This Privacy Policy explains how Daukas Group LLC ("we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, and protects your information when you use The Sermon Coach (the "Service"), accessed through sermoncoach.com and related domains.
We believe preachers should be able to use this tool with full confidence that their work stays their own. This policy is written in plain English wherever possible. If anything is unclear, email chris@sermoncoach.com.
1. Who We Are
The Sermon Coach is operated by Daukas Group LLC, a company registered in Arizona, United States. For privacy-related questions or requests, you can reach us at:
- Email: chris@sermoncoach.com
- Mail: Daukas Group LLC, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
2. Information We Collect
We collect only what we need to provide the Service. Specifically:
Account information: Your name, email address, and password (stored encrypted). If you subscribe, we collect billing information through our payment processor (see Section 4).
Sermon content you submit: The sermon manuscripts, transcripts, or text you upload for evaluation. This is stored securely and, unless you are in a mentoring relationship, visible only to you. See When others can see your work below. We do not read, analyze, sell, or share this content beyond what is required to generate your evaluation.
Evaluations we generate: The evaluation outputs created by the Service from your sermon submissions. These are stored in your account library for your ongoing access.
Usage data: Basic technical data — IP address, browser type, pages visited, actions taken in the product — collected to keep the Service running and to detect abuse. We use this in aggregate, not to identify individuals.
Communications: When you email us, we keep the message so we can respond and improve the Service.
How you heard about us: When you sign up, you can tell us how you heard about The Sermon Coach, including the name of someone who recommended it. This is optional. We use it to learn how pastors find us, and we may thank the person you name. We never add them to a mailing list or contact them for marketing.
3. How We Use Your Information
We use your information to:
- Provide the Service: generate evaluations, maintain your account, and let you access your sermon library.
- Process payments through our payment processor when you subscribe to a paid plan.
- Respond to your questions and provide customer support.
- Send you essential communications about your account (billing, security, service updates).
- Improve the Service in aggregate ways — for example, understanding which features are used most.
- Detect, prevent, and respond to fraud, abuse, or security issues.
We do not use your sermon content to train artificial intelligence models. We do not sell your personal information. We do not share your sermons with anyone outside the Service except as described in Section 4 (Service Providers).
4. Service Providers We Use
The Sermon Coach relies on a small number of trusted third-party services to operate. Each of these has its own privacy practices:
Anthropic (Claude API): We use Anthropic's Claude API to generate the AI-assisted portions of your evaluations. Anthropic's API terms commit to not using your inputs to train their models. Read Anthropic's privacy policy.
Stripe: When you subscribe, payments are processed by Stripe, a leading payments company. We do not store your full credit card information on our servers — Stripe handles that directly under PCI-DSS compliance. Read Stripe's privacy policy.
Vercel: Our website and product are hosted on Vercel, which provides infrastructure and content delivery. Read Vercel's privacy policy.
Supabase: We use Supabase as our database provider for storing account data, sermon submissions, and evaluations. Read Supabase's privacy policy.
Email delivery: We may use third-party email services (such as Resend, Postmark, or similar transactional email providers) to send account-related emails. These providers only handle email metadata and content as needed to deliver messages.
We only share information with these providers as necessary to operate the Service. None of them are permitted to use your data for their own purposes beyond providing services to us.
5. When others can see your work
Most of what you submit is visible only to you. There is one arrangement where that changes, and it requires you to accept it first.
If someone is mentoring you. While a mentoring relationship is active, the sermons you submit are evaluated through that relationship, and the person mentoring you can read them. That includes the manuscript, the coaching you receive, and the scored evaluation.
On an Apprentice seat your scored evaluation is produced at the same time as your coaching and held from you until your mentor releases it. Nothing is withheld from the work itself. What changes is when you see it, and your mentor decides that.
You are told this before you accept an invitation, and again on every sermon you submit. You can end the relationship at any time, and ending it stops further access.
6. Data Security
We take reasonable steps to protect your information, including:
- Encryption of data in transit (HTTPS/TLS).
- Encryption of passwords using industry-standard hashing.
- Access controls limiting who can view stored data internally.
- Regular review of our systems and dependencies for security issues.
No system is perfectly secure. If we ever discover a breach affecting your data, we will notify you promptly and in accordance with applicable law.
7. Data Retention
Your sermons and evaluations stay in your account until you delete them.
When you delete a sermon, it leaves your dashboard immediately and you can restore it for 30 days. After 30 days it can no longer be restored, and it and its evaluations are removed from your account.
For up to 14 days after that, a copy can persist in our internal archives and daily backups. After that window no copy remains.
A sermon you have shared through a mentoring relationship, or agreed to publish as a sample, is not removed by this process. Email chris@sermoncoach.com and we will delete it by hand.
To delete your account, email chris@sermoncoach.com. We will delete your account and everything in it within 48 hours, subject to the same 14-day window described above.
8. Your Rights
Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights regarding your personal data. We honor the following for all users, regardless of location:
- Access: You may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
- Correction: You may correct inaccurate personal information through your account settings or by contacting us.
- Deletion: You may request deletion of your account and personal information at any time; email us and we will delete it within 48 hours. A copy can persist in our internal archives and daily backups for up to 14 days after that, as described in Section 7.
- Portability: You may request your sermon library and evaluations in a portable format.
- Objection: You may object to certain types of processing.
- Marketing opt-out: We do not send marketing emails by default. If we ever do, you can unsubscribe from any such email.
To exercise any of these rights, email chris@sermoncoach.com. We will respond within 30 days.
9. For Users in the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom, and Switzerland
If you are located in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and equivalent laws apply to our processing of your personal data.
Legal basis: We process your personal data on the following legal bases: (a) performance of a contract with you (providing the Service), (b) our legitimate interests (improving the Service, preventing fraud), and (c) your consent where required.
Data transfers: Your data may be transferred to and processed in the United States, where some of our service providers are located. We rely on appropriate safeguards, including Standard Contractual Clauses, for such transfers.
Complaints: You have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. We encourage you to contact us first so we can address your concern.
10. For Users in California
If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) give you specific rights regarding your personal information:
- The right to know what personal information we collect, use, disclose, and sell.
- The right to delete personal information we have collected from you.
- The right to correct inaccurate personal information.
- The right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information.
- The right to limit the use of sensitive personal information.
- The right to non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights.
We do not sell personal information. If you choose to allow advertising cookies (see Cookies and Tracking below), our use of the Meta Pixel and Meta Conversions API may count as “sharing” personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising under California law. This only happens after you select Allow. You can opt out at any time through Cookie preferences, and we treat a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser as an opt-out, even if you selected Allow earlier. We do not use sensitive personal information for purposes that would require the right to limit. To exercise any California privacy right, email chris@sermoncoach.com.
11. Children's Privacy
The Sermon Coach is not directed to children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.
12. Cookies and Tracking
We use a minimal number of cookies — primarily for keeping you signed in and remembering basic preferences, including your cookie choice.
Advertising measurement (Meta). We advertise on Facebook and Instagram. If you select Allow in our cookie notice, we load the Meta Pixel, which sets Meta cookies and tells Meta when you visit a page or start or complete an evaluation, so we can measure which ads bring people to The Sermon Coach. When your free evaluation finishes, or you start a paid subscription, our server may also report that event to Meta through the Meta Conversions API, together with your IP address, browser type, and the Meta cookies already in your browser, and for a purchase its amount and currency. It does this only if your choice is Allow at that moment (for a subscription, when you start checkout) and your browser is not sending a Global Privacy Control signal. We do not send Meta your name, email address, or account details, in plain or hashed form. Meta may use this information as described in Meta's privacy policy. We never send Meta your sermons, transcripts, evaluations, scores, or report content.
Nothing is shared with Meta unless you select Allow. A Global Privacy Control signal from your browser counts as a refusal and withdraws an earlier Allow; if you later turn it off, we ask you again rather than restoring your earlier choice. If you change your choice to Decline, nothing further is sent to Meta from then on, and we delete the Meta cookies set on our site; events already sent before you changed your choice are not recalled. You can change your choice at any time through Cookie preferences.
We also record the advertising campaign that first brought you to the site (for example, the utm_campaign in an ad link) with your account, so we can tell which campaigns lead to sign-ups and subscriptions.
You can control cookies through your browser settings. Disabling cookies may affect your ability to stay signed in or use certain features.
We use Vercel Web Analytics to understand how people use the site, such as which pages are visited and which links are clicked. It does not use cookies and does not collect information that identifies you.
13. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you by email or through a notice in the Service. The effective date at the top of this policy tells you when it was last updated.
14. Contact Us
Questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your information:
- Email: chris@sermoncoach.com
- Mail: Daukas Group LLC, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
We read every email and aim to respond within 5 business days.