Privacy
Last updated October 7, 2026
The short version: we never ask for your phone number, we don't sell or share your information with installers, and we keep as little as we can.
Solar or Not is operated by Travis Mahoney, 1875 Mission St Ste 103 #842, San Francisco, CA 94103.
What you give us
- Your address and anything optional you enter (bill amount, utility, electric car, existing solar, quotes). We use it to run your estimate.
- Your email address, only if you ask us to email you a report or tell you when we launch in your area. It is the only contact detail we ever ask for.
How your address is used
- To find your roof we send the address to Google's Geocoding API, and the resulting coordinates to Google's Solar API. For the satellite photo in your report, our server sends the roof's coordinates to Google's Maps Static API and passes the image straight to your browser without keeping it. Google's handling is covered by the Google Privacy Policy (opens in a new tab).
- To model hourly solar output we send your coordinates (not your address) to PVGIS, a free service run by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. If PVGIS is unavailable, we send the coordinates to NREL's PVWatts service instead.
- We don't keep your address in our own database. A finished estimate may stay in server memory for up to six hours, and the address and roof lookups for up to 24 hours, so a repeat visit doesn't pay for the same lookup twice. Then they are discarded.
- Your results link contains your address and the details you entered, encoded but not encrypted, so the link can rebuild your report. Anyone you share the link with can see them. We tell browsers not to pass that link on to other sites you visit from it.
- Because your address is in the results link, our hosting provider's request logs contain it for the hosting provider's standard log retention period.
- If you ask us to email your report, the report link is stored with your email at Kit (see below) until you unsubscribe and ask us to delete it.
If you give us your email, it goes to Kit (formerly ConvertKit), the service we use to send email. Kit sends a confirmation message first; nothing else is sent until you confirm. Along with your email address we give Kit your report link, which contains your home address and the details you entered, and your verdict as tags (for example “solar: yes, battery: no”), so the email can include it. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe. See Kit's privacy policy (opens in a new tab).
If you already confirmed and ask for another report, we email that report link to you ourselves from our Google Workspace mailbox, at most three times a day, because Kit won't send it again. A copy stays in that mailbox's sent folder.
Technical data
To stop abuse we count requests per IP address. The counters are kept in server memory or, once it is switched on, in a shared rate-limit store (Upstash Redis). That store holds only counters keyed by a salted hash of your IP address, which expire within 48 hours, and a hash of your email address for 24 hours so a repeat sign-up doesn't send a second confirmation email. It never holds your address or your results. Our hosting provider (Vercel) keeps standard server logs.
We do not use advertising trackers, and there are no analytics scripts on the site. No other company collects data about your browsing here. If we add privacy-friendly analytics later, we will list them here first.
Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
We don't track you across sites and don't sell or share personal information. We treat Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals as an opt-out anyway.
Partners
If you click a partner link (see our affiliate disclosure), you leave our site. The partner's site may set its own cookies, including an affiliate cookie that tells it we sent you, so it can pay us a referral fee. Its privacy policy covers anything you give it there, such as contact details if you ask for quotes. We never send partners your address, your bill or your email, and the link itself carries none of them.
California notice at collection
The categories of personal information we collect, where they come from, why, and how long we keep them:
- Identifiers: your email address (from you, only if you sign up; used to send what you asked for; kept at Kit until you unsubscribe and ask us to delete it) and your IP address (from your browser; used to stop abuse; kept as hashed counters for up to 48 hours and in our hosting provider's logs).
- Precise geolocation: your home address and its coordinates (from you). This is sensitive personal information under the CCPA. We use it only to compute and deliver your estimate, never to infer anything else about you. Kept as described above: up to 24 hours in server memory, in hosting logs, and in your report link at Kit if you ask us to email it.
- Energy and financial details: bill amount, usage, existing solar and any quotes you enter (from you; used for the estimate; kept the same way as your address, since they are part of the report link).
- Inferences: your verdict tags at Kit (for example “solar: yes”), only if you sign up; kept until you unsubscribe and ask us to delete them.
Your choices and California rights
We do not sell or share personal information as the California Consumer Privacy Act defines those terms. If you live in California you have the right to know what personal information we hold about you and to get a copy of it, to ask us to correct it, and to ask us to delete it, and we won't treat you differently for using any of these rights. You can unsubscribe from email at any time from any message.
To make a request, write to hello@solarornot.com. We verify a request by emailing the address it concerns. An authorized agent can make a request for you, with your signed permission.
Children
This site is for homeowners and is not directed at children under 16.
Changes
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page.