AppSumo Black Friday 2023 Tier List: Every Deal Ranked

The Surprise 11th Deal: Live Webinar vs Big Marker

AppSumo pulled a move nobody expected for Black Friday 2023 — they dropped a surprise 11th deal: Live Webinar. This was a big deal because the LTD community had been buzzing about Big Marker for weeks, with people agonizing over whether to keep their codes or refund them. Suddenly, there was a second option on the table.

Before you rush to grab either platform, though, there's something worth considering. Webinar software is only a tiny fraction of what it costs to run a profitable webinar. The real expense is getting people into seats — paid traffic, email lists, promotion. Isaac Rudansky, an online educator with over 150,000 students, documented his webinar journey publicly on Medium. On his first attempt, he spent $5,400 on ads, got 137 registrations, but only 13 people showed up live. He generated $2,400 in revenue — a net loss of over $3,000.

His second attempt was even more aggressive: nearly $12,000 in ad spend, 200 registrations, 42 attendees, and just $2,100 in sales — a $9,800 loss. The takeaway isn't that webinars don't work, but that they require a high-ticket offer, a proven sales process, and serious marketing budget before the software even matters. If you've never run a webinar before, take a breath before stacking codes on any platform.

Why Live Webinar Gets the Edge

If you've weighed the costs and decided a webinar platform is right for your business, Live Webinar is the stronger choice for most people. The main complaint is that recordings default to a low frame rate — 12 frames per second isn't great, and the claims that "nobody notices" don't hold up. There are two workarounds: stack five codes to unlock 30fps recording, or stack three codes to enable social media streaming, which lets you pipe the stream to an unlisted YouTube video and download the recording from there.

Beyond the recording issue, Live Webinar has a significant reliability advantage. Multiple trusted sources have reported stability problems with Big Marker during live sessions. Big Marker defenders often point to bandwidth as the culprit, and they're sometimes right — live video is demanding. But when your business reputation is on the line during a live sales webinar, reliability isn't optional.

There's also a sustainability angle. Live Webinar uses WebRTC (peer-to-peer) technology, which means they don't carry the same massive cloud bandwidth costs that Big Marker does. That's a healthier long-term business model for a lifetime deal product. The UI isn't the prettiest — it looks like developers built it without a designer's input — but it works, and that's what matters when you're live in front of potential customers.

Continually: A Chatbot That Actually Makes Sense

Let's be honest — nobody visits a website and thinks "oh good, a chatbot." They're not exciting. But they do work. Chatbots measurably increase conversion rates because they catch visitors who would otherwise leave without a trace. If your website doesn't have any kind of engagement widget in the corner, you're almost certainly losing leads.

Continually is built specifically for local businesses and B2B lead generation. The UI is clean and modern, and it comes with calendar integrations for booking-type workflows. If you're a service business, a consultant, or a local company that needs to capture leads from your website, Continually is a solid fit.

Here's the important qualifier: if you've already collected chatbot LTDs — CurioBot, ActiveChat, Chatbotize, and whatever else has come through AppSumo — you don't need another one. There are no prizes for collecting every LTD. But if you genuinely don't have a chatbot and you serve local or B2B clients, Continually deserves a look. Just don't expect it to be an advanced e-commerce chatbot builder — that's not what it's designed for.

HelpShelf: A Simple Two-Step Decision

HelpShelf has been on AppSumo multiple times now, including those "Last Call" return deals for Plus members. People hear "help" in the name and assume it's a support desk. It's not — it's a widget that combines multiple tools into a single corner widget on your site.

Here's a two-step process to decide if it's for you. Step one: visit their integrations page and check whether you're already using any of the platforms they connect with — help desks, content tools, roadmap tools, and scheduling (coming soon). You'll see a lot of familiar LTD names on the list: CurioBot, Gist (formerly ConvertFox), LiveAgent, and others. If nothing on that list matches your stack, move on.

Step two: if you do use those tools, ask yourself whether you want a single widget in the corner of your site that ties them all together — your roadmap, contact form, resource search, everything in one place. If the answer to both questions is yes, HelpShelf is a clean solution. If not, skip it without a second thought.

Quuu: Automated Content Curation with a Team Twist

Quuu is a content curation tool — you type in a topic and it surfaces articles you can share on social media. If you used ContentStudio early on, this was one of its original selling points. The difference is that Quuu focuses purely on finding the articles and doesn't include a built-in social scheduler. Instead, it integrates with platforms like Hootsuite, Buffer, and — notably — SocialBee, which will interest a lot of people in the LTD community.

The workflow is straightforward: Quuu finds relevant articles, you schedule them through your preferred social media tool, and your feeds stay active without you manually hunting for content to share. On its own, that's a useful time-saver.

But the real killer feature is Pods. Let's say you have a real estate team with seven or eight agents. One person can sift through Quuu's article recommendations and push them to the entire pod. Every agent on the team can then blast out the same content, giving the algorithm a boost and spreading your brand across multiple profiles quickly. For teams where some members love social media and others avoid it, Pods eliminate the friction entirely. At $39 for a single code, it's worth testing — and AppSumo's refund policy means you can try it for your specific industry without risk.

FindThatLead: Simple B2B Prospecting

FindThatLead is another returning AppSumo deal, so longtime Sumo-lings may already have it. The concept is dead simple: type in a domain, and it gives you a list of email addresses it thinks are associated with that domain.

Is it 100% accurate? No. Does it work every time? No. But does it work sometimes? Absolutely. And if you close even one deal from a lead you found through the tool, you're looking at a 10x to 100x return on a $39 investment. The math is hard to argue with for anyone doing B2B outreach.

This is one of those deals where the value proposition is so straightforward that there's not much to debate. If you do cold outreach or B2B prospecting, FindThatLead is a no-brainer pickup. If you don't, skip it.

Klinked: Client Portals Done Right

If you've ever had a client email you asking for a document you sent them last week, you understand why client portals exist. Klinked puts all your client documents, links, and communication in one organized place. Instead of digging through email threads, you just say: "Check the portal."

Klinked is a cloud-hosted SaaS solution, which differentiates it from some WordPress-based client portals that have appeared on AppSumo in the past. The reviews have been very favorable, but there are two common complaints. The big one is storage: you get 50GB regardless of how many codes you stack, and additional storage costs $10/month per 50GB. Coming from a world of Dropbox and Google Drive where a terabyte costs a few dollars a month, 50GB feels stingy.

But consider it from Klinked's perspective — they're not running Google-scale infrastructure, and if you're burning through 50GB+ of client files, you're clearly getting serious value from the platform. Think of the overage fee as a sustainability tip. The codes aren't cheap at $100 each, and the only thing stacking gets you is more team members: 30, 60, or 90 members across one, two, or three codes. For agencies and freelancers who want to look professional and stop playing email ping-pong with clients, Klinked is a polished solution.

Final Verdict: Wave Two Is Stronger Than Wave One

Looking at this second wave of AppSumo Black Friday deals as a whole, it's a stronger lineup than the first wave for most people. These are practical, proven tools — many of them returning deals — which means the products have had time to mature and the reviews are established. If you missed them the first time around, this is your shot.

The standout deal is Live Webinar, but only if you have a genuine, profitable use case for webinars. Don't buy it because of FOMO — buy it because you have a high-ticket offer and a plan to fill seats. For everyone else, Continually (if you need lead gen), FindThatLead (if you do B2B outreach), and Klinked (if you manage clients) are the most universally useful picks.

As always, AppSumo's refund policy is your best friend. If a deal looks interesting but you're not sure it fits your workflow, grab it, test it, and return it if it doesn't deliver. That's the whole point of lifetime deals — low risk, high potential upside.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.