Bot9

First of all, I do like the product. The dashboard is clean and the bots work very well. There have been some nice developments as well. When I purchased the deal, it was not yet possible to let the bots only reply based on trained data. When asked a question that the bot wasn't trained for, it tended to use some general info. That was a pain. After some updates, that became an added feature. So right now I'm pretty pleased with the bot performances.

But! (and I know that the Appsumo review guidelines say 'Review the product, not the terms', but for me (and many other Sumolings), the terms are the reason for purchasing the product)

I purchased Tier 2 because of the BYOK feature. I really wanted to be able to use my own OpenAI account. Suddenly, the company decided to remove that feature. They say it became an obsolete feature since their own language models are performing better now. Well, can I decide that myself?! It's like buying a car and the car company suddenly rips off the windshield wipers, saying that it'll probably not rain anyway.... No, that's not the way you treat your customers.

So if you can't bring your own key, then you totally depend on Bot9. In Tier 2, 5000 messages are included per month. So if you exceed those, you have to pay. I'm pretty sure this was the one and only reason for Bot9 to remove the BYOK feature. The additional credits you pay for once exceeding your limit will be pricey. That's probably the reason why you can't find the costs for additional messages on their website. They tell you to send them an email. So I did. Twice. So far, no response. My experience with companies is that if you have to make a lot of effort to find out about certain costs, it's pricey.

I'm so disappointed in Bot9. It looked like an awesome product. I even bought an Appsumo Plus subscription to be able to pick it up. I had some nice plans with my Bot9 product, but right now I'm doubting whether to use it. Because what will happen in the future....? Maybe they will tell what the price of the additional messages is, but what if they suddenly change this policy again? I'm not able to use this product for different small companies since I don't know what invoice I'll get, suddenly.

Although I like the product and it was maybe my favorite purchase on Appsumo, right now I'm looking for another bot company and not advising people to use Bot9. Also, their regular prices on the website have been increased a lot (like a minimum 100% increase for their cheapest subscription). So it really looks like they are just trying to make big bucks. Which is fine. But don't treat early adopters this way. Why would you?