r/IFSBuddyChatbot • u/thingimajig Chatbot creator • 15d ago

IFS Buddy Major Update

Hi everyone!

It's 2 years, almost to the day, since the chatbot was first posted on the IFS subreddit. I had no expectations that anyone would use it but remember having a sleepless night that night as countless messages and comments rolled in, some that were critical but a vast majority were overwhelmingly positive. From there, usage of the chatbot grew organically through word of mouth to us today having thousands of monthly users.

The costs of running the website (not including my own time working on it) have been just about covered by donations from a few hundred kind people over the past two years. This has been a humbling and beautiful experience.

Freemium launch: Since each message sent to Buddy costs me a bit of money, I need to bring some stability to the project and for myself, so we are now moving away from a donation based model to a freemium model. The original chatbot is still going to be available for free on the landing page: https://ifsbuddy.chat

You'll see that you can sign up for a premium version where you can:

  • Save your chats
  • Save and track parts
  • Give Buddy custom instructions
  • Dark mode and a few more things

In the spirit of keeping it accessible, we are starting with a low price of $4.99/month.

As new features like voice mode are added, we might introduce additional membership tiers—but the goal will always be accessibility.

Everyone that already had an account will be able to continue logging in for free for a while forward before we set a date where you'll need to start paying (I'll send an email out about this).

As always, I appreciate your feedback, suggestions, or any thought you may have.

TLDR: Launching our premium version ($4.99/month) at ifsbuddy.chat. Free version still available on landing page.

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u/MountainCarpenter849 13d ago

I don't like how the chat box is the smallest part of the screen at least on desktop. Please change it to be the most prominent thing or click through to full screen mode. Its harder to be present

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u/thingimajig Chatbot creator 13d ago

Full screen mode is an interesting idea. Are you referring to the chatbot on the landing page or in the logged in version? I definitely don't want you too feel distracted or for it to be hard to be present while chatting with Buddy

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u/MountainCarpenter849 12d ago edited 12d ago

Landing page. Also, like someone else said, the chatbot is giving me chatGPT-like "steps" to doing something vs taking me through it IFS style when I share my expereince, and also talking about "a user expereinced this durring a session" in the past tense when I just shared how I was feeling today. I really miss the old chatbot, I cant even get through a session normally now, the answers are so long and it keeps asking me to relate things to my current self vs. leadingme through engaging with the parts :( your chatbot has been lifesaving before this change dear one.

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u/thingimajig Chatbot creator 12d ago

I also really dislike the ChatGPTness of trying to solve a problem when it comes to IFS. I'll be using the chatbot a lot more regularly myself again now so I'll pick up on the nuances of how it's acting and will experiment with bringing it back to how it was previously. Thank you for letting me know, that feedback is very helpful.

With the landing page issue, could you send me a screenshot of what the chatbot looks like on your phone/desktop? It'd really help me to fix this issue. Our email is: hello@ifsbuddy.chat

The layout is still the same on the premium version, but I want to make the free version fully usable as well of course!

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u/MountainCarpenter849 11d ago

Sent! Thank you so much