Durable test data

Each of the three fixed briefs was pasted word for word into Durable's 'Share more details' box, after its four short questions. The clock ran from pressing Start building to the finished draft on screen. The shop then went live on Launch: the clock for publishing ran from pressing 'Publish website' to a 200 answer at the public address. Only the shop could be published, because a plan belongs to one business.

The three drafts took 81 seconds (cafe), 70 (photographer) and 60 (shop). On 29 October 2026 the shop's page answered at https://fernhook-ceramics-lzcqnfa5.durable.site 4 seconds after I pressed 'Publish website', so brief to live was about 64 seconds. A box then offered a free custom domain; I pressed 'Skip for now'.

The cafe and the photographer stayed on the free plan, where the Publish menu still says 'Pick a plan to go live in seconds'. Each would need its own plan. Durable asks four questions first: the kind of business, where it is, its name and a phone number, then 'Share more details' takes the whole brief.

• Times come from my session log, and the publish time from the press of the button to the first answer from the live address. The shop draft waited unpublished for about eight hours before the plan was bought.

Every page of the three first drafts was loaded at 360, 768 and 1440 pixels wide on the preview address. The checker counted sideways scrolling, tap targets under 24 pixels, text under WCAG AA contrast (axe-core), placeholders, broken images and overlapping text, once per type per page. I then ran axe-core on every page at 1440 and 390 pixels, walked each page with the Tab key and compared the three drafts. The drafts were checked before I edited anything.

36 faults on 21 pages: 16 on the cafe (tap targets under 24 pixels and overlapping text on all 8 pages), 4 on the photographer (pale text on 3 of 5 pages and small tap targets on 1) and 16 on the shop (tap targets and overlapping text on all 8 pages).

The overlap is real. On a phone the round 'Built with Durable' badge sits over body text at the bottom-left of every page, and a cart and a Book a Table button float over the page. No sideways scrolling and no broken image was found at any width.

Accessibility (WB-D3): no critical problem on any page. The photographer's pages have serious colour-contrast problems on 3 of 5 pages (146 elements at desktop width, mostly white text on a photo); the cafe and shop have none. The cafe and shop product pages have no main heading (moderate). Walking the pages with the Tab key reached 157 of 216 focusable items on the cafe, 107 of 116 on the photographer and 159 of 215 on the shop; a focus ring was missing on 22, 23 and 22 of them at desktop width.

Look-alike check (WB-A2): the three sites share a layout (a big headline, a photo, three feature cards, customer quotes, a questions block and a footer) but differ in colours, photos and fonts (the photographer's site is set in Lora). They look like one family with a theme each.

Switching template after the content is in (WB-D1): possible and quick. Themes shows six options in about 28 seconds, each already holding my edited text. I applied the dark green one ('Professional Structure applied'): layout, colours and fonts changed, my headline and button text stayed. 'Confirm this theme' or 'Undo theme' ends it, and the top bar can show a phone and a tablet view.

• The pages were checked on the preview address, not a published site, and the checker flags the floating badge and buttons that a paid plan may remove. The tap-target and contrast counts follow the same rules as for Wix, Lovable and Hostinger.

Each brief has 20 facts. Every page of each first draft was read and each fact marked right, missing or wrong. Anything the AI added that the brief did not give was listed as invented: customer quotes, staff, products and claims. Generic marketing wording was not counted.

54 of 60 facts were right: 17 of 20 on the cafe, 18 of 20 on the photographer and 19 of 20 on the shop. 4 were wrong and 2 were missing.

Wrong: the cafe said 'open Tuesday to Sunday' where the brief gave Monday to Friday and Saturday to Sunday, and its home page priced the loaf at $9.50 where the brief said $9.00; the photographer's booking page headline said '90 Bluebonnet Court' (the address further down was right); the shop's home page priced the Speckled Mug at $38 where the brief said $34. Missing: the cafe's Saturday and Sunday closing time, and the photographer's $1 per mile beyond 100 miles.

Made up: 16 named customer quotes on the cafe (for example 'Alex Thompson, Regular since 2019'), 8 on the shop (four signed 'Person 1' to 'Person 4' and four from 'Collector in Raleigh' and other cities), a 'Marta Ruiz, Associate Photographer' and a 'Jordan Lee, Studio Assistant', 'Catering for 40, done 100 times over', farm partners, and four products I never listed (two gift cards, a home latte kit and a ripple bowl set).

The brief said 'don't add reviews, awards or staff we haven't mentioned' on all three sites. Durable added reviews and staff anyway. The photographer's site had no made-up reviews.

• Claims count when they state something about the business the brief did not give. Words such as 'worth the trip' were treated as style.

The twelve fixed edits were done on the cafe draft in Durable's editor on the free plan and checked on the preview address. Edits the toolbar could not do were tried with the AI helper (the 'AI Edit' button on each section), which uses AI credits. The embedded-code edit was repeated on 29 October 2026 on the live shop through Site settings, Integrations, Custom code, because Launch unlocks it. Five written instructions, the template switch and the credit meter were run as added checks.

11 of 12 edits worked on the cafe: move a section (1 click, about 3 seconds), site font (4 clicks, about 25 seconds), site colours (6 clicks, about 40 seconds), a FAQ page with a menu link (about 60 seconds to make the page; the menu link needed 8 clicks and its label stayed 'Link'), a footer line (AI, 22 seconds), a form field (AI, 28 seconds), a button link (AI, 17 seconds), a replaced image (3 clicks, about 4 seconds), a duplicated section (AI, but it copied the intro block, not the section I pointed at), a phone-only change (AI, 25 seconds; the line is hidden at 390 pixels and shown at 1440) and a rewritten headline (AI, 18 seconds).

With no credits left, an AI edit opened 'You need more credits. This costs more than you have left. Upgrade or top up to keep going.', with 'Move up to Launch, 1,000 credits every month' and 'Credit packs from $5, They never expire'.

Embedded HTML failed on the free plan. I asked for it twice and the AI answered: 'Raw HTML cannot be injected here: the design system has no HTML/embed primitive, so the section is left unchanged.' On Launch the Custom code screen took <p id="rd-embed">RankDude embed test</p> for the end of the body on all pages; it was in the live page within 10 seconds, without publishing again. So all 12 edits can be done, the last one through a settings screen and not through the editor or the AI.

AI credits (WB-A6): the free account showed '70 of 100 credits used' after the three builds, six AI edits, a new page and the theme options, and '100 of 100 credits used' after three more AI edits, with 'Free credits reset tomorrow'. Median time per edit was about 20 seconds with the AI helper and about 25 seconds with the toolbar (WB-E1).

Free placement (WB-E2): not offered; sections move up and down only. A blank page cannot be started, because the AI always builds from a description.

• Eleven edits were made on the cafe on the free plan; the embed was made on the shop on Launch, because the cafe cannot take custom code on the free plan.

Lighthouse 13.5 with mobile settings ran three times on each of six pages of the live shop at its durable.site address (18 runs) and three times on the desktop setting (18 runs), with the computer otherwise idle. The pages are the shop home, the shop page, About, Shipping and returns, Contact and the mug page. The median score of the 18 mobile runs is the grade. An earlier set on the free preview addresses of all three sites gave the same median.

The median of the 18 mobile runs was 48. By page: mug page 52, Shipping and returns 49, shop page 48, About 48, shop home 43, Contact 43. The desktop median was 84.

Phones waited long for the main picture: Largest Contentful Paint medians ran from 5.2 to 7.0 seconds. Pages weigh 1.7 to 2.2 MB, and Total Blocking Time medians ran from 1,789 to 2,134 milliseconds. Layout shift was small (0.021 to 0.023).

Lighthouse also scored accessibility 100, best practices 77 and SEO 61, because I had hidden the site from search.

• One live site, six pages, one location. Speed from three regions was not run. The first run of the shop home scored 61 and the next two 43 and 42; the median is what counts.

The twelve points were read in the HTML and files of the live shop (eight pages) on 29 October 2026, and in each page's settings in the editor. I read the site while it was visible to search, for a few minutes, then switched it off with the 'Show my website in search results' switch.

8 of 12 points were there: an editable title and description per page (the page's own SEO tab), clean URLs with an editable slug, an automatic sitemap.xml with 8 pages, a canonical tag on every page, structured data (LocalBusiness, Organization and WebPage), Open Graph tags, and a per-page 'Remove from sitemap' switch that asks search engines not to index the page.

Missing: one H1 on every page (the three product pages have none), editable alt text (every image has alt text, but I found no field to edit it), an editable robots.txt (there is only the all-site switch) and 301 redirects (http and a trailing slash redirect with 308, and I found no screen for your own). The sitemap has no dates, the product pages have no social image, and there is no Product structured data.

The switch needs a Save button: the toggle alone did not stick after a reload. After Save the pages carried 'noindex, nofollow', robots.txt read 'Disallow: /' and the sitemap was empty, within 15 seconds. About six minutes passed between publishing and hiding.

• Google Search Console and Bing were not run, because the site is hidden from search. Alt text may be editable in a place I did not find.

On the live shop I tried the blog, the AI post, the shop screens, shipping, tax, the cart and checkout, the contact form, custom code and the settings, on Launch. I did not set up payments, claim a domain, or press Cancel plan.

Seen or done, 7 of 12: a blog (a Blog page and menu link in 4 clicks), an AI blog post (topic ideas in 35 seconds, a post drafted and published in about 100 seconds), bookings (a setup screen with Services and Settings; no booking made), a flat shipping rate (US shipping $8.00; no free-over-$100 rule is possible), a default tax percentage (0%), digital products (an item type; no file added) and built-in analytics (a chart in the editor bar and 'Visits' in SEO and GEO).

Not met: a connected domain (a free one is offered and I skipped it), form messages by email (the form returned 'Access denied' and nothing reached Customers), email marketing (no campaign tool), product variants (the item form has a sale price and nothing else; no stock count or discount code), and a test order (checkout says 'Checkout coming soon, This store isn't accepting payments yet').

The AI post ignored 'under 300 words': it ran to about 1,800 and wrote general pottery science, not facts from my brief. The Blog screen kept showing 'You've reached your blog generation limit' while it worked.

• I did not set up payments, because I was told not to chase it. The form test may be blocked by Durable's human check on an automated browser, and I did not get round it.

I looked for an export in the editor and the settings, searched the help centre for 'export my website', read the cancel path in Billing and usage and in two help articles, and read the terms of service on 29 October 2026.

I found no way to export the site's code, pages, posts, products or images. The help centre's search for 'export my website' returned an article on exporting customers as a CSV file and one on viewing the sitemap. My Customers list was empty, so I could not run the CSV export.

The terms say 'The Customer retains all ownership and Intellectual Property Rights in and to Customer Data.' They also say fees are 'non-cancelable and non-refundable' and the term 'will automatically renew' unless you cancel in your account; the plan page's 30-day refund promise is the exception, and the cancellation article says refunds 'are not automatically issued'.

Cancel path: Settings, Billing and usage, 'Cancel plan' (or Manage plan, which opens a billing portal). The help article says the plan stays active to the end of the billing period and can be resumed. A domain bought through Durable can be transferred only after three months on a plan and by contacting Durable. I did not press Cancel plan.

• Billing and usage says the next payment is 29 November 2026, and the billing portal says 28 November 2026. I did not read the privacy policy.

On 29 October 2026 I asked the three standard questions in the live chat (a domain bought elsewhere, form messages not arriving, changing a card and moving to yearly billing), timing the first words and the whole answer. On 28 October I had emailed four questions to support@durable.com (thread logged). I searched the help centre five times and read the cancel and domain-transfer articles. I did not search my inbox.

The chat is a 'Durable Assistant, AI Agent'. It began typing after 9 seconds and finished each answer in about 25 seconds. The first answer (domain) was the right idea but named a 'Website, Domain' screen; the real path is Site settings, Domains, 'Connect a domain you already own'. The second (form messages) told me to check a 'Contact email field' in the form editor, which I did not find. The third (card and yearly) was right: Manage plan, Add payment method; the button is 'Upgrade', not 'Change Plan'.

No person answered: the chat's home said 'We'll be back online tomorrow', and the email had no reply when I wrote this. The help panel also offers a 20-minute screen-share session. Help-centre searches: 3 of 5 answered (cancel, domain transfer and a cookie banner); 'restore a previous version' and 'export my website' found no matching article.

• One question set, sent once, at about 05:35 UTC, which is night in the US.

Every plan was read on Durable's pricing page, on the in-app plan screen, in Billing and usage and in the billing portal of the plan the owner bought. The figure graded is the yearly cost of the cheapest plan that connects a custom domain and holds all the pages in my briefs.

The free plan is $0: a preview, 'Add up to 10 customers' and 'Basic help center support'. The pricing page says '300 credits to try Durable's AI', but the app showed 100 credits that reset the next day.

Launch is $22 a month on yearly billing ('$255 billed yearly') and $25 a month on monthly billing. Grow is $41 or $49. Launch has a domain (or one free, up to $20), 1,000 AI credits a month (my meter showed 1,100) and bookings.

The plan I used: Launch on monthly billing, $25.00 for the first month, paid on 28 October 2026. The portal shows the Launch plan and the next bill on 28 November 2026 (the app says 29 November), the same price, so a month-to-month renewal does not rise. I did not buy a yearly plan, so I cannot say what a yearly renewal costs; the '40% off your first year' offer I saw on 28 October was gone on 29 October.

A plan covers one business: three sites cost three plans, $75 a month. Payments need Stripe and fees were not tested.

• I paid one month. The yearly price and its renewal were read, not bought. The first-year offer showed $15 beside '$255 billed yearly', which did not add up, and had expired when I looked again.