Privacy Policy.

This website (arteplandscapes.com) is operated by Artep Landscapes & Construction (“Artep,” “we,” “us,” “our”), a landscape design, hardscape and property care company based in Kennesaw, Georgia, serving metro Atlanta.

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect through this website, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It applies to information collected online through this website. It does not cover information you give us offline, for example on a job site or over the phone, although we treat that information with the same care.

“Personal information” means information that identifies you or could reasonably be linked to you, such as your name, email address, phone number or home address.

Information you give us. When you fill out a form on this website, we collect the details you enter. Depending on the form, this can include:

• Your name, email address and phone number
• Your project address or ZIP code
• The service or project type you are interested in, your estimated budget and when you would like to start
• Anything else you choose to write in your message

Information collected automatically. When you visit the website, our server automatically receives standard technical information from your browser, such as your IP address, browser type and the pages you request (see Section 5). Our analytics tool counts visits in a privacy-friendly way that does not identify you (see Section 6).

What we don’t collect. We do not take payments on this website, and we never ask for Social Security numbers, bank details or card numbers through it. Please don’t include sensitive information like this in a form message.

Our website has several forms for requesting a free estimate, a design consultation or a quote, and for sending us a message. When you submit one of these forms, your entries are:

• Emailed to our business inbox, contact@arteplandscapes.com, so we can reply to you
• Saved as a form entry in our website’s database, so we have a record of your request

We use this information to respond to you, prepare your estimate, schedule a visit and, if you hire us, carry out and follow up on your project. We do not save your IP address or device details with form submissions.

If you sign up for our newsletter or seasonal yard tips, we collect your email address and, if you give it, your first name. We use them only to send you occasional emails with seasonal landscaping tips, project ideas and news from Artep.

We send these emails using Kit (formerly ConvertKit), an email marketing service based in the United States. Kit stores your email address and name on our behalf and may record whether an email was delivered, opened or clicked, so we can see which tips are useful. Kit handles this data under its own privacy policy.

Every email includes an unsubscribe link, and you can also unsubscribe by emailing us. Once you unsubscribe, we stop sending you these emails.

Our website, our business email inbox, our website backups and our analytics all run on dedicated servers managed for us by our web developer and rented from Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany. Our web developer and Hetzner act only as service providers. They may access the data only as needed to run, maintain, secure and back up these systems, and not for their own purposes.

When you visit this website, the server automatically records certain technical information in log files, including:

• IP address
• Date and time of the visit
• Browser type and version, and operating system
• The page you came from (referrer)
• The pages you requested and the amount of data transferred

We use Plausible Analytics, a privacy-friendly analytics tool, to understand how many people visit our website, which pages they look at and which links they click to leave the site. We run Plausible on our own server in Germany, so this data is not shared with an analytics company.

Plausible does not use cookies, does not collect or store personal identifiers, and does not follow you across other websites or over time. Your IP address is used only briefly to count unique visits and is not stored. We only ever see totals, such as “120 visitors viewed the Portfolio page this week.”

Our Contact page shows an embedded Google Map so you can see where we are. The map is provided by Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. When the map loads, your browser connects to Google, which receives your IP address and technical information about your browser, and Google may set its own cookies.

We don’t control what Google does with this data and don’t receive any of it. Google’s use is covered by the Google Privacy Policy. If you’d rather not load the map, you can find our address in Section 1 instead.

Our website links to our Facebook and Instagram pages. These are simple links: no information is sent to Facebook or Instagram until you click one. Once you visit those sites, their own privacy policies apply.

Cookies are small text files that a website stores in your browser. We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels or any tool that follows you across other websites. Our own website does not use cookies to identify or track visitors. Any cookies it may set are strictly necessary for the site to work securely and quickly, such as for spam and attack protection or page caching. The only third-party cookies you may receive come from the embedded Google Map on our Contact page (see Section 7).

You can block or delete cookies at any time in your browser settings. The website will keep working normally.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. Some browsers can send a “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control” signal. Because we don’t track visitors across websites, sell personal information or use it for targeted advertising, there is nothing for these signals to switch off, and everyone gets the same privacy-friendly experience whether or not the signal is on. We also do not allow third parties to collect personal information about your online activities over time and across websites through our site, except for the Google Map described above.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for targeted advertising. We share it only in these situations:

• Service providers who help us run our website and business, such as our web developer, our hosting provider Hetzner and our email provider Kit. They may only use the information to provide their services to us.
• Partners on your project, such as a supplier or subcontractor, but only the details needed to complete work you asked for, like a delivery address.
• Legal reasons, when required by law, a court order or to protect the rights, property or safety of Artep, our customers or others.
• Business changes, if our business is sold or merged, in which case the new owner would have to honor this policy.

California residents: we do not share personal information with third parties for their own direct marketing purposes.

Although Artep is based in Georgia, our website, email and analytics servers are located in Germany. This means information you submit through this website, or send to our business email, is stored on servers in Germany. Our German hosting provider is subject to strict European data protection and security rules.

We use reasonable safeguards to protect your information, including encrypted HTTPS connections for the whole website, a firewall and brute-force protection, malware scanning, restricted administrator access and regular software updates and backups.

No website or email system can be guaranteed 100% secure. If a security breach ever affects your personal information, we will notify you as required by Georgia law and any other law that applies.

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purposes described in this policy, or as long as the law requires, for example for tax and accounting records. In short:

• Quote and contact requests: up to 3 years after our last contact if no project follows, longer for customer records where needed
• Seasonal tips emails: until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete your details
• Server logs: typically within 30 days
• Analytics: only anonymous totals, which contain no personal information

When information is no longer needed, we delete it or make it anonymous.

Wherever you live, you can ask us to:

• Tell you what personal information we have about you and give you a copy
• Correct information that is wrong or incomplete
• Delete your information, unless we have to keep it for legal, tax or warranty reasons
• Stop sending you tips emails (or simply use the unsubscribe link in any email)

Some state laws, such as the Georgia Consumer Privacy Protection Act and California privacy laws, give residents specific privacy rights. Many of these laws only apply to much larger businesses, but we honor the requests above for every customer and visitor anyway. We never sell personal information or use it for targeted advertising, so there is no sale or ad tracking to opt out of.

To make a request, email or call us using the details in Section 17. We may ask you to confirm some details so we can verify that the request is really from you. We aim to respond within 45 days, and we will never treat you differently for using these rights.

This website is meant for adults planning landscaping projects and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, for example when we add a new service or tool to the website or when the law changes. The current version is always available on this page, with the “Last updated” date at the top. If we make a significant change, we will make it clear on this page before it takes effect.

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, want to make a request about your information, or have a concern about how we handle it, please contact us: