Privacy policy

Same Sermon is operated by Variable Ratio LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company (“Same Sermon,” “we”). This policy explains what information we collect when you use samesermon.com and the Same Sermon service, how we use it, and the choices you have. If anything here is unclear, write to hello@samesermon.com.

The people we serve

We think of two groups. Churches (and the people who manage their accounts) sign up, use the service and choose settings. Listeners use a church’s live listening page without creating an account.

Information we collect

From churches

• Account details: your name, email address, church name and sign-in details.
• Settings: the preferences you choose in the service.
• Transcripts: on the Church plan, the text of what was said and translated during your services, so you can review and reuse it.
• Usage: how much of the service you use, so we can apply your plan’s limits.
• Billing: if you subscribe, our payment processor, Stripe, collects your card details. We receive only limited information, such as your billing email and the status of your subscription. We never see or store your card number.

From listeners

Listeners are anonymous. We don’t ask for a name, email address or phone number. To deliver the service, our servers necessarily handle basic technical information such as an IP address and browser type, as every website does. We may count how many people are listening and which languages they chose, so a church can see that its translation is being used. We don’t use that information to identify anyone.

From people who contact us

If you use our contact form or email us, we keep your message and contact details so we can reply.

From churches we invite to try Same Sermon

To show churches what Same Sermon can do, we sometimes make a short, private demonstration page for a church before it has an account. To do this we use a brief clip of a sermon the church has already published publicly on YouTube, which we transcribe and translate. The page embeds the church’s own YouTube video rather than copying it. We also keep the church’s name and location, and the name and work email address of a contact, gathered from public websites or public listings, so we can send the invitation and see whether it was opened.

Every invitation page has a “Don’t contact us again” link. When it is used, we hide the page and keep only the email address, and only so that we never contact it again. You can also ask us to delete an invitation page or your contact details at any time by writing to hello@samesermon.com. Invitation pages aren’t listed on our site or in search engines.

Audio

During a live service, audio from your church’s device is sent to our servers to be turned into text and translated. We do not record or store this audio. It is processed to deliver the service and then discarded.

Transcripts

On the Church plan, we keep the text transcripts of your services for your church for 90 days, unless you delete them sooner. Church account managers can delete transcripts at any time. On the Free plan, captions are kept only as long as needed to deliver the live service.

How we use information

• To provide the service: transcribing, translating, delivering captions and audio, and showing your transcripts.
• To run your account: sign-in, billing, plan limits and service emails.
• To keep the service secure and working, and to fix problems.
• To answer your questions.
• To understand how Same Sermon is used and improve it (see “Analytics” below).
• To invite churches to try Same Sermon, as described above, and to honor requests not to be contacted.

We don’t sell personal information. We don’t use advertising trackers. We don’t use your content to train AI models.

Analytics

We use PostHog to understand how Same Sermon is used, so we can make it better.

• Website visitors are counted without cookies. We don’t store an identifier on your device, and we drop your IP address, so we can see things like which pages are popular and where visitors come from without being able to follow you across visits or sites.
• Account holders: when you use your account, we record key actions, such as signing up, starting a trial or subscription, and starting or ending a live service, linked to your account, so we can see what’s working and fix what isn’t.
• Listeners: we don’t run analytics on the listening page, the screen overlay or demonstration pages. We only count how many people listen and in which languages, as described above.

We don’t use analytics for advertising, we don’t sell it, and we don’t record your screen. Analytics data is kept for up to one year.

Service providers we rely on

We use a small number of trusted companies to run Same Sermon. They process information only on our behalf and only to provide their services.

• Cloudflare: hosting, networking, data storage and AI processing (speech recognition, translation and voices).
• Stripe: payments and subscriptions.
• PostHog: product analytics: cookieless website visit counts and key account actions. IP addresses are dropped.
• Anthropic: translation, when this is enabled for a service. Text of what was said is sent for translation; audio is not.

We will update this list if it changes.

Cookies and local storage

We use one cookie: a sign-in cookie that keeps account holders signed in. It is not used for advertising or tracking. The listener page may remember a listener’s chosen language on their own device so they don’t have to choose it again. We don’t use analytics or advertising cookies. If we measure how many people visit our website, we use privacy-friendly tools that don’t use cookies or build profiles of visitors.

How long we keep information

• Audio: not kept.
• Transcripts: 90 days, unless you delete them sooner.
• Account information: for as long as your account is open. When you close your account, we delete your information within a reasonable time, except where we must keep records (for example, billing records required by law).
• Contact messages: up to one year, then deleted automatically.
• Invitation pages and contacts: until the church signs up, asks us to delete them, or they are no longer needed for outreach. Email addresses that asked not to be contacted are kept only to make sure we never contact them again.
• Analytics data: up to one year.
• Server logs (technical records such as IP addresses and errors, used to keep the service secure and working): kept briefly, typically for days, not months.

Security

We use encrypted connections (HTTPS) everywhere, limit who can access data, and rely on providers with strong security practices. No system is perfectly secure, but we take the responsibility seriously and will tell you promptly if something goes wrong that affects you.

Your choices and rights

You can view and update your account details at any time, delete your transcripts, and close your account. You can ask us for a copy of your information, or ask us to correct or delete it, by writing to hello@samesermon.com. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under local law, and we will honor them.

Where information is processed

Same Sermon is run from the United States. Our providers may process information in the United States and in other countries where they operate data centers, with appropriate safeguards.

Children

Accounts are for adults. Listeners of any age can use the live listening page, which collects no personal information. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to this policy

If we make meaningful changes, we will update the date at the top of this page and, for significant changes, email account holders.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Write to hello@samesermon.com.