Made in Europe with love. Pipedesk OÜ, Pärnu mnt 22, 10141 Tallinn, Estonia
steps
A supporter who joins your walk gives you their number, their steps and a monthly donation. That deserves real privacy. Here are our promises, in plain words. Where they conflict with growth, the promises win.
Your supporters are yours. Steps runs the campaign for you and never sells, rents or shares their details, and it never messages them for anyone else. For your supporters' details, your organization is in charge, and Steps does the work on your behalf under a data processing agreement. You can download your supporter list any time.
The number a supporter texts from, the campaign they joined, and the messages they send. Their daily step goal and the monthly donation they chose. Their step counts, read by the Steps app only once they say yes. Any few words they choose to write about why they walk. The name they show on a leaderboard, if they choose to be on one, and whose invite link they joined through, if any. And what they give each month, so your campaign can add it up. Card details go to Stripe and never reach us. Nothing about a supporter is used to aim an ad at them.
Every campaign gets its own join word. Supporters text it to the Steps phone number, or tap your link or scan your QR code, which opens iMessage or WhatsApp with the word already typed. Then they set their daily steps and monthly donation, and install the Steps app. Steps only messages people who texted a join word themselves, in iMessage or WhatsApp. The first reply names the campaign and says "Reply STOP any time". After that, a walker hears from Steps once a month, with a short report, or weekly if they ask. Replying STOP ends everything, the messages and the monthly donation, once they confirm: after that Steps sends only one message saying they are out, and charges nothing more beyond the days they already walked. Asking to stop in any other plain way works too. Steps never messages a walker's contacts and never reads their address book.
Daily step counts, kept over weeks, can say something about a person's health, so we treat them with that care. A walker says yes in the Steps app before it reads their steps, and can take it back any time. A day counts when the steps their phone shares with Steps reach their daily goal, for that day in their own time zone. Because those days decide what they give, if a phone syncs its steps late or not for a while, Steps picks up the missing steps when it syncs again and recounts that day before the monthly charge. If a day still looks wrong, the walker can tell us. Steps uses step counts for four things only: the days walked, the walker's reports and score, the leaderboards and the campaign totals. Never to guess or comment on anyone's health, and never for ads. They are deleted when a walker leaves a campaign or asks us to.
A cause can have its own leaderboard of its walkers, ranked by the days they reached their goal and showing each walker's average daily steps, and each walker sees a leaderboard of their own, with the friends who joined through their invite link. A walker appears on a leaderboard only if they choose to join it, under the name they pick, and can leave any time. Every walker gets a personal link to pass on to friends themselves, and now and then Steps may invite a walker to share a good month. Steps never messages anyone for them.
Steps is software. A local AI model writes its short replies to supporters. Nothing a supporter sends is used to train AI, and Steps never gives health advice. By default it sends each walker one short report a month, or a weekly one if they ask, and answers when they write, including when they ask for their score. It sends no daily texts and no reminders to walk. If a walker wrote a few words about why they walk, a report may send those words back, exactly as they wrote them. Those words are the walker's, used only to send back to them, and deleted when they leave or ask. It is not a medical program. The rules it follows are public, at steps.org/safety.
A walker sets up a monthly donation, say $30 a month. Each day they reach their goal gives a set amount, like $1, and a missed day gives nothing. At the end of each billing month, which starts on the day they set it up, the card they saved with Stripe is charged for the days they walked in it, up to their monthly donation, straight into your organization's own Stripe account, so Steps never holds a donation. They can change their monthly donation or goal, or stop, any time. Donors can add a tip for Steps. It starts at zero, sits on its own line, and is added on top of the donation, so the whole donation reaches the cause.
What sits on our servers for a campaign: supporters' numbers, the campaign they joined, their messages, their goal and monthly donation, their step counts once they said yes, the days they walked, any words they wrote about why they walk, their leaderboard name if they chose one, whose invite link they joined through, what they gave, and records of their conversations with Steps. Those records are kept for one purpose, making Steps reply better, and never to train AI or sell anything. For your team: the details you give us in the sign-up or contact form, and the campaign we build together. For this website: which link brought you here. steps.org counts visits too, with Seline and Google Analytics, and you can switch that off. We say all of this plainly, because no system is a perfect black box.
A walker can stop their monthly donation whenever they like, and no later charges follow: days already walked in the current billing month are charged at its end. They can reply STOP to end both the messages and the monthly donation, and ask to be deleted. Their steps and any words they wrote about why they walk are deleted when they leave a campaign or ask us to. When your organization asks us to delete its campaign data, we do, as our agreement with you sets out. There is no "deactivated" limbo.
Steps is run by Pipedesk OÜ in Estonia, and data is stored encrypted in EU data centers, under the GDPR, which gives you rights you can enforce. Some services that run Steps are in the US, like Sendblue for iMessage and Google Analytics for counting visits. WhatsApp messages go through Meta, payments through Stripe, and our sign-up and contact forms through Formspark. The policy names every one. The legal version of this page is the Privacy Policy.
Steps began as a journal in iMessage, at app.steps.org. If you have an account there, every promise below still holds.
Never sold, never used for ads, never handed to anyone, and never used to train AI. Your journal is there for you to read. Someone at Steps may read a conversation record to make replies better. Before anyone can, we automatically hide the names we can find in it (yours, your kids', anyone you mention) and every email and phone number.
A phone number, so Steps can message you in iMessage. The words you send. The mornings and the time you chose, your questions, and the note you keep with each one. And how you told Steps you like to be messaged ("keep it short", "call me T"), which you can read and forget in Settings. No mood scores, and those preferences never hold facts about your life.
An AI model from Anthropic writes the journal's short replies too. It asks your questions when you reply, saves your answers, reads them back when you ask, and remembers how you asked to be messaged. It never reads your mood or tells you how you are. Once a day, entries from days that have ended go to Anthropic to be labelled with what they're about and the names they mention, only so you can find them and so a repeated word can be counted.
The numbers Steps shows you are simple counts, worked out by code from your own record and shown only to you: your score, the mornings in a row a question went unanswered (only if you turn that count on), and figures you wrote yourself, when you ask. When one word keeps coming up in your recent answers to a question, one fixed line says so before it, unless you ask Steps to switch that off. A note to self comes back in your own words, exactly as you wrote it. A skipped morning is saved like any other day.
Take everything with you any time. Delete your account and everything (your journal, your schedule, your number) is gone for good within 30 days. Your journal stays readable and exportable at app.steps.org, free, whether you keep a plan or not.
steps.org and the app count visits with Seline and Google Analytics, and remember which link brought you here, so we can tell which ones bring people who stay.
Your supporters can stop their monthly donation, leave or ask to be deleted any time. Your journal, if you keep one, is yours to read, take or erase at app.steps.org.
Questions about any of this, or something that falls short of it? You can send us a message. The legal version lives in the Privacy Policy and Terms.