FAQ
Frequently asked questions about Chatmancer.
FAQ
AWS & infrastructure
How can I benefit from AWS Free Tier?
AWS Free Tier gives you 1 million Lambda requests per month, 5 GB of S3 storage, 1 TB of CloudFront data transfer, and a generous CloudWatch allocation — all free, forever (not just 12 months for these services). Most Chatmancer deployments stay inside that envelope, which means your effective infrastructure cost is $0.
The one service that may incur a small ongoing cost beyond free tier is RDS (PostgreSQL), depending on your instance size and traffic. You can monitor your exact bill at any time via the CloudWatch billing dashboard that ships with the stack.
What AWS regions are supported?
Any region that supports Lambda, API Gateway, CloudFront, S3, and RDS. We recommend us-east-1 as the default. See Deploying to AWS for the full list of tested regions.
Can I set a spending limit on AWS?
Yes. We recommend creating a billing alarm in CloudWatch (one ships with the stack) and setting AWS Budgets to alert you at whatever threshold you choose — $1, $5, $50. AWS will notify you before costs become meaningful.
What happens if I exceed the AWS Free Tier?
AWS bills your card at standard rates. For most sites this is a few cents to a few dollars per month. Lambda costs approximately $0.20 per 1 million requests beyond the free tier. You will receive a billing alert long before it matters.
Privacy & data
Is my data secure?
Your data never leaves your AWS account. Conversations are stored in your RDS database, encrypted at rest with AWS-managed keys (or your own KMS keys if you prefer). Chatmancer has no technical access to your database, your S3 buckets, or your API logs.
The only outbound call from your stack is a once-daily license check-in to chatmancer.com, which contains no user data — only a hashed license key and a timestamp. See How It Works for full details.
Can Chatmancer read my conversations?
No. Technically impossible — your RDS instance is in your VPC with no public inbound access. Chatmancer does not have credentials to your database and never will.
What data does the daily check-in send?
Only: a hash of your license key (not the key itself), the current timestamp, and your AWS region. Nothing else.
Chatbot & AI
Does Chatmancer support languages other than English?
Yes — the underlying OpenAI models support 80+ languages. Your chatbot will automatically respond in the language the visitor writes in, without any additional configuration.
Which AI models can I use?
Any model available through your OpenAI API key: gpt-4o-mini, gpt-4o, gpt-4-turbo, o1-mini, and any future OpenAI releases. You set the model name in your chatbot's settings. See Chatbot Configuration for a comparison.
Can I use Chatmancer without an OpenAI account?
No — Chatmancer requires a bring-your-own OpenAI API key. There is no shared or managed key option. This is by design: your key means your usage stays in your account, under your billing, with no intermediary.
Billing & licensing
Is a credit card required?
Not for Chatmancer — the Free plan has no payment. AWS will ask for one when you create an AWS account, but you control your own billing alarms and can keep costs at $0. You only pay Chatmancer if you upgrade to Pro, Premium, or Whitelabel.
Can I uninstall and walk away?
Yes, at any time. Delete the CloudFormation stack and everything Chatmancer provisioned is removed. Export your data from RDS first if you want to keep your conversation history. No exit fees, no retention period, no lock-in.
What happens to my chatbot if I stop paying for AWS?
If you let your AWS account lapse or delete the stack, the chatbot stops serving traffic. Your data remains in the AWS account until you explicitly delete the stack and its resources. Chatmancer has no role in this — it is entirely under your control.
How do I upgrade my plan?
Purchase the new plan tier at the Pricing page, receive a new license key, and enter it in Dashboard → Settings → License. No redeployment needed. See Pricing & License Keys for the full upgrade flow.