Privacy at a glance

If you give us your email

If you enter your email but do not finish creating an account, we store it only so we can send you your sign-in link and occasional updates. No spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

If you use the app

Your account details, classes and calendar events are stored securely so the app works across your visits.

Connecting an outside calendar

If you connect a school or personal calendar (for example a Canvas, Blackboard or other iCal link), Zella fetches the events from that link and stores them in your account so they show on your calendar and stay up to date. We keep the link itself private and use it only to refresh those events. You can disconnect it anytime, which removes those imported events.

Syncing to your phone calendar

If you turn on phone-calendar sync, Zella gives you a private subscription link that your phone's calendar app reads. Your schedule events (not your mood, energy or health data, which never leave your device) are sent through that link to your calendar app so they appear alongside everything else. This is one-way: changes you make in your phone's calendar do not come back into Zella. You can reset the link anytime to shut off access.

Your private data stays on your device

Mood, energy, period and headache details are kept only on your device by default. Mood and energy are never shared. For health, the student can choose to share a simple weekly summary (which days had a headache or period, yes or no) with a linked parent and turn it off anytime. No symptoms, notes, flow or pain levels ever leave the device.

How Zella handles your teen's health data

Crisis language detection

Zella checks for language related to suicide or self-harm in the things you write or say to it: notes and titles on an event, a goal or a goal step, your Daily Big 3, a meditation reflection and anything you speak to the microphone. The check happens on your device.

If it finds something, Zella pauses and points you to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. It does not notify your parents, your school or anyone else. You always choose what to do next.

When that happens, one anonymous record is kept so we can review how often the feature is being used. That record contains only the hour it happened and which part of the app it came from. It does not contain your name, your account or a single word of what you wrote. It is never shared with parents, schools or third parties.

Analytics and product improvement

Zella collects anonymized usage data to help us understand how the app is being used and improve it over time. This data does not include your name, email address, health information, mood or energy scores or any content you enter into the app. It includes things like which features are used most often and how long sessions typically last.

This data is stored on servers with enhanced data protection standards appropriate for applications serving minors. It is never sold and never shared with third parties.

Health data, mood scores, energy scores and cycle tracking data are never included in analytics. These stay on your device and are never sent to our servers. We can see that you used the mood or energy check-in, because that tells us the feature is worth keeping, but never the score you chose.

Third party services

Voice transcription

When you use the voice-to-calendar feature, the audio you speak is sent to OpenAI for transcription. OpenAI converts your spoken words to text so Zella can create your calendar event. This audio is processed by OpenAI and is not stored permanently by Zella. We do not send any personally identifiable information to OpenAI alongside your audio.

AI event structuring

The transcribed text from your voice input is processed by OpenAI to identify the event title, date, time and class. This is text only, not audio. It contains only the words you spoke to create a calendar event.

Read aloud

When you use the read-aloud feature, the text of your event or note is sent to OpenAI's text-to-speech service to generate audio. This text contains only the content of your calendar event or note.

What is never sent to OpenAI or any third party

Your health data, period tracking, headache logs, mood scores, energy scores, cycle phase data, goal content, habit data and any information you enter outside of the voice-to-calendar and read-aloud features never leave your device and are never sent to OpenAI or any other third party.

There is one narrow exception. It is worth being precise about. If the crisis language detection described above is triggered, Zella sends a single anonymous record: the hour it happened and which part of the app it came from. No text, no name, no account. Nothing you actually wrote is ever transmitted.

Parents

A linked parent sees the student's calendar, read-only. They never see mood or energy. They see a weekly health summary only if the student turns sharing on. The student can turn it off at any time.

Children

Zella is for ages 13 and up. We check age at signup, block under-13 accounts and do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13.

Where Zella is available

Zella is currently available to users in the United States only.

We never sell your data

Your information is used to run Zella for you, nothing else.

Questions?

Use the Contact form on our home page and we'll get back to you.