Issue description: Quota Reached, Working on Instructions
I can’t believe I’ve already hit my free monthly message quota because I’ve been refining my bot’s instructions and working on backend issues. Really? You charge me messages to test the bot through the dashboard?!?! I assumed the quota only applied to published interactions. If Elfsight wants me to create the best possible bot and recommend it to others, wouldn’t it make more sense to allow free access during development?
From what I saw on OpenAI, Elfsight is paying about $0.0008 per API call. Even with the free plan, I can’t imagine that cost would seriously impact your business while I’m just trying to get my bot running. Does anyone else find this system frustrating? I’ve never used a platform that limited backend control like this. It feels like shooting yourself in the foot.
Now I have to wait until next month to finish my work before I can even test whether the bot is worth paying for. I’m definitely not upgrading until I know it works the way I need it to!
We understand that these limits may feel a bit restrictive, and we’re truly sorry for any inconvenience. The reason they exist is that every interaction with the bot incurs costs. Because of this, usage limits are just necessary unless additional fees are applied.
The pricing and usage details you’ve seen are based on general information, and for businesses, terms can vary depending on specific needs. To ensure stability and reliability, we’ve carefully chosen an API solution that allows the chatbot to perform smoothly.
That said, current message limits help us keep the AI Chatbot both accessible and efficient for everyone.
I hope this clears things up, and I really appreciate your patience and understanding
See ya next month…I’ve already pulled down your bot from my website, since I can’t finish refining the instructions for more reliable responses, as your engineer suggested I do. Then, because backend interaction will eat into that month, it’ll be another month before I can launch it for public use, to see if it’s popular. Then, it’ll be the following month when I decide if there is enough interest to warrant paying for a subscription.
By my calculations, because you charge developers just to refine your bot to their needs, I won’t be subscribing until…December. Thanks for the help.
I really like what I see, but it needs to be reliable before I can trust it for open use. And then, just because I like it, doesn’t mean others will agree.
I had to edit this response because, by coincidence, I received an email newsletter with an article that perfectly illustrates my point: do not spend money on AI until you know it will be useful for your needs. I encourage you to read it and consider its message as if you were a client deciding whether Elfsight is a worthwhile investment. I see that I’m not alone.
I suspect that the article that says “do not spend money on AI” is talking about enterprises that invest millions of dollars on unproven AI initiatives.
The Elfsight chatbot is around $120 per year for a license that gives ample views and messages to experiment and fine-tune.
Once you try some competing chatbots I think you’ll have a lot fewer complaints with Elfsight.
It still advises people to be leery of AI. One of the people he helped was a regular dad.
My main problem isn’t with Elfsight, per se. It’s that their engineer helped refine my instructions and suggested I work on further revisions to guide the AI into providing better, more limited responses. Just as I went to do that, I ran out of monthly messages. My point is, development shouldn’t incur message deductions. If the free plan is “Good for testing purposes,” shouldn’t it be sufficient for proper development? Many others and I are not AI Prompt Engineers! It requires a fair number of iterations on the prompt to get the results you’re looking for. See my other threads. Whether it’s trying to get the AI to stop hallucinating or looking for the proper way to embed the chatbot, development takes a lot of engagement with the service. Now, that’s assuming people want to do more than slap something together and trust Elfsight and the ChatGPT AI are going to do everything properly, out of the box.
…when you can’t use the platform to make something good.
You are correct. I know Elfsight has to pay for each call on the API. My previous number was inaccurate. This is recent info (it’s not costly enough to warrant blocking development, IMO):
Assuming their API is for GPT-4, the most expensive, my free tier’s 50 message replies has cost Elfsight $0.0012. Forgive me if I think that is a poor barrier to keep me from continuing to develop my chatbot. This platform IS better than most other ones. It’s why I’m disappointed that there is a barrier to development.
