A: Hey, happy to break it down properly.

All AppSumo tiers include a one time credit allocation at purchase. The amount scales with the tier you bought. The cost per action is the same across tiers, what changes is how many credits you start with.

What credits are actually used for:

AI responses (one credit per response cycle, not per message). If a contact sends 5 rapid messages, the bot batches them and replies once, that is 1 credit total, not 5.

Outgoing campaigns themselves do not consume credits per contact. WhatsApp Web, Instagram, and Messenger campaigns are free to send. WhatsApp Business API sends carry a per template Meta delivery fee plus a 0.05 credit ($0.005) per message Twilio fee, both passed through at cost with no markup.

Channel infrastructure: WhatsApp Web is 50 credits per month, which covers the dedicated proxy and server. WhatsApp Business API runs on our managed Twilio with the 0.05 credit per message fee above (no separate monthly). SMS is bring your own Twilio (regulatory compliance has to be in your name), so no credit charge from us for SMS at all. Instagram and Facebook Messenger have no fees.

AI tool calls and other AI-driven actions are 1 credit each on Pro or 0.25 on Max. That includes things like booking appointments, web search, custom functions, generating a campaign, ingesting an FAQ page, summarizing a long chat, and auto-tagging contacts.

Each credit is $0.10 USD if you ever top up.

Real example: a typical AI conversation runs 2 to 8 credits depending on complexity. A short FAQ chat ("what are your hours?") sits at the low end, a long sales qualification with multiple lookups and a booking sits at the higher end. So 100 credits comfortably handles 15 to 50 conversations.

Important point on AI cost. We have three AI quality tiers and Max is the default for new campaigns. Max is our own in house model, costs 0.25 credits per response (4x cheaper than Pro/Claude), and is on par in quality for the vast majority of use cases. So your effective conversation cost on Max is closer to 0.5 to 2 credits per chat.

You also have BYOK available from Tier 2 upwards. Bring your own Anthropic key and AI operations stop deducting credits entirely. Worth doing the math first though: BYOK on Anthropic typically runs 2 to 8 cents per reply depending on context length and tool use, it's variable and hard to predict. Max charges a flat 2.5 cents per reply, at or below the lower end of the BYOK range, with no rate limits to manage and no separate API bill.

Without credits, DM Champ still works as a unified multi channel inbox, contact and tag manager, campaign builder, and team workspace. What you lose is the AI agent responding to contacts. Channels stay connected, you just send manually.

So the honest summary: useful without credits as a CRM and inbox, fully functional with credits or BYOK for the AI side.