Legal pages for a one-person app
Shipping alone does not reduce the requirements, but it does change what is worth your afternoon.
What this is
Shipping alone does not reduce the requirements, but it does change what is worth your afternoon.
Step by step
- Write the privacy policy first. Everything else is derived from it.
- Use your own name if you have no company. An individual can contract; a made-up entity cannot.
- Publish a deletion page even if deletion is a manual email on your side. Say that it is.
- Set a support route you will actually read.
- Do not claim certifications, insurance or a team you do not have.
One thing people miss
The single biggest risk for a solo developer is not the wording. It is a link that dies when a free hosting trial ends.
Keeping it true after launch
A legal page stops being true the moment the product moves past it, usually by adding a payment provider, an analytics SDK or a sign-in. No store re-checks your pages against your build, so the drift is yours to notice.
- Re-read it whenever you add a dependency that sees user data.
- Re-check what loads on the page after any change: the cookie notice and the policy have to agree.
- Keep the URL stable. Changing where a policy lives breaks every listing that points at it.
Common questions
How long does this take?
Minutes, once the page it points at exists. The writing is the slow part, not the form.
Can I change it later?
Yes, and you should whenever the app changes. What you want to avoid is changing the URL, because everything that points at it breaks.