Hi @marek,
We won’t be allowing you to use your own keys. I urge you to try out the new system, our records indicate you aren’t even actively using the product. I’m sure you’ll find once/if you do that the new system is much better.
How can I find out that your system is much better, when thing I bought included important element - BYOK - that is gone? If you say that it is better - what do you mean by “better”. In what parameter please? Will it save me money? Will I spend less money buying credits from you, than paying credits on various LLM providers separately? Can you please explain THIS honestly? Because the BYOK feature was something that most ■■■■■■■ users were calling for - as with BYOK we have transparency. We can predict how much we will spend and we have clear evidence. Every other credit system, like yours in such situations - where you do not allow BYOK is questionable and non-transparent. And supporting arguments/reasons why should we pay aou instead LLM providers - they are missing.
I do not see your communication as trustable and clear. No evidence, no comparisons and no real, solid explanations for such muve. Just simply: “we won’t allow” seems highly arrogant and unfriendly. Or better I say not client-friendly.
Not comfortable for me.
I’d like to know reasons. I can handle the truth. I can understand reasons, if I can read them. I just need to see/read/hear logic. Because buying Ltd with monthly credits and BYOK just to find out the BYOK is gone - I do not see the logic in it.
Thank you
It is not our obligation to prove to you that the new system is better. We’re telling you it is, and we’ve already provided numerous reasons. But the key thing to understand is, we are removing BYOK.
As for the deal terms: our deal with LTD providers, in its actual contractual terms, stipulates only that LTD holders retain (most) of the features we extend to customers on our Gold tier. Any specifically listed features are not guaranteed, only that we hold that parity. This is part of the standard terms, and the reason it’s structured this way is so that as we change our product, LTD holders keep up. It means (almost) anything we give to Gold, we must also give to LTD holders. It also means anything we take away from Gold, we take away from LTD holders.
If you’d like to continue using Pickaxe, you’ll have to put your credit card down for auto renewal, or work within the token budget you have through your LTD.
@marek to add to Nathaniel’s response: we have been very public about our reasons for removing BYOK. These reasons include (but are not limited to) internal security, changing model schemas, and the implementation of the fallback model system.
Another reason is backend costs - because when a user uses a tool, we don’t just run the model, we also run a variety of other systems (user memory, knowledge base processing) that often take more tokens than just the input/output. Those are costs we’re passing on to you, that we were previously covering ourselves.
It’s wildly inaccurate to say that this system is not transparent, because one of the main benefits of the credits system has been a massive increase in analytics tools that we created to help you track your costs as granularly as possible. These include:
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Account-level analytics. In the Analytics section of your Account Dashboard, you can look at cost by Pickaxe or Studio, and monitor how these costs change over time.
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Message Insights. If you head to the Users tab of your Pickaxe Dashboard and go to the ‘Activity’ area, you can review both summaries and specifics of all user conversations - and if you click on the ⓘ icon at the bottom right of any message, you will see a Message Insights screen, giving you a detailed look at cost and model performance for every single interaction.
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User stats. If you want to look at composite stats for your users, you can check out the ‘Manage users’ area, which will let you see exactly how much each of your users has spent, any file uploads or user memories they have associated with them, adjust which products they have access to, and even give them customized user profiles.
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Cost estimates by model. Each prompt run will have different costs based on a multitude of factors - including token usage, Actions, and model selection. You can monitor your credit usage on the Account page, and to help you pick the model that will best fit your needs, the selection area in the Pickaxe Builder provides detailed information about what each model can do and how much a prompt run is likely to cost. If you go to the models section of our website, you can do cost comparisons of every model we offer based on real-time data from our thousands of other users.
I appreciate that the change has frustrated some of our LTD users, but on this point, Nathaniel is absolutely correct: we have upheld our guarantees to the letter, and it is entirely up to you whether you decide to use the platform or not! I took the time to write all of this out because we would love to have you stay, but if you’re not interested in using Pickaxe without BYOK, we completely understand and wish you all the best 