AppSumo Review

AppSumo is a marketplace for businesses to get access to lifetime software deals.

Think of AppSumo like Groupon for marketing and startup nerds.

Every week new deals are added to the website where you can expect to save anywhere from 50% to 99% on apps to grow your business.

AppSumo’s founder Noah Kagan started AppSumo out as a side hustle but it quickly caught traction in the market especially when they started to use the services of a professional copywriter for their email blasts.

There is a definite growth hacker and startup vibe to AppSumo so the type of lifetime deals you will expect to see include things like tools to help you design better websites (like Ultimate Addons for Elementor) all the way to invoicing and reporting tools making it easier for you to get paid.

You can also expect to see a lot of social media marketing and content marketing tools.

But because of the AppSumo business model you must remember you are not going to find companies like Microsoft or Adobe featured on their website.

That being said there have been numerous times where I have been super impressed by the caliber of company that AppSumo managed to get a deal on. Companies like TechSmith and Deposit Photos spring to mind which have had deals featured on AppSumo before.

How does AppSumo work?
AppSumo negotiates deals with app vendors based on the significant size of the AppSumo audience which represents publicity and an immediate capital injection for the startup.

As you can see the business model makes sense for startups who want to feature their app on a network as large as AppSumo which virtually guarantees sales in a quick amount of time.

Is AppSumo legit?
For buyers AppSumo is still a trusted source for getting software cheaper and if you don’t like what you bought you get an immediate no question asked refund for up to 60 days after your purchase.

The risk to you as a buyer from AppSumo is absolutely zero to answer the question of whether AppSumo is legit. However there is a definite cost to the app vendor because they have to give most of their revenue to AppSumo (70%) to be featured. This goes a long way to explaining why AppSumo has revenue in the 8 figures (think 10’s of millions of dollars per year.)

If the startup has not done their due diligence they could get seriously overwhelmed with new clients and support requests for very little monetary return.

So this does highlight one potential concern with AppSumo deals not so much with AppSumo themselves but with the actual app vendor themselves. To mitigate this risk AppSumo does do a lot of due dligence on who they feature but their have been times when a deal has gone south and the company goes out of business.

To AppSumo’s credit this most recent case they stepped in and gave a full credit refund to their customers (of which I was one) and I immediately bought another AppSumo deal.

And while I am talking about this AppSumo does have a refund policy where you will get your money back on any deal you buy if you ask for a refund within 60 days.

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