Privacy Policy

Who's responsible for this site

SoapmakingToolbox (soapmakingtoolbox.com) is operated by Hamilton Digital Media Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under number 15608219, with its registered office at 13a Mill Lane, Wimborne, Dorset, BH21 1LN, United Kingdom. Hamilton Digital Media Limited is the data controller for this site. Privacy questions and requests go to [email protected], and we answer all of them.

Your recipes stay in your browser

The calculators remember your work so you don't retype it every visit. All of it is written to local storage in your own browser. It is not sent to our servers, we cannot see it, and it doesn't exist anywhere except on the device you typed it into. Here is the complete list of what this site stores and why:

That's the lot. There is no sixth thing.

Two of those deserve a sentence of their own. Your ingredient prices and selling numbers — what you pay suppliers, what your hour is worth, your margins — are commercially sensitive in a way a soap recipe isn't. They are stored exactly like everything else: in your browser, never transmitted, invisible to us. We mention it because a tool that asks for your cost base ought to say plainly where that cost base goes.

Local storage also means your work isn't backed up or synced. Clearing your browser data clears your saved recipes, and a different device starts fresh. If you want a recipe to outlive the browser, use the copy-link button and keep the link somewhere. You can wipe everything yourself at any time:

Recipe links, and what's in them

Every calculator here writes what you entered into the address bar, so the link is the recipe — that's what makes it shareable, bookmarkable and printable. That link contains your oils, weights, superfat, water and, on the cost calculator, whatever pricing figures you typed. It contains nothing about who you are: no name, no email, no identifier of any kind.

The practical consequence is simply that a link you share carries the numbers in it. Post a recipe link on a forum and people can read your recipe — usually the entire point. Send someone a costing link and they can read your margins, which probably isn't. If you want to share the recipe but not the money, share a link from the recipe builder or the lye calculator rather than the cost calculator. We never see any of these links; the numbers are processed in your browser, and the address bar is not sent to us.

What our host records

The site is served by our hosting provider, which keeps standard server logs — IP address, browser type, the page requested, and the time. These are generated automatically by essentially every website on the internet, are used for security and diagnosing faults, and are held on our host's normal retention schedule. We don't combine them with anything else or use them to build a picture of you.

Analytics

We currently run no analytics at all — no Google Analytics, no tracking pixels, no third-party scripts watching what you do here. If that changes we'll say so on this page, name the provider, and ask for consent first where the law requires it.

Affiliate links

Some links to products are affiliate links: if you buy something after clicking one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Clicking an affiliate link takes you to the retailer's own site, where that retailer typically sets a cookie to attribute the sale. That cookie is theirs, governed by their privacy policy, and it's how they know the visit came from us. We never see your order details, your payment information, or what you bought — only, at most, an anonymous count of sales attributed to the site. Commission never changes a calculation: the saponification value of an oil is the same number whoever sells it. Our affiliate disclosure names every program we're in — currently none.

Emailing us

If you email us, we keep the message so we can reply and — where it's a correction or a bug in the math — so we can fix the thing you reported. We don't add you to any mailing list, because we don't have one. Corrections go to [email protected] and are genuinely welcome.

Cookies, honestly

SoapmakingToolbox sets no cookies of its own. Your saved work uses local storage, which is a different mechanism: it's readable only by this site, it isn't attached to network requests, and it isn't used to track you. The only cookies you might pick up are the retailers' own, after you click through an affiliate link to their shop.

Your rights

Under the UK/EU GDPR you have the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict the processing of personal data we hold about you, to object to processing, and to complain to a supervisory authority. Under the CCPA/CPRA, California residents have rights to know, delete, and opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information — we don't sell or share it, so there's nothing to opt out of.

In practice, the personal data we hold amounts to emails you've chosen to send us. Write to [email protected] and we'll act on any of these requests. Your recipes and costings aren't included in that, for the simple reason that we've never had a copy — use the button above and they're gone.

Children

This site is about handling sodium and potassium hydroxide, which are caustic chemicals. It is aimed at adults, isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

Changes to this policy

If we add anything that changes the picture — analytics, an email list, a new third-party service — we'll update this page and change the date at the top. Because there are no accounts, we can't email you about it, so the date is the honest signal to watch.

Contact

Privacy questions: [email protected]. Anything else: the contact page.