Is WoodWright a subscription?
No — and there's no one-time purchase either, because there is nothing to buy. The desktop CAD is free: no monthly fee, no annual term, no seat count, no revenue cap, no trial clock, no card. Install it on every bench in the shop and run paying work through it. The only thing that ever costs money is the optional cloud AI, and that's prepaid credits you buy when you want them — never a recurring charge.
Do I own my files? What format are they in?
You own them, and you can check rather than take our word for it. A job saves to your own disk as a
.ww file — one header line, then the whole job as plain JSON you can open in Notepad. Parts go out as layered DXF to any CAM and cut lists as CSV. The app runs signed out and works offline; online, it reports once a day: an install id, the version, your OS, how far into the app you have got and counts of your work, never a dimension or a client (details on the privacy page), with one switch to turn it off. If we vanished tomorrow, every drawing you've made would still open.
Read the format, byte for byte →How do I buy credits, and how do they reach the app?
On your account page at woodwright.app: sign in with your email (we send a link, no password), pick a pack and pay on Stripe's own checkout page. It is one charge, nothing recurs, and Stripe emails the receipt. The credit usually lands within seconds. In the desktop app, choose Sign in at the top and approve the code in the browser tab it opens; the app then spends that same balance and shows it beside your name. A new account starts at $0, and a render that fails or comes back broken costs nothing.
Go to your account →Can I get a surprise bill?
No. The AI is prepaid — you buy credits up front and spend them down. There's no monthly charge that runs whether you use it or not, and auto-refill stays off unless you turn it on and pick the amount. When credits run out, the AI simply pauses.
What happens when my credits hit $0?
The cloud AI pauses — that's it. WoodWright itself keeps running normally: every design, cut list, nest, and G-code file you've made still opens and works, fully offline. You top up credits whenever you want more AI.
If I stop paying, do I lose my work?
Never — there's nothing to stop paying for. The CAD is free and runs without a licence check, so there is no moment at which it stops opening. And if you'd bought AI credits and let them run out, the app is untouched: your designs, cut lists, nests and DXFs are files on your machine, not rows in our database. There is no server that can lock you out of your own drawings — the whole point of WoodWright.
What if you get bought, or start charging later?
It's the right question — shops have watched exactly that happen to software they depended on. We won't promise you a future nobody can honestly promise. What we can do is make it not matter: the build you installed keeps running whether or not we do, it never checks a licence server, and your jobs are readable text on your own disk. Anything we ever charge for can only apply to new cloud AI credits — never to the CAD you already have, and never to a file you already drew.
Is it really per-shop, not per-seat?
Yes. Install the free client on every workstation in the shop — no seat count, no revenue cap, no license server. We make money only when you choose to use the cloud AI.
Why is the AI the only paid part?
Design, nesting, and G-code run on your own computer, so they cost us nothing to give away. AI renders and the Draftsman call AI models that bill us for every request — credits cover that at a fair, transparent rate that tracks the underlying cloud cost.