DraftHarbor is free while the beta lasts. This page says plainly what that means, what it will cost afterwards, and what you keep either way — so you can decide whether to move a real manuscript here rather than guess.
The beta is capped at 50 accounts. Registration closes once they are taken. The cap is deliberate: fifty writers using it seriously produce better information than a crowd trying it once, and it is a number one person can actually answer.
No end date is fixed, and you will get at least 14 days' notice before the beta closes, in the app and in the community group. Nobody meets a paywall without warning.
Payment is not built yet. Nothing can be charged today, and no card details are collected anywhere in the product. The prices below are the intended pricing at release, published now so you can plan — not a live offer.
A free tier stays. It keeps the core writing workspace: binder, editor, planning views, and export.
AI work is measured in credits, shown in the app against your monthly allowance. Every price is confirmed on screen before anything is charged, and nothing renews without you choosing it.
In development: checkout, subscriptions, and the plan structure itself. Prices at release may differ from the figures above, and this page will be updated if they do.
50% off for twelve calendar months. It applies to any purchase you make in the twelve months following the end of the beta — so it is still worth having if you wait a while before subscribing.
Every one of the fifty beta accounts gets it. You do not need a code and there is nothing to claim.
An affiliate programme for founding members is in development. The intention is 25% of the first year of any subscription you bring in. Exact terms will depend on the payment platform, which is not chosen yet, so treat this as a direction rather than an offer — it will be set out properly before anything goes live.
In development: the discount mechanism and the affiliate programme, both of which arrive with checkout.
Your writing is always exportable, and export is never behind a paywall. That is a rule, not a temporary state: .draftharbor bundles, Word, EPUB, Markdown and HTML stay available on the free tier and after any subscription ends.
Three things are worth telling apart, because only one of them is a backup.
Your working copy lives in your own browser storage. It is not encrypted — it is protected by your device and your account, like any file on your computer. It works offline and needs nothing from us. It is not a backup: it lives in the same place as the browser that could be cleared, reset or replaced.
Your backup file — the one that matters. Link a .draftharbor file on your disk, when you create a project or later in Project settings, and DraftHarbor rewrites it every few minutes while you work. Plain, unencrypted, readable by DraftHarbor on any machine. This is your real backup: it survives us completely. If this service disappears tomorrow, that file is still a complete copy of your project, and it is yours.
Linking the file needs a browser that can write to a file you have chosen — today that means Chromium-based desktop browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera). On Firefox and on Safari, including iPhone and iPad, that automatic link is not available and DraftHarbor will remind you to save a .draftharbor file by hand instead. Please do — on those browsers it is the only backup you have.
An encrypted copy, on demand. Separately, you can save a passphrase-encrypted copy of a project from the menu. It is a manual, one-off export for when you want a copy nobody can read without the passphrase. It is not the automatic backup and it is not required.
Cloud backup, optional and off by default. If you turn it on, each revision is encrypted on your device before upload, so we cannot read your manuscript or your images. That protects the content — it does not make the copy permanent. It is a convenience for moving between devices and recovering a lost machine. It depends on this service continuing to exist. If DraftHarbor shuts down or its hosting is closed, cloud copies go with it. It is never a substitute for the backup file on your disk.
If you cancel a subscription, you stop being billed and you do not lose your manuscript. Local copies are untouched. Cloud material stays readable and downloadable for a documented period so you can retrieve it.
Things may break. Features may change or be withdrawn. Link a backup file in Project settings if your browser supports it, and save a .draftharbor copy by hand if it does not.
That is not boilerplate. It is the honest state of software this young, and it is the same advice whichever writing tool you use.
Bug reports and ideas: the app menu → Send feedback, or the form at draftharbor.app. Both reach the operator directly and privately.
The community group is public and good for talking to other writers. Please don't paste unpublished writing there.