How I Built an AI Chatbot Service for Small Businesses as a CS Student (And Launched It This Week)

youssef abobakr — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 23:39:17 +0000

I'm a 3rd-year Computer Science student and this week I launched my first real service. I wanted to share the full story here because Dev.to has been a big part of my learning journey.
The Problem I Found
Small business owners — especially people running Etsy and Shopify stores — spend hours every single day answering the same customer questions. "Do you ship internationally?" "What's your return policy?" "How long does delivery take?"
It's repetitive, it's exhausting, and it takes them away from actually running their business. I realised this was a perfect problem for AI to solve.
What I Built
A custom AI chatbot service. For each client I build a chatbot trained on their specific business information — their products, policies, FAQs — that handles customer questions automatically, 24/7.
Tech stack:

Python + FastAPI for the backend
React.js for the frontend widget
Claude AI API / OpenAI API for the language model
PostgreSQL for storing conversation data
Deployed on Railway

How The Process Works

Client tells me their business info, common questions, and website platform
I build and deploy the chatbot in 3–5 days
They paste one line of code on their site — it's live

The whole thing runs autonomously after that. No maintenance needed on their end.
What I Learned Launching This Week
Getting the first client is 100x harder than building the product. The tech part took me a few days. Finding someone willing to pay took much longer.
The thing that worked best was direct outreach — finding Etsy sellers on Instagram and sending a genuine message offering a free demo first. No hard selling, just showing what the product does.
What's Next
I'm offering this service starting at $75 for a basic chatbot. My goal is to get to $500/month while finishing my degree — then use those learnings to build a proper SaaS product.
If you're a developer who's done something similar or a business owner who'd find this useful — I'd love to connect. Drop a comment or send me a message!
Has anyone here gone from a freelance service to a SaaS product? Would love advice on that transition.

Forem: youssef abobakr

How I Built an AI Chatbot Service for Small Businesses as a CS Student (And Launched It This Week)