Get started

Get started with your backend

Every Willo business has its own backend for data, member logins, files and server code. What it does, when it appears, and how you work with it.

Last updated Open in ClaudeOpen in ChatGPT
On this page

Your site is what visitors see. Your backend is what remembers things: the form submissions, the customer list, the member accounts, the uploaded photos, and the small pieces of server code that talk to other services. Every Willo business has its own, separate from every other business.

What it gives your site

  • A database of tables: contact-form messages, bookings, orders, a waitlist, anything your site needs to save and read back.
  • Member login, so your customers can sign up, sign in and see their own pages.
  • File storage for images and uploads.
  • Backend functions: server code for jobs a web page can't do safely, such as taking a payment, sending an email through your account with an email service, or receiving a webhook from another app.
  • Scheduled jobs that run one of those functions on a timer.

When it appears

Your backend is created automatically when your business's first build starts. There is nothing to set up or buy, and it is normally ready long before the build finishes. If a business has never been built, it has no backend yet; starting the first build creates it.

Every business gets one. What your plan changes is how much backend usage is included each month. See Pricing.

How you work with it

There is no database screen to learn. You describe what you want in chat, and Willo builds the backend side and the site side together:

  • "Add a booking form that saves name, email, date and party size, and email me each new booking."
  • "Let customers sign up and see their past orders."
  • "Show me this week's contact form messages."
  • "Who signed up for the waitlist yesterday?"

Willo creates the tables, sets the access rules, writes the functions and wires up the pages. Changes that could lose data or that reach the live site straight away stop for you to confirm first.

Drafts and the backend

If your business drafts changes before they go live, the backend has a draft copy too. Schema changes, functions and test data land on the draft backend, and you try them in the draft preview. Publishing applies the schema changes and functions to your live backend; test rows stay behind. A few things are always live: member accounts, scheduled jobs and storage buckets. The full picture is in Draft and live.

Your included usage

Your plan includes a monthly amount of backend usage: database activity, storage and bandwidth. You get an email at 85% and again at 95%. At 100% the backend pauses. Your data is kept, and your pages still load, but forms, logins and images stop working until it resumes: on its own on the 1st of the next month, or within minutes of moving to a plan that covers this month's usage. A Backend Boost on a paid plan raises the allowance too. See Backend usage and Backend troubleshooting.

Next