The Dodo Digest: Trump ships Nvidia to China; Flat plans are quietly killing your margins.

Hello from Dodo Payments!

First of all, apologies. We couldn’t ship our previous edition cause our team has been busy. We’ve been hitting ATHs (all-time highs) - every damn week. It’s been exciting and exhilarating.
Also, apologies if our response times were not the best. We’ve expanded our team and capabilities :)

With this edition, we are beefing up our newsletter and adding more sections.
We’d love your feedback on what you would like to see more of and what you’d like to see less.

👀 What just happened in AI/infra

Washington cleared restricted Nvidia AI chips for export to China, a move that likely accelerates LLM infra usage and model demand all over the world. 

This means:

• More open-sourced LLMs from China

• More tools built on top of LLMs

• More LLM tokens are used to deliver value

What that means for you:

• Lesser margins for flat subscription models

• Flat subscriptions will feel this pain first

This isn’t macro news; it directly hits your margins.

Flat plans are killing your margins. Here’s the fix.

If you’re charging a flat $29/$49 plan while your AI usage per customer varies wildly, it’s almost guaranteed that your light users are subsidising a small group of heavy users.

This edition is the shortest possible walkthrough to enable usage-based billing inside Dodo - no infra rebuild, no pricing rework, no support chaos.

Why flat pricing quietly breaks margin?

Numbers vary by product, but the pattern is consistent:

• Most users consume reasonably

• a small % consume 10–20× more than average

With flat pricing:

• light users → overpay

• power users → underpay

• you → eat the delta

Usage billing aligns value with cost - You bill based on actual consumption, without making pricing complicated or scary.

The 5-minute activation, which can save your margins

You already have everything in Dodo Payments - No migrations, no pricing page rebuild.

1. Create a meter (3 minutes)

2. Add a simple rate (1 minute)

Open meter → Pricing

This keeps onboarding friendly while protecting margin where usage spikes.

3. Track usage for your exact product (1 minute)

You don’t have to redesign your billing logic - Just map usage to your real business case:

No new infra, no new counters.

You tell Dodo what unit matters, Blueprint handles how it turns into revenue.

When to use this?

Usage-based billing fits well if your cost per request is:

• variable

• model dependent

• volume sensitive

i.e. LLM calls, image generations, voice minutes, embeddings, inference.

If usage is uniform and cost is flat → subscription stays fine.

Companies saving real $$s with Dodo billing

• https://www.indiehackertracker.app by https://x.com/bpdunbar

• https://www.tinylaunch.com by https://x.com/chrissyinspace

• https://howsthisgoing.com by https://x.com/kanishkrazdan