does not receive your name, email address, phone number or anything you wrote in a brief.

You can turn this off in your Google account under Ad settings, or block third-party cookies in your browser. Neither affects your project or your quotes.

What developers can see, and when

Approved developers browsing open projects see your title, category, description, budget range, timing and region, plus anything you marked Public.

Your name, email address, phone number, company and tender pack — the files, links and detailed requirements you kept private — are released to a single developer at the moment you approve them, and withdrawn if you decline them, close the project or close your account.

Who else handles it

We keep the list short.

• Cloudflare — hosting, database, file storage and bot protection
• Postmark — delivers the email we send you
• Google — advertising measurement, as described above

Where it is stored

Our infrastructure is global, so your information may be stored or processed outside New Zealand. We use it only for the purposes described here wherever it sits.

How long we keep it

Sign-in sessions expire and are then deleted. Projects and messages are kept while your account is open, because you and the developers you approved may need to refer back to them.

Closing your account withdraws your open projects, revokes every tender pack immediately and marks the account deleted. We keep a record of email we sent you, and anything we are required to keep by law.

What you can do

• Download everything we hold about you, from Account → Privacy and data
• Correct your details at any time in Account
• Turn marketing email off without affecting project notifications
• Close your account, which is immediate and cannot be undone
• Ask us to delete anything that survives that, by emailing us

Security

Passwords are hashed, never stored as text, and sign-in links and codes are stored hashed and expire. Contact details are withheld from developers at the database level rather than hidden in the interface.

No system is perfect. If something does go wrong and it affects you, we will tell you.

Changes and complaints

We may update this policy. The date below shows when it last changed.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, email us first and we will try to put it right. You can also complain to the privacy regulator in New Zealand.