MerchLens AI Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 26, 2026
MerchLens AI ("MerchLens", "we", "us") is a Shopify app made by SparTech Software of Burleson, Texas, United States. It gives Shopify merchants sales, inventory, customer and marketing analytics for their store. This policy explains what information the app handles, why, who it's shared with, and how long it's kept. Questions: support@merchlensai.com.
Who this policy covers
- Merchants: Shopify store owners and their staff who install and use MerchLens AI.
- Merchants' customers: people who buy from a store that uses MerchLens AI. We process their information only on the merchant's behalf and under the merchant's instructions (we are the merchant's "processor").
- Visitors to merchlensai.com.
Information we handle
From the merchant's Shopify store, through Shopify's API, once the merchant installs the app and approves its permissions:
- Orders: dates, totals, discounts, refunds, line items (product, size, color, quantity, price) and the order's sales channel.
- Products and inventory: titles, types, vendors, collections, tags, prices, costs, stock levels and product images (images are read, not stored).
- Customers: an ID, the customer's name, how many orders they've placed, and whether they agreed to receive marketing email. We use customer email addresses and phone numbers only to recognise when two customer records belong to the same person; we don't store them.
- The store's name, timezone and Shopify plan, and storefront traffic figures from Shopify's analytics (visits, sources, devices, countries), which are aggregate counts.
About merchant staff who use the app: when someone signs in with Shopify, Shopify tells us their name, email and staff ID. These are kept in a signed cookie in their browser for the session; we don't keep a user database. We log each time a signed-in person opens a view that shows customer names (time, store, user, page, IP address) so access to personal data can be audited.
When you contact support at merchlensai.com/support/: your name, email, store address, what you write and any screenshots you attach. We use them only to answer you. Screenshots can show store figures, so attach only what's needed for the question. Each ticket has a private link that works like a password; anyone with it can read the ticket.
About how the app is used: we use Google Analytics to count which screens of the app and pages of merchlensai.com are viewed. The app sends only the name of the screen, the store's plan and whether the app was opened inside Shopify; it never sends store, sales or customer data.
We don't knowingly collect information from children, and we don't sell personal information or use it for advertising.
How we use it
- To show the merchant their analytics: sales, forecasts, inventory, customer segments, retention, recommendations and marketing plans.
- For the AI features (questions about the store, weekly briefing, buying insights, style tagging, marketing drafts): the relevant store figures are sent to our AI provider to produce the answer. If a merchant asks about their customers, customer names can be part of what's sent.
- To bill for the app (through Shopify), provide support, keep the service secure, and meet legal obligations.
Win-back and recommendation lists mark whether each customer agreed to email marketing, so merchants can respect that choice when they reach out. MerchLens doesn't contact merchants' customers itself.
Who we share it with
Only these service providers, to run the app:
| Provider | What for | Data |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify | The platform the app runs on; billing | Everything above comes from Shopify |
| Hostinger | Server hosting (Phoenix, Arizona, United States) | All stored data, encrypted backups |
| Anthropic | AI features | Store figures needed for each AI request, sometimes customer names |
| Usage analytics (Google Analytics) | Screen names, plan, embedded or not |
Merchants can also connect their own chatbot (ChatGPT, Claude and others) to MerchLens. That connection shares sales totals, products and inventory only, never customer names, emails or phone numbers, and only when the merchant sets it up.
We may disclose information if the law requires it.
How long we keep it
- Store data stays while the app is installed. When a merchant uninstalls, Shopify tells us 48 hours later to delete the store's data, and we delete it.
- A customer's data is removed from the store's records when Shopify forwards that customer's deletion request.
- Access logs are kept for 90 days.
- Support tickets and their screenshots are deleted two years after the ticket is solved, or sooner if you ask us to delete them.
- Backups are encrypted and kept for 14 days, so deleted data disappears from backups within 14 days. Our host also keeps daily server backups for a limited period.
Your rights
Merchants' customers who want to see, correct or delete their data should contact the store they bought from; Shopify passes those requests to us and we act on them. Merchants can contact us at support@merchlensai.com. Depending on where you live (for example the EU, UK or California) you may have rights to access, correct, delete or port your data, or to object to its use.
Security
All traffic is encrypted (HTTPS). Each store's Shopify access token is encrypted at rest, backups are encrypted, and each store's data is kept in its own process and folder so one store can't reach another's. Stored data sits on an encrypted disk volume. Server access is limited to SparTech staff using key-based login.
Changes
We'll update this page when the app changes how it handles information, and tell merchants in the app about significant changes.
Contact
SparTech Software · Burleson, Texas, United States · support@merchlensai.com