Privacy Policy

Effective date: June 15, 2026 · One policy for StartBuild.com and CostToBuildAHouse.com, both operated by StartBuild LLC, a California limited liability company. Questions? Visit our contact page.

What we collect

• Contact details — your name, email address, and phone number when you order a report, create an account, or contact us. Your email address also serves as your customer ID. Occasionally a plan publisher orders a report on a customer’s behalf — if yours does, we receive your details from them.
• Project details — the build ZIP code, square footage, foundation and finish selections, and your house plan (a plan URL, an uploaded PDF, or details you enter manually).
• Billing information — payments are processed by PayPal Merchant Services. We never store your credit card or banking information — it goes to PayPal, not to us.
• Site usage — basic analytics and cookies that help us understand how the site is used, and to help customers use the websites.

How we use your information

We use it to prepare your Cost To Build report, support your post-purchase edit window, send your receipt and report delivery emails, answer support requests, and improve the service. If you opt in, we may also send occasional emails about your project or our services — you can unsubscribe anytime.

When your plan comes from one of our partners

Some house plans our customers price are published by home-plan companies we partner with. We have co-marketing agreements with these partner home plan companies.

If you order a report for a plan published by one of our partners, we share your contact information and order details — including the report — with that plan’s publisher. This happens automatically at the time of sale, so the publisher can help you take the next step while your project is fresh: answering questions about the plan, quoting modifications, or completing a plan purchase.

We also send each partner a monthly reconciliation summary of the Cost To Build report and BudgetBuilder orders for their plans. It contains minimal order information: the order date, order number and ID, plan number, and the email address on the order. It is shared for reconciliation, not as a marketing list, and it includes no report contents and nothing else about you.

If you ask us or your plan publisher for help with your project, we may exchange the information needed to assist you between StartBuild and that home plan publisher.

• Each partner receives only the orders for its own plans. No partner ever sees your activity with another publisher.
• Reports for non-partner plans — a PDF from your architect, manually entered house plans, or a plan from a non-partner website — are not shared with anyone.
• You’ll always see a notice at checkout when this applies.

What we don’t do

We don’t sell your personal information to data brokers or advertisers.

Your choices

You can ask us to show you, correct, or delete the personal information we hold about you — use our data removal request form or our contact page. You can stop marketing and tips emails at any time using the Unsubscribe link in any marketing email, or in your account’s Email preferences.

Data retention and security

We keep your report and account data for as long as your access period runs and as required for tax and business records. Your password is stored in encrypted form — even we can’t see it, which is why we send you a reset link instead of your password if you forget it. Payments are handled entirely by PayPal as our merchant services. This may change as the credit card, banking, and payment systems change; credit card and banking details never touch our servers, for your security.

Children

Our services are for adults planning construction projects and are not directed to children under 16.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes, we’ll update the effective date above and note the change on this page.

See also our Terms of Service.