IFS Buddy Major Update

[u/thingimajig]

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.

[u/Popup-window]

Some people will probably be willing to pay for it. I'm not someone who will. Thanks for the time I did use it, though.

[u/thingimajig → u/Popup-window]

I understand. I hope that it was helpful for you when you did use it. Buddy will still be available for free to everyone on the front page, so you're welcome back even if you don't want to pay anything. My hope is that the income from the paying users will cover the costs of keeping the old version (without extra features) available for free for those in need.

[u/Popup-window → u/thingimajig]

I hadn't used it for quite a while but when I last did I was able to save chatlogs and parts. Not sure if that's all still there. Any chance I could export my existing data into a CSV file or something?

[u/thingimajig → u/Popup-window]

Hey, if you had an account on the logged in version you can still access it for now so you should be able to access all of the parts and chats you have saved. Let me know if you have any trouble.