We believe you have a right to know exactly what data we collect, why we collect it, and how you can control it. This policy explains everything in plain English.
PlumbMate is operated by Holwell Educational Services Ltd (Company No. 17129105), based in England and Wales. We are the "data controller" for the personal data described in this policy — which means we are responsible for how your data is used.
This policy applies to all PlumbMate users — including free-tier users, free-trial users, people who buy a one-off year, and monthly or yearly subscribers. We process the same types of data and follow the same rules regardless of whether you pay us or not.
If you have any questions about this policy or your personal data, please contact us at info@plumbmatemastery.co.uk.
We only collect data that is necessary to provide you with the PlumbMate service. The table below explains what we collect and why.
| Data | Why we collect it | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | To create and manage your account, and to send you account-related emails | Contract |
| Display name | To personalise your experience and address you in emails and on the platform | Contract |
| Subscription status & plan | To control which content you can access | Contract |
| Stripe customer ID | To process and manage your payments securely via Stripe | Contract |
| Session token | To ensure your account can only be used on one device at a time (account security) | Legitimate interest |
| Last active timestamp | To allow college tutors to monitor learner engagement on their dashboard | Legitimate interest |
| Learning progress | To save your quiz scores and revision progress between sessions | Contract |
| Short answer responses | Free-text answers you provide for AI-marked short-answer questions. These are graded by the AI marking service (see Section 5) and stored against your account so that you can review your performance. | Contract |
| College ID (if applicable) | To link your account to your college's subscription | Contract |
| Usage data | Firebase automatically records basic technical data (pages visited, errors) to keep the app running correctly. | Legitimate interest |
| Analytics data (optional) | If you accept analytics cookies, Google Analytics records which sections of the app you visit and how long you spend on them. This data is used exclusively to improve PlumbMate and the learner experience — never for advertising. No analytics data is collected if you decline cookies. | Consent |
Directly from you — when you create an account, sign in, or submit a feedback form.
Automatically — Firebase (our hosting and database provider, run by Google) collects certain technical data when you use the app, such as your device type and IP address. This data is processed by Google under their own privacy policy.
Via third-party services — if you pay for a subscription, Stripe processes your payment details. We never see or store your card number. If you submit feedback via our Google Form, Google may collect your email address as part of that process.
We send you the following types of emails:
Welcome & onboarding series — During your 14-day free trial, we send a short series of welcome and educational emails to help you get the most out of PlumbMate (study tips, feature walkthroughs, and how-to guidance). At signup we ask whether you'd like to receive these emails — you can opt out at signup, or unsubscribe at any later point. Legal basis: consent (which you can withdraw at any time without affecting your account or access to the service).
Trial reminder — Near the end of your 14-day trial we send you a short reminder letting you know your trial is ending and how to subscribe if you would like to continue. This is treated as part of the welcome series and respects the same opt-out preference. Legal basis: consent.
Account & service emails — Password resets, security alerts, important policy updates, and other essential notifications about your account. These are sent regardless of your marketing preferences because they are necessary for the operation of your account. Legal basis: contract / legitimate interest.
Replies to problems you report — If you flag a quiz question as wrong, or your page automatically reports a fault while you are using PlumbMate, we may email you back about it — to say what we found, or that it is fixed. We only ever write to the people who reported that particular problem, and only about that problem. Because this is a reply to something you raised rather than marketing, it is sent regardless of your marketing preferences, and each one says why you are receiving it. Legal basis: legitimate interest (answering a problem you told us about).
Payment receipts — Sent by Stripe on our behalf when you subscribe, renew, or are charged. Legal basis: contract / legal obligation (tax records).
Renewal reminders — Before each annual renewal, we send a reminder of your upcoming charge so you can review or cancel if you wish. Legal basis: contract / legitimate interest.
Check-in if you stop using a paid subscription — If you pay for PlumbMate yourself and have not logged in for 30 days, we email to ask whether you still need it, with how to log back in, how to reset your password, and how to cancel if you would rather. On a monthly subscription we send one every 30 days while you stay logged out. On an annual subscription we send one in the month before it renews and one in the last week. To decide when to send it, we look at when you last logged in and when you last used the site. The emails stop as soon as you log in or cancel, and each one has a link to stop them without cancelling your subscription. Because they are about a subscription you are paying for, not marketing, they are sent regardless of your marketing preferences. Legal basis: legitimate interest (helping paying subscribers to use, or to cancel, what they pay for).
Opting out. You can unsubscribe from the welcome & onboarding series and trial reminder at any time using the unsubscribe link included in each email, or by emailing info@plumbmatemastery.co.uk. Account, payment, and renewal emails will continue to be sent as they are necessary for your account and subscription, as will a reply to a problem you have reported to us. You can stop the subscription check-in with the link in any of those emails; that does not cancel your subscription.
We do not send general marketing or promotional emails (for example, about new features or product launches). If this changes in the future, we will ask for your explicit consent first via a separate clear opt-in.
We do not sell your personal data. We only share it with trusted third-party services that help us run PlumbMate:
Firebase (Google LLC) — our database, authentication, and hosting provider. Your account data and progress are stored on Firebase servers. Google is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
Stripe Inc. — our payment processor. Stripe handles all payment data securely. We only store a Stripe customer ID reference, never your card details. If you (or, in the case of college subscriptions, your tutor) use the Stripe Customer Portal to manage your subscription, your billing details and history are shared with Stripe directly via that interface.
Resend (Resend, Inc.) — our transactional email provider. Resend is used to send welcome emails, trial reminders, and other account-related messages. Your email address and name are shared with Resend solely for the purpose of delivering these emails. Resend is a US-based company; data transfers are protected by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum.
Anthropic (Anthropic PBC) — provider of the AI marking service used for short-answer questions. When you submit a written answer to a marked short-answer question, the answer text and the corresponding question are sent to Anthropic's Claude API to be graded against a marking rubric. We do not deliberately send your name, email address, or other identifying information with marking requests. Under Anthropic's API terms, input and output data are not used to train their AI models. Anthropic is a US-based company; data transfers are protected by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum.
Your browser’s dictation service — answer boxes offer a “Dictate” button on browsers that support speech input. The listening is done by your browser, not by PlumbMate: in Chrome the audio is sent to Google’s speech service to be turned into text, and on iPhone and Mac it is handled by Apple. We never receive, hear or store the recording — only the text that lands in the answer box, which is then treated exactly like anything else you type. The microphone runs only while you have pressed the button, your browser will ask your permission before it is used the first time, and typing your answer instead is always available.
Google (Gemini API) — provider of the AI summary service used to generate end-of-quiz feedback. Your overall quiz performance (such as number of questions attempted, score, and topic breakdown) is sent to Google's Gemini API to produce a personalised summary of how you did. We do not deliberately send your name or email address with these requests. Google processes this data under its API terms and privacy policy.
Google LLC — if you submit feedback via our Google Form, your email address is passed to Google to pre-fill the form. Google processes this data under their own privacy policy.
Google Analytics (Google LLC) — if you accept analytics cookies, anonymised data about how you use the app is sent to Google Analytics. This data is used exclusively to improve PlumbMate and the learner experience. It does not identify you personally and is never used for advertising. You can prevent this by declining analytics cookies when prompted.
College tutors — if you are enrolled under a college subscription, your tutor can see your email address, last active time, and learning progress via the tutor dashboard.
We keep your account data for as long as your account is active. If you request that your account is deleted, we will remove your personal data within 30 days, except where we are legally required to keep it (for example, payment records may need to be retained for up to 7 years for tax purposes).
Anonymised or aggregated data (e.g. overall quiz completion rates) may be retained indefinitely as it cannot be used to identify you.
PlumbMate is primarily designed for adults studying for a Level 2 Plumbing qualification. Direct paid subscriptions are restricted to users aged 18 or over — see our Terms of Service for details.
However, plumbing apprentices often start training at 16 or 17. If you are under 18 you may use PlumbMate in one of two ways:
For any user we know to be under 18, we follow the principles of the ICO's Age Appropriate Design Code (Children's Code):
If you believe a child under 13 has created a direct PlumbMate account, please contact us at info@plumbmatemastery.co.uk — we will close the account and delete the data within 7 days.
As a UK resident, you have the following rights over your personal data:
To exercise any of these rights, email us at info@plumbmatemastery.co.uk. We will respond within 30 days.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you believe we have mishandled your data. You can contact the ICO at ico.org.uk or by calling 0303 123 1113.
Strictly necessary cookies — PlumbMate uses cookies and browser local storage to keep you logged in between visits. These are essential for the app to function. Without them you would be logged out every time you close your browser. These cookies do not require your consent.
Analytics cookies — with your consent, we use Google Analytics to collect anonymised data about how you use the app (for example, which units you visit and how long you spend on each section). This information is used exclusively to improve PlumbMate and the learner experience. It is never used for advertising or shared with third parties for marketing purposes.
Your choice — when you first visit PlumbMate, a cookie banner will ask whether you accept analytics cookies. You can decline without any effect on your ability to use the app — your login, progress, certificates, tutor links, and all other features work exactly the same whether you accept or decline.
You can change your cookie preference at any time by clearing your browser cookies and reloading the page, which will show the consent banner again.
PlumbMate uses YouTube API Services in two ways, and they are worth separating because only one of them touches your browser at all.
Embedded videos — some lesson pages play a video through an embedded YouTube player. When a page with a player on it loads, YouTube may set cookies on your device and receive your IP address, in the same way it would if you watched the video on YouTube itself. That happens between you and YouTube; we do not receive or store anything from it.
Publishing our own lessons — we use the YouTube Data API to upload our own course videos, their caption tracks and their thumbnails to our own channel, and to sort them into playlists. The tool that does this signs in to our Google account only. It reads nothing about you, nothing about anybody who watches our channel, and nothing from anyone else’s YouTube content. No PlumbMate user ever signs in to YouTube through us.
We hold no YouTube user data, so there is none to delete. Everything we do hold about you, and how to have it removed, is in section 6 and section 8 above.
By using PlumbMate you are also agreeing to the YouTube Terms of Service. How Google handles data is set out in the Google Privacy Policy.
If we make significant changes to this privacy policy, we will notify you by email and update the "last updated" date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.
For any privacy-related questions, data requests, or concerns:
Holwell Educational Services Ltd (PlumbMate)
Company No. 17129105
Registered in England & Wales
71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ
📧 info@plumbmatemastery.co.uk
We aim to respond to all privacy enquiries within 5 working days.