Hosted Questionnaire SaaS: Why Vendors Shouldn’t Paste Their Own OpenAI Keys

If you sell B2B SaaS, your buyers already expect a smooth vendor security questionnaire experience. They do not care whether your team runs OpenAI or Ollama in the background—they care whether answers are consistent, traceable, and fast.

Yet many early questionnaire automation tools still ask every customer to paste an API key. That is a conversion killer for non-technical buyers and a support burden for you.

The product pattern that matches buyer expectations

Hosted software should behave like other B2B SaaS: sign up, pay (or start on a free tier), use the product. The operator holds one platform key (or a private VPC endpoint) on the server. Embeddings and completions run against that configuration; tenant data stays scoped by workspace in the application layer.

SecureFlow follows that pattern when billing is enabled: workspace admins upgrade via Stripe; monthly row limits protect COGS; Customer Portal handles cards and cancellation. End users never see sk- strings.

Why meter rows instead of “unlimited AI”

Questionnaire throughput maps cleanly to rows generated—each Generate drafts pass and each Regenerate row is a predictable unit of model spend. Free tier rows build pipeline; Starter (for example $19.99/mo with a higher cap) captures revenue from teams that outgrow the free allowance; Enterprise is a conversation for SSO, custom limits, and contracts.

This is the same economic logic as API-backed productivity tools—just expressed in questionnaire language buyers understand.

Enterprise and custom deployments

For security-sensitive or regulated buyers, some organisations need on-premises or VPC deployment as a contractual requirement. SecureFlow's Custom / Enterprise tier supports that conversation — private hosting options, custom SLAs, and SSO integration are on the roadmap. The standard hosted SaaS serves the vast majority of teams; the Custom tier exists for buyers whose procurement requires it.

Checklist: what to promise on the marketing site

No end-user API key on hosted plans (unless you intentionally sell to developers only).
Clear usage policy — what counts as a row, when limits reset, what happens at 402 / limit errors.
Human-in-the-loop — drafts are not customer-ready until security / legal sign off; citations support that workflow.
Subprocessor transparency — name OpenAI (or your LLM vendor) in Privacy / DPAs like any other SaaS.

For a hands-on walkthrough of vault → import → export, see our tutorial. For FAQ on billing and keys, see FAQ.

Start free on SecureFlow — no API key or setup needed. Compare vs generic AI.