Your data at expert.band: privacy, security, backups

A band's workspace holds more than setlists: members' phone numbers, clients' names and event dates, fees, the charts you paid an arranger for. Before you move that from a spreadsheet to a service, you should know where it goes, who can see it and what happens when you leave.

This article is the plain-language version of the privacy notice and terms, with the practical details a band leader or member actually asks about. It is not legal advice; the legal texts on the site are the binding ones.

Where the data lives

• Hosting: servers in the European Union, at Hetzner.
• Files (charts, recordings, backing tracks you upload): stored with Cloudflare under EU jurisdiction, encrypted at rest.
• Payments: Stripe. expert.band stores a customer reference and the subscription status, never your card number.
• Email delivery: Zoho, EU. SMS delivery: sms.to.

Those are the processors, all under contract. Nothing is sold, nothing is used for advertising, and there are no third-party analytics or tracking cookies. The site uses two cookies: one to keep you signed in and one to remember your language.

What is collected

Three groups:

1. Account data: name, email, a password hash or a Google account id, language, phone number if you add one, emoji avatar, theme.
2. Band data that you or your band leader enter: songs, setlists, gigs, availability answers, painted rehearsal hours, ratings, votes, quotes with client names, inventory. Plus the files you upload.
3. Technical logs: IP address, browser, timestamps, kept for security.

The legal bases are the usual ones: providing the service you signed up for, sending the transactional messages the service consists of (invitations, availability requests, reminders, rating links), billing, and keeping the service secure.

Who sees what inside a band

Privacy within the band is governed by roles, and it is worth knowing before you invite people:

• Everyone in the band sees the repertoire, setlists, gigs including the fee field, rehearsals, the inventory, the member list with names, instruments, emails and phone numbers, and band averages for song ratings.
• The leader and managers additionally see and write quotes (with client names, venues and prices), send availability requests and rating rounds, and can see who has and has not answered.
• Nobody in the band sees another member's password, and the leader cannot edit a member's account details; each member manages their own name, phone, language and theme.
• Clients see only the quote page you send them: the band name, the offer and the totals. They never see the app, members or other quotes.

If the fee field is sensitive in your band, leave it empty or record the band's share rather than the gross; the field is for your records and visible to members.

Personal links and tokens

Availability requests, rating rounds and client quotes all work through personal links with long random tokens, so the recipient needs no login. Two consequences:

• The links are unguessable but not password protected. Anyone holding the link can open that one page: one gig's yes/no, one rating round for one member, one quote.
• The worst case of a leaked link is limited: an answer recorded under someone's name, or a quote read by someone who should not have seen the price. Quote links can be regenerated, which invalidates the old one; rating links stop working when the round is closed.

Ask members not to forward their personal links and not to post them.

Sign-in security

Sign in with email and password, or with Google. A Google sign-in on an address that already has an account links to that account rather than creating a second one. Passwords are stored as hashes; if a member forgets theirs, the reset link on the sign-in page sends a message to their confirmed address. Confirm your email early: password resets and notifications depend on it. There is no two-factor authentication at the moment; use a password you do not use elsewhere.

Backups

Backups are made daily and kept for 90 days. They exist to recover the service after a failure, not as a self-service undo: deleting a song, a gig or a band in the app is immediate and cannot be reversed by the user, and the confirmations say so. If something was deleted by mistake, write to support promptly; recovery from a backup is a manual job and is not guaranteed.

When you stop paying

When a trial or subscription ends, bands you own become read-only. Nothing is deleted. Everything can still be read and printed: the repertoire, setlists, gig sheets, quotes. Subscribe again and write access is restored with everything as it was. So a band that pauses for the winter loses nothing. See expert.band pricing explained.

Deleting

• A member leaving: removing a member takes away their access immediately. Their past ratings, votes, availability answers and activity stay in the band's history. A member can leave a band themselves from the band list, or ask the leader to remove them, or write to expert.band.
• A band: the leader deletes it from band settings, typing the band name to confirm. Songs, gigs, quotes and everything else go with it. Members keep their accounts.
• An account: from the account page, after cancelling any subscription. It removes your memberships, ratings, votes and availability, and every band you own with all their data. It cannot be undone. A closed account and its bands are deleted within 30 days; backups age out after 90. Invoices are kept as long as accounting law requires.

Before deleting a band you might want later, remember that read-only mode costs nothing and keeps everything. Before deleting an account that owns bands the others still use, transfer the bands to another member first.

Getting your data out

There is no one-click export of a whole band at the moment. What exists: the repertoire can be printed or exported as a plain list; setlists, gig sheets, packing lists and rating reports print cleanly to paper or PDF; quotes have a PDF download; files you uploaded can be opened and saved from their attachments. Under GDPR you also have a right to portability and can ask for a copy of your personal data by email; the reply comes within 30 days.

GDPR rights, in one paragraph

Access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, objection, and the right to complain to a supervisory authority. The controller is the company operating expert.band, registered in Estonia; write to the contact address on the site. Band leaders should remember that they, too, are responsible for the data they and their members enter, which mostly means: do not put in the app what the client or the member would not expect you to store, and remove members who leave.

Practical checklist for a band leader

• Tell new members what the band sees: name, email, phone, instrument, availability, ratings. It is in the invitation conversation, not a surprise.
• Ask members to confirm their email and to use a unique password.
• Keep client data in quotes to what the quote needs: name, event, venue.
• Remove members when they leave the band; the history stays, their access does not.
• Do not share personal links; regenerate a quote link that went astray.
• Keep your own copy of anything irreplaceable, such as arranged charts; the app stores them, but a backup you hold is still good practice.

Where this fits

Data location and deletion are a real part of choosing a tool, alongside the features compared in expert.band compared with other band apps. The details of accounts, cancelling and deletion are in account and billing.