Top Appsumo Deals in February 2021
As we all know, lifetime deals (LTD) can be addictive. With a lot of deals launched every week, most of us get the shiny object syndrome way too often.
You know that feeling you get every morning, Monday through Friday at 8:00 am CST to go and check AppSumo for their latest deal. We go to the site and we see a new tool being launched and we jump right in, most of the time without even a use case.
Sometimes we go on Facebook to Ken’s group and Kartik group and seek some advice from other members to validate our rush into buying.
Reality is, most of us that have been investing in LTDs for a long time, purchase deals most of the time for the sake of buying, sometimes as insurance just in case another company goes out of business.
In no way I’m saying that buying LTD deals is a bad thing but buying compulsively is a completely different story.
For this reason, here is the guide for some of the deals that launched during the month of February and what I think about them.
Not all of them are bad deals but for some of them, you might be better off by using a completely different solution.
Keep in mind this is my personal opinion, your business niche, needs and wants should play a role when deciding whether or not to get one of these deals at all.
Mailrush
Mailrush enables you to run cold outreach campaigns to engage with potential customers. They offer automated workflows, templates and advanced tracking. While their limits are really good, keep in mind these emails are being sent from a shared IP address. All it takes is a bad actor and your emails will be landing in the SPAM box
Alternatives: As an alternative, I recommend you consider the Sales.Rock LTD going on right now. Not only this is a more mature tool and a robust team of developers but it also offers many more features for a little more money. The LTD ends on March 14.
Linguix
Linguix is an AI based writing assistant that helps writers correct basic grammar and spelling.
Alternatives: Grammarly Free is an appropriate replacement at this moment for Linguix. While you might be interested in the prospect of getting a Grammarly Premium replacement for a fraction of the cost, in reality this is no replacement for it. In reality, depending on your use case, Grammarly free plan might be more than enough. If Linguix improves exponentially in the next few years it might come close to Grammarly Premium but honestly, you might be better off paying for Grammarly Premium anyways.
WebTotem
WebTotem is a website security that analyzes and protects your website from bad actors.
The biggest downside of this deal is their definition of malware removal. While tools such as Virusdie offers automated malware removal, WebTotem just place those files in quarantine and won’t remove them. Unfortunately, this is something not offered in this deal. In my opinion, in a way this defeats the purpose of this plugin.
Alternatives: While looking at it from a pricing perspective there might not be better deals than this one, security is not the category where you want to save money on. VirusDie, Malcare and WebRx were LTDs before and they turned out to be great investments, time will tell if WebTotem will join them on this list. For now, I would recommend you to pay for one of the plugins listed above and sleep well at night knowing your site is protected.
Gravitec
Gravitec is a web push notification that allows you to maintain an engaged audience by sending push notifications to their browser.
Depending on your niche, this might be a good tools to use to bring repeat customers. Reality is that a good percentage of users will never agree to push notifications from a website for a variety of reasons, therefore, this tool might or might not be useful in your specific niche. One of the biggest downsides of this company is the lack of support for mobile push notifications.
Alternatives: While the limits on this deal are decent, I believe most of us can get away using OneSignal. This company is the most recognizable brand in this space and offers up to 10,000 web push notifications per month. They also offer unlimited mobile push subscribers in their free plan. Other options are Webpushr which offers to send notifications for up to 60k subscribers and Truepush which offers an unlimited free plan for web and mobile push notifications.
10Web AI Builder
10Web AI Builder is an artificial intelligence Elementor extension plugin that clones websites into your own WordPress installation. While this might sound like a great solution, think again, how many times have you actually fully cloned a page into your site? I understand there are cases in which you like the design of a site or a page or a cliente simply wants an exact copy of a site but that doesn’t happen too often. In addition to their AI builder, 10Web offers a web hosting solution with up to 5GB of storage for one site.
Alternatives: While this might be a tempting solution for some users to use AI to build exact replicas of sites, I personally like to design my sites based on my preferences, needs of my users and desired features. I’m sticking with Elementor, Gutenberg and old fashion manual design. While they claim their web hosting is optimized for speed, I rather use NameCheap or Vultr to host my sites. Storage in 10Web can cost as much or more than other well known solutions.
Vidlogs
Vidlogs is an AI powered video call transcription software that allows you to
Alternatives: If you’re considering this deal as an Zoom Premium or Microsoft Teams alternative, think again. Vidlogs limit your calls to 50 minutes for calls with more than 15 participants while Zoom free plan limits them to 45 minutes. Another option is to use Microsoft Teams which is free for up to 100 participants and includes online video calls and up to 60 minutes meetings. The biggest downside of using Microsoft Teams is the lack of recording features in their free plan.
Signaturely
Signaturely is a software that allows you to get your documents legally signed by your clients online. This is a great software for those that have to deal with clients located in different locations than their own location and for busy entrepreneurs that want to optimize their document signing process.
Alternative: While the terms of the Signaturely deal are not bad, PandaDoc is a great free alternative if you don’t require templates or custom branding. Their free plan is really appealing as they offer unlimited signatures, unlimited document uploads, payments and access to their mobile app.
Guestboard
Guestboard is an events management platform that allows you to increase your event attendees engagement before and after your event.
Alternatives: Facebook Events are free and don’t require downloading additional software nor learning a new platform.
Not everything is doom and gloom, there are good deals on AppSumo right now that depending on your use case might turn out to be great investments. Here are some I already bought or am considering buying in the near future:
Switchboard: Alternative to Restream and Streamyard. While this tool is not at their level yet, I foresee getting there with time. This is a great solution for those that are into the streaming live videos business.
Morphio: In my opinion a good solution if you run the marketing of your company. This is especially useful for those that run ads on social media. This might be a good Jepto alternative.
bCast: If you run a podcast or are thinking about starting one, you will need storage for your show and that’s exactly what you get with bCast.
Ora3: I get it, we probably have wayyyyy too many product management tools in our arsenals. Didn’t I just say that buying tools for the sake of buying is a bad thing? Well, hear me out, this is not just another PM tool, this is probably the best PM tool that has come across AppSumo. While their limits in terms of users are low, this tool has improved a lot in the past few months, enough for me to get FOMO.
Quickpage / Sendspark: Both of these tools are great solutions if you’re looking to send and receive video messages. I think either of them are great buys, especially if you send
Debating whether or not they are good deals
Here are some deals which I don’t know much about and would require some further research to make a decision:
GuruCan – This is a online learning management system / social media tool for content creators
Webtrends Optimize – This is a page optimizer (only good if you have enough traffic to make the tests worth it)
GoodFlow – A workflow management tool to help teams collaborate
Pixelied – Another design tool to possibly add to the list. This is a maybe / maybe not.
TrustMate – Trust Mate is a software that facilitates the collection of products reviews.
Blogely – This one has been widely covered on different Groups. I already own MarketMuse and Frase which I consider to be superior alternatives. Will research further to see if I’m missing something as some users are raving about this one.
Everything else on AppSumo right now was a waste of time to talk about so I decided to skip them in this conversation. If I missed a gem or an overhyped product, please let us know in the comments section. Would love to hear your opinion.
As you can see, LTDs are not always the solution to all your problems. There are tools out there that are cheap or free that can meet your business needs. While we might be tempted to get deals just for the sake of getting them, remember, you worked hard for that money, you might as well invest it smartly.
If you want to learn more about free tools and want to earn up to $1M in free tools, checkout my article about the Segment Startup Program here and the Join Secret program here.
