FAQ

Frequently asked questions about botts.ai. Get answers about pricing and credits, data residency in Switzerland, roles, model failover, channels, languages, and memory.

Getting Started

How long does it take to set up an AI agent?

Most users have their first agent live in under 15 minutes. The process involves three steps: creating a Knowledge Base (adding your website URL or uploading a document), configuring an Agent (writing a System Prompt), and deploying it (embedding a chat widget, assigning a phone number, or chatting internally). See the Quick Start Guide for a step-by-step walkthrough.

Do I need any technical skills to use botts.ai?

No. botts.ai is designed for business users, not developers. Everything — from building your Knowledge Base to configuring your agent and deploying it — is done through a visual dashboard. No coding is required.

To embed the chat widget on your website, you paste a single script tag into your site. If you use a website builder like WordPress, Shopify, or Squarespace, this usually takes less than 2 minutes.

Can I try botts.ai before committing to a paid plan?

Yes. The Free plan includes 200 credits per month, so you can build a Knowledge Base, configure an agent, and talk to it before upgrading. Free-plan limits are smaller (for example, 50 knowledge-base pages and 10 MB of upload storage).

Knowledge Base

What types of content can I add to a Knowledge Base?

You can add two types of sources:

• Websites — Provide a URL, and botts.ai crawls and indexes the pages automatically. Crawls can run manually or on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule.
• Files — Upload PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, or Markdown files (up to 100 MB per file).

How many pages can my Knowledge Bases hold?

A page is 2,000 characters of extracted text. The cap applies organization-wide, across all Knowledge Bases, and counts crawled and uploaded content combined:

Usage banners on the Knowledge pages show how much of your page and upload-storage allowance you have used.

How often should I update my Knowledge Base?

Whenever your content changes. Each website source has its own crawl schedule (manual, daily, weekly, or monthly), so a frequently changing site can re-index itself automatically. For uploaded files, upload the new version and delete the old one.

Does the agent respond only from the Knowledge Base?

When an agent has linked Knowledge Bases, a knowledge search tool is enabled automatically and the agent uses it to ground its answers. The underlying AI model also has general knowledge, so if you want the agent to answer only from your content, say so explicitly in the System Prompt (for example: "Only answer using information from the knowledge base. If you cannot find the answer, say so."). There is no web search tool — agents cannot browse the internet.

Agents

How does the System Prompt work?

The System Prompt is a set of instructions written in plain language that tells your agent how to behave. It defines the agent's personality, tone, rules, and boundaries. The AI model reads these instructions at the beginning of every conversation and follows them throughout.

Can I have multiple agents?

On Standard and higher plans, yes. The number of active agents is limited by your plan: Free and Lite include 1 agent, Standard 2, Pro 5, and Ultra is unlimited — creating an agent beyond your limit is blocked until you upgrade. Within your limit, each agent has its own System Prompt, Knowledge Bases, tools, and deployments. This is useful when you need different agents for different purposes — for example, one for customer support and another for sales. The number of active deployments is also limited by your plan.

Can one agent use multiple Knowledge Bases?

Yes. An agent can be linked to multiple Knowledge Bases, and one Knowledge Base can be shared by multiple agents. When answering a question, the agent searches all linked Knowledge Bases and uses the best results across them.

How does memory work?

Customer Memory is an opt-in, per-agent feature (off by default). When enabled in the agent's Customer Memory section:

• After a conversation ends, an extraction step identifies persistent facts about the person (name, preferences, standing instructions) and updates a short rolling summary of past conversations.
• Memory is stored per person, per agent, and is loaded into the agent's context at the start of that person's next conversation — so the agent can pick up where it left off.
• A retention period controls how long facts are kept — Keep indefinitely (the default), or 30, 60, 90, 180 days, or 1 year. Expired memories are pruned automatically.
• You can review, edit, or delete individual facts — or wipe a person's memory entirely — from a person's profile under the agent's Contacts → People view. See People & Memory.

Memory extraction runs on Swiss-hosted infrastructure, like the rest of the platform.

Deployments & Channels

Which channels are supported?

Three channels are available today:

Telegram, WhatsApp, and Email appear in the channel selector but are marked "Coming Soon" and cannot be configured yet. All deployments of an agent share the same configuration and Knowledge Bases — only the channel and model settings differ. See Deployments.

Can I customize the chat widget's appearance?

Yes. The widget editor lets you customize colors and fonts for the header, chat area, message bubbles, and footer, plus the welcome message, suggested messages, teaser bubble, logo, bot name, widget position, and size. A live preview shows your changes in real time; click Save Changes to publish them.

What is the backup model, and when does failover happen?

Website and Chat (Internal) deployments can set an optional backup model in addition to the primary AI model. If the primary model's provider has an outage (server errors), rate-limits the request, times out, or reports the model as unavailable, the request automatically retries on the backup model — so your agent keeps answering during provider incidents.

Failover never happens for ordinary request errors, after the agent has already started streaming a reply, or after a tool with side effects (such as a form submission or HTTP call) has run. For best reliability, choose a backup model hosted by a different provider than the primary — the form warns you if both are on the same provider. Phone deployments use voice models and have no backup model.

Which countries are supported for phone numbers?

Phone numbers are available in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with local, mobile, and toll-free types where offered. You can filter by area code to get a local number. Numbers belong to your organization's pool and can be reassigned between phone deployments; each organization has a phone-number quota.

Which languages do agents speak?

The AI models are multilingual: agents respond in the language the user writes or speaks, and you can pin a language in the System Prompt (for example, "Always answer in German").

For phone deployments, the transcription language setting (Auto, English, Deutsch, Français, Italiano) is a speech-recognition accuracy hint only — it does not control which language the agent speaks. The dashboard itself is available in English, German, and Italian.

Team & Roles

What roles exist?

botts.ai uses four roles per organization:

What can chat-only Members access?

Members only see agents that have an active Chat (Internal) deployment they are allowed to use. Each internal chat deployment has an access mode: open to the whole organization, restricted by minimum role, or invite-only with an explicit member list. Phone deployments can use the same access modes, enforced by caller ID against members' profile phone numbers.

Data & Privacy

Where is my data stored?

In Switzerland. The platform runs on Swiss infrastructure (Infomaniak), and this applies to everyone regardless of plan or settings:

• Knowledge bases — uploaded files and crawled documents are stored in Swiss object storage; the search index lives in a Swiss database. Embeddings and reranking also run on Swiss infrastructure.
• Conversations and memory — chat storage is in Switzerland.
• Secrets — API keys you store for integrations are encrypted at rest and never leave Swiss infrastructure.

All connections use TLS encryption in transit.

Where do AI models process my conversations?

That depends on the models you choose. Each organization has a data-residency setting that controls which models appear in the pickers, from Global (default, all models) to stricter tiers such as Swiss-hosted models only or Swiss-hosted models operated by Swiss companies. Every deployment shows a Data Assessment badge listing each country where data is processed — primary model, backup model, and platform infrastructure (always Switzerland); phone deployments additionally route calls through a US telephony provider. See the data residency blog post for details.

Does botts.ai train AI models on my data?

No. botts.ai does not train models on customer data.

Is botts.ai GDPR friendly?

botts.ai is built with European data protection in mind: Swiss hosting, encryption in transit and at rest, no training on your data, and controls that help you comply:

• Memory retention — set a retention period so customer facts are deleted automatically.
• Deletion requests — delete individual remembered facts or a person's entire memory from the agent's Contacts → People view; deleting knowledge sources permanently removes their indexed content.
• Model residency — restrict AI processing to Switzerland or Europe via the data-residency setting.

Who can see my conversations?

Only members of your own organization, according to their role — conversations are never shared between organizations. botts.ai staff do not access your data except for troubleshooting with your permission.

Can I disable conversation logging?

Conversations are stored so you can review them in the dashboard. For phone deployments, call recording is a separate, per-deployment toggle that is off by default.

Technical

Which browsers does the chat widget support?

The chat widget works on all modern browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. It is fully responsive and works on both desktop and mobile devices.

Does the chat widget slow down my website?

No. The widget script loads asynchronously, so it doesn't block your page from rendering, and it can be embedded on any domain.

Which AI models does botts.ai use?

botts.ai offers models from multiple providers, including models hosted in Switzerland. The available list evolves over time; the model picker in each deployment shows every model's provider, hosting country, speed and intelligence ratings, and credit rates, filtered by your organization's data-residency setting. You choose a model per deployment and can change it at any time with no downtime. Phone deployments require a voice model; text channels use text models.

Billing & Credits

How does pricing work?

botts.ai uses subscription plans plus credits. Each plan includes a monthly credit allowance and sets resource limits (knowledge-base pages, upload storage, active agents, active deployments, members):

All usage is billed in credits: agent responses (based on the model and the amount of text — the model picker shows each model's rates per 1,000 words), phone call minutes and voice audio, website crawling (1 credit per page), and document indexing. Visit the Pricing page for plan prices.

Can I buy extra credits?

Yes. On paid plans you can buy credit packages of 1,000 up to 100,000 credits, or enable auto-recharge so credits top up automatically. Plan credits expire at the end of each billing cycle; purchased credits stay valid for 12 months. Plan credits are spent first; after that, purchased credits are spent from the earliest-expiring block.

What happens when my credits reach zero?

Your agents pause until credits are available again:

• The website widget and internal chat stop answering with an "insufficient credits" error.
• Phone calls are answered with a short spoken message and then end.
• New crawls and file uploads are blocked, and scheduled crawls are skipped.

Nothing is deleted — your agents, Knowledge Bases, and conversations remain intact. Service resumes as soon as you buy credits or your monthly allowance renews.

Can I change my plan at any time?

Yes. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time from the Billing section of your organization settings.

What happens if I exceed my plan limits?

Limits block new additions, not existing usage:

• Pages or upload storage — new crawls and uploads are blocked until you delete content or upgrade; existing knowledge keeps working.
• Active deployments — creating another active deployment is blocked; deactivating one frees up the slot.
• Phone numbers — buying a number beyond your quota is blocked; contact support to increase the quota.

Troubleshooting

Why won't my PDF upload, or why is it empty after uploading?

A few common causes:

• Scanned or image-only PDF. botts.ai indexes text. A PDF that is just scanned images has no extractable text, so it uploads but shows as Skipped and adds nothing searchable. Use a text-based PDF, or copy the text into a Markdown file.
• File too large. The limit is 100 MB per file; larger files are rejected before the upload starts.
• Out of storage or credits. Uploads are blocked when you've hit your plan's upload-storage limit or your credit balance is zero. Check the usage banners at the top of the Knowledge Bases page.

Supported types are PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, and Markdown. See Knowledge Base.

Why did my agent stop responding to customers?

The most common cause is running out of credits — the website widget and internal chat return an "insufficient credits" message and phone calls end with a short spoken notice. Buy a credit package or wait for your monthly allowance to renew (enabling auto-recharge avoids this). Also check that the deployment is still active: downgrading your plan can deactivate deployments that exceed the new plan's limit. See Team & Billing.

Why are my agent's answers outdated or missing recent content?

An agent only knows what's indexed in its linked Knowledge Bases. After your website or documents change, re-index: click the play button to re-crawl a website source (or set a daily/weekly/monthly schedule), and re-upload changed files. Confirm each source shows indexed — not crawling, failed, or skipped. See Knowledge Base.

My agent gave a wrong answer — how do I improve it?

Three levers, in order: tighten the System Prompt (add explicit rules, and an instruction to answer only from the knowledge base if you want that); make sure the Knowledge Base actually contains the answer (test it with the built-in AI Search); then re-test in the Test Agent panel before redeploying. See Agents.

Last updated on June 16, 2026