How builds run
What happens in your business's first build, what the full site build does and costs, how later changes are built, and how long each takes.
On this page
Willo builds your site in three ways: the first build when a business is created, an optional full site build from a brief, and the everyday rebuild after each change.
The first build
When you finish setting up a new business, Willo plans it with you in chat and then builds it. The planning and the site build run side by side, and the whole first run usually takes 5 to 15 minutes. What it produces depends on what you said you are building. What the first build ships lists each kind.
Two things happen in every case:
- A live website at your business's own
bywillo.aiaddress. - A code repository holding the site's source, which you can read on GitHub (see Your code).
You'll get an email when it finishes. You don't need to keep the tab open.
The full site build
When Willo plans a new business with you, the plan card can offer a full site build: up to 12 pages built from your brief and deployed in one run of about 10 minutes, instead of growing the site page by page in chat.
- It is on paid plans. A Free business sees the offer and can upgrade.
- It is charged for the work it actually does, and the card shows what you need available to start. A build that fails to finish costs nothing. If you stop it partway, you pay for the work done so far.
- Pages beyond the first 12 carry on in chat.
Rebuilds after each change
Every change to the site, from chat, the edit tools, an AI agent or a published content item, rebuilds it. A rebuild usually takes two to five minutes. Small edits to a few files are quick. Larger jobs, such as a redesign or a new feature across many files, run as a longer coding session; Willo says when it starts one.
With drafting on, a rebuild updates the draft preview, and the live site rebuilds when you publish.
Watching progress
The chat shows each step Willo takes as it happens, and documents it writes appear as cards you can open. The preview blurs while a rebuild runs and clears when it is done. Business → Activity keeps the full history.
When a build seems stuck
The first build runs several steps in order, and the site build alone can take five minutes or more. Before deciding it is stuck:
- Wait at least 15 minutes from the start.
- Refresh the page. This reconnects the progress feed; it does not restart the build.
- Ask Willo: "check my deploy status". It can see whether the site build succeeded, failed or is still running.
- Ask Willo: "check my infrastructure and repair anything that's missing". It can retry the steps that set up your site.
- Still nothing after 30 minutes? Contact support from the ? menu with your business's name.
See When a build or deploy fails for failed deploys.