This is the short, plain-English version of what HostingBuff does with data. No dark patterns, no data selling, no tricky legalese. We use a single privacy-respecting analytics tool — Plausible, which is cookieless, EU-hosted, and collects no personal data — and that is it. If you have a question this policy does not answer, email contact@hostingbuff.com.

01 // What we collect

HostingBuff is a static content site. We do not run user accounts, do not ask you to sign in, and do not collect personal information directly. The data generated by your visit is:

  • Plausible Analytics (cookieless, EU-hosted) — we use Plausible Analytics to understand which guides are useful and which are not. Plausible is built specifically as a privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative: it sets zero cookies, stores no personal data, never accesses your IP address beyond a brief moment to derive an approximate country, and uses no cross-site tracking or device fingerprinting. The only data we receive about your visit is anonymized and aggregated: page URL, referrer, country, device class (mobile / tablet / desktop), browser, and operating system. Plausible is hosted in Frankfurt, Germany, and is GDPR, PECR, CCPA, and PIPEDA-compliant by design — which is why this site has no cookie banner. Read the Plausible data policy for the full breakdown.
  • Server logs (Netlify) — our host logs your IP address, user agent, referring URL, and the path you requested. This is standard CDN behaviour and is used to serve the site, detect abuse, and keep the network healthy. See Netlify’s privacy policy for retention details. We do not access or analyse these logs for marketing purposes.
  • Self-hosted fonts — we host Inter and JetBrains Mono on our own CDN. Your browser never contacts Google Fonts or any other font provider while loading this site.
  • Local storage — some interactive tools (wipe calendar, hosting calculator, VPS sizer) save tiny preferences to your browser’s local storage so the tool remembers your choice next time. This data never leaves your device.

02 // What we do not collect

  • No Google Analytics, Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, Mixpanel, Segment, Fathom, Umami, or self-hosted server-side analytics. Plausible is the only client-side analytics tool on this site, and it is cookieless and anonymous (see §01). We do not run any other tracking script.
  • No accounts, no email signups, no newsletters
  • No Meta Pixel, no TikTok Pixel, no advertising retargeting pixels of any kind
  • No advertising cookies (first-party or third-party)
  • No session recording tools (Hotjar, FullStory, Microsoft Clarity)
  • No device fingerprinting scripts
  • No data sold to brokers, ever
Transparency — why we changed our mind on analytics

On 2026-04-20 we briefly added Google Analytics 4 to understand which guides readers used. The same day we removed it again — we did not want to ask sysadmins and privacy-minded gamers to accept a cookie banner or be tracked by Google.

For three weeks we ran blind. The result: we genuinely could not tell why some affiliate links converted and others did not, or why some guides got search traffic but no engagement. Running blind hurt the readers we were trying to protect, because we could not fix the pages that were not actually answering the question they came for.

On 2026-05-09 we adopted Plausible Analytics — the privacy-respecting alternative to Google Analytics. Plausible is cookieless, EU-hosted, sets nothing in your browser, never sees your IP beyond a one-shot country lookup, and stores no personal data of any kind. There is no cookie banner because there are no cookies, and no banner is required by GDPR or PECR for a tool that processes no personal data. If you would still rather not be counted, any standard tracker blocker (uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, NextDNS, Pi-hole, AdGuard) will block plausible.io by default — and we are completely fine with that.

HostingBuff recommends a handful of hosting providers — primarily Hostinger, Nitrado, ZAP-Hosting, Physgun, and Shockbyte. When you click an affiliate link and sign up, we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure of the programs and commission amounts is on the affiliate disclosure page. Affiliate links are marked with rel="sponsored" as required by Google’s guidelines.

Clicking an affiliate link sends you to the provider’s site. What that site does with your data is governed by their privacy policy, not ours:

04 // Cookies

HostingBuff sets zero cookies. No first-party cookies, no session cookies, no tracking cookies, no analytics cookies. Even our analytics tool — Plausible — is intentionally cookieless and uses no localStorage or sessionStorage for tracking. This is why you will never see a cookie banner on this site: there is genuinely nothing to consent to under either GDPR or the ePrivacy Directive (PECR).

The only browser storage we use is localStorage for tool preferences (wipe calendar timezone, calculator defaults). It never leaves your device and is not considered a cookie under GDPR / ePrivacy.

Third-party cookies may be set when you click an outbound link — for example to Hostinger, Nitrado, ZAP-Hosting, Physgun, Shockbyte, Facepunch, CubeCoders, or GitHub. Those cookies are set by the destination site under their own privacy policy, not by HostingBuff.

05 // Your rights (GDPR / CCPA)

Because we do not hold any personal data tied to an identifiable individual, there is nothing for us to delete or export. Plausible, our analytics processor, holds no personal data either by design — the data they aggregate cannot be tied back to any individual, so there is nothing to subject-access-request. See the Plausible data policy and their Data Processing Agreement. Netlify, as our hosting provider and CDN, handles raw IP logs on our behalf — you can reach them through their GDPR/CCPA portal.

If you are in the EU, UK, EEA, Switzerland, or California and believe we hold data about you that you want removed, email contact@hostingbuff.com and we will respond within 30 days.

06 // Children’s privacy

HostingBuff is aimed at technical readers setting up game servers. We do not knowingly collect any data from children under 13 (COPPA) or under 16 (GDPR Article 8). If a parent or guardian believes their child’s data is on the site, contact us and we will remove it.

07 // Security

The site is served exclusively over HTTPS (TLS 1.3) via Netlify’s CDN. All form submissions — should we ever add them — will go through Netlify Forms with server-side validation. We do not store passwords, payment data, or any other sensitive information on this domain.

08 // Changes to this policy

When this policy changes in a material way, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top and, where relevant, add a banner to the homepage for 30 days. Minor fixes (typos, clarifications) may be made without notice but will still be timestamped.

09 // Contact

Questions about this privacy policy, the site, or anything else: