The things people ask before they try it.

No. There is no sign-up, no login and no email required. Open the page and start drawing. There is no server holding your work, so there is no account for it to sit in.

Yes, once you have installed it. Open Settings and choose Install as an app (it tells you how for your browser; on an iPhone or iPad it is Share, then Add to Home Screen) and it opens with no signal, in a basement, a stairwell or a location van. Not installed, it keeps working while the tab stays open, but loading the page in the first place needs a connection. Installed or not, nothing about your plan is uploaded at any point, and an installed copy asks before it switches to a new version.

In one small plan file that you save to your own machine, the same way you would save a document. You choose where it goes, you back it up, you email it to whoever needs it. There is no cloud storage and nothing to sync.

The app quietly keeps a recovery draft as you work and offers it back the next time you open the page. It is a safety net only, it never loads on its own, and it never overrides a file you opened yourself.

It is built for a desktop or laptop browser, any current Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari on Windows, macOS or Linux. Nothing has to be installed and there is no extension to add, though you can install it like an app if you want it to open with no signal. It works by touch on a tablet: pinch to zoom, two-finger pan, tap to open, and a Select several toggle. The side boxes fold away to give the plan room. A phone is still not a sensible place to draw a plan.

Both. Everything is stored in metres and degrees internally, and the feet toggle only changes what is shown and printed. Switching units never moves anything on the plan.

A4, A3 and US Letter, in landscape or portrait, for one scene or a whole project. PDF exports are vector with selectable text, a legend, an object schedule, room dimensions and a scale bar. You can also export a scene as a PNG picture of the printed page, for slides or messages; the free version's watermark is on that too.

Two things, both about the export. The watermark comes off, and you can export a whole project as one paginated PDF rather than a scene at a time. Everything else (drawing, editing, every fixture type, blocking, saving, opening files, as many scenes as you like) is free and has no limits. You pay once and it is yours: no subscription, no renewal.

Yes. Buy it once, share the file, and anyone can open it and change it for free; opening, editing and saving are never gated. What the payment covers is a clean copy of your own. An unlicensed machine still exports a single scene, with the watermark on it, and a project of two scenes or more needs its own licence to come out as one PDF. So a gaffer can nudge a light and send the file back for nothing, but exporting the shoot-day pack themselves is the part that is paid for.

Yes, within 30 days, no questions asked. You can also export a watermarked PDF before paying anything, so you can see the exact output you are buying first.

Yes. It is a code you paste in, not an account tied to a device, so it works on every machine you draw on. It is for you personally, so a colleague who wants clean or whole-project exports needs their own. See the browser answer above for what it is actually comfortable on, the short version is a laptop or a desktop.

Email us and we will resend it. The checkout provider keeps the record of the sale against the address you bought with, so the only thing you need to remember is which email you used; there is no account to lose.

A single line of small grey text in the bottom margin of the page, beside the drawing rather than across it. The plan itself, the legend and the schedule are untouched: a free export is perfectly readable, it just says where it came from.

No, deliberately. It draws a clear top-down plan fast. It does not do 3D previs, construction drawings, layers, or a fixture database with DMX addresses. If you need those, you want Vectorworks Spotlight or Lightwright, and a week to learn them.

A template is a printed grid you draw on by hand, and for one simple setup it is genuinely fine. It stops working the moment the plan has to change.

You cannot move a light on paper and have the throw follow it. You cannot swap a 35 mm for a 24 mm and watch the cone open. You cannot hand a legible revision to eight people in a minute. ShotPlots is what a template becomes once the plan has to survive contact with a schedule. More on templates versus a tool.

No. A shot list is a different document with a different job, and there are good tools for it. This one draws the floor. It does keep shots in order: a scene can hold several shots (Shot A, Shot B and so on), and you can drag them into the order you want.

No. Your plan exists in your browser while you work and in the file you save, and it is never uploaded. The app makes two small checks and nothing else: if you enter an unlock code, it is sent once to Gumroad to verify it, and the installed app checks shotplots.com for a newer version of itself. No plan data goes with either. Nobody else can see your plan, including us.