EzyshopAI Switches to Bring-Your-Own-Key Billing to Slash AI Support Costs

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EzyshopAI, an AI customer service tool for independent ecommerce sellers, originally used a platform-managed pay-per-reply model. The team found that charging about $1 per AI reply left sellers facing costs of $15,000 or more per month, far above the roughly $0.001 per reply that providers like DeepSeek or OpenAI actually charge. To fix this, they rebuilt their architecture around Bring Your Own Key, where customers supply their own API keys. Keys are encrypted with AES-256 before storage, and AI requests are sent directly to the provider, so the platform no longer marks up AI usage. A platform mode remains as a fallback, offering new users a complimentary allowance before they move to their own keys.

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