How ema handles your event data

Every event platform asks you to hand over attendee data, exhibitor details, financial records, and more. Most of them don't tell you much about what happens to that data once it's in their system. We think you deserve a straight answer.

This isn't a privacy policy. You can read that too, but this is the version written for humans.

Where your data lives

ema runs on cloud infrastructure hosted in Australia. Your event data — registrations, schedules, exhibitor records, documents, financials — is stored in encrypted databases. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit. Backups are automated, encrypted, and tested regularly.

We don't store data on developer laptops. We don't email spreadsheets of attendee lists around internally. The basics, but worth stating because not every platform can say the same.

Who can access what

ema uses permission-aware access throughout the platform. That means your team controls who sees what, down to the role level.

An exhibitor logging into their portal sees their booth details, compliance requirements, and their own data. They don't see other exhibitors' information, your internal notes, or your budget. A speaker sees their session details, submission status, and AV requirements — not your scheduling conflicts or review committee comments.

Inside your own team, you set the permissions. Admin, editor, viewer — each role has defined boundaries. If someone shouldn't be editing the budget, they can't. If a volunteer only needs the check-in list, that's all they get.

This isn't a bolt-on feature. It's how the platform works at every level. Permissions follow the data, not the page.

What we do with your data

We use your data to run the platform. That means processing registrations, generating reports, powering the AI agent's recommendations, building your schedules, and handling payments through Stripe.

That's it.

We don't mine your attendee data for advertising. We don't build profiles of your registrants to sell to third parties. We don't use your event data to train models that benefit other customers. Your data powers your events, in your account, for your team.

What we don't do

Worth being explicit about:

• We don't sell attendee data. Not to sponsors, not to partners, not to anyone. Ever.
• We don't share data between accounts. Your events are yours. Another ema customer can't see your registrations, your exhibitors, or your floor plans.
• We don't use your data for marketing. We won't email your attendees. We won't add them to any list. They're your attendees, not ours.
• We don't hold your data hostage. More on that below.

Your data is yours — including when you leave

This is where a lot of platforms get uncomfortable. We don't.

You can export your data at any time. Registrations, attendee records, exhibitor data, financial reports, documents, schedules — all of it. Standard formats, no hoops to jump through, no "contact support to request an export" process.

If you decide to leave ema, you take everything with you. We'll help you export it cleanly. We don't charge exit fees. We don't throttle exports. We don't make it artificially painful to switch.

Some platforms treat data portability as a threat. We treat it as a baseline expectation. If the only reason a customer stays is because leaving is too hard, that's not a product worth building.

How the AI agent handles data

ema's AI agent works within the same permission model as everything else. It can access the data your role allows and nothing more. If you ask it to pull a report on exhibitor compliance, it uses the data you're authorised to see.

The agent doesn't send your data to external services for processing. It works within the platform, using your event data in context, and it doesn't retain conversation history beyond your current session.

What about sub-processors and third parties?

We use Stripe for payment processing — they handle card data directly, and we never see or store card numbers. We use standard cloud infrastructure providers for hosting and storage. Each sub-processor is assessed for security and data handling practices.

We keep the list short on purpose. Every additional service that touches your data is another surface to manage. We'd rather build more in-house and keep the chain tight.

The short version

Your event data is stored securely in Australia, encrypted, and access-controlled. We don't sell it, share it, or use it for anything other than running your events. You can export everything, anytime, in standard formats. If you leave, you take it all with you.

We think this should be unremarkable. The fact that it's worth writing a blog post about says something about the state of event tech. We'd rather just do the right thing and be clear about it.