AppSumo Black Friday Drop 2: 8 Sales & Lead Gen Tools Reviewed

AppSumo Black Friday Drop 2: Sales & Lead Generation

AppSumo's second Black Friday 2024 drop is all about sales and lead generation. There are eight tools on offer, ranging from cold email outreach platforms to appointment schedulers and even a virtual event solution. As always, these deals are lifetime purchases at heavily discounted prices, but the pricing increases 48 hours after each drop goes live.

Full disclosure: this roundup was sponsored and supported by AppSumo. They provided early access to the deals so I could review them ahead of launch. If any of these tools catch your eye, using the affiliate links in the description helps support the channel. Now let's dig into each deal and figure out which ones are actually worth your money.

GetSales: LinkedIn & Cold Email Outreach Powerhouse

GetSales is a LinkedIn and cold email outreach tool designed to help you grow your network and close deals. Starting at $79 with usage-based tiers, it sits in a competitive space alongside tools like AimFox and Closly. After testing all three, I'd put GetSales ahead of both — it's a power-user tool with a deep feature set and a strong emphasis on keeping your LinkedIn account safe.

Account safety is a big deal in the cold outreach world. A recurring theme in comments on my Closly review is people getting their LinkedIn accounts banned because they're over-automating without experience. GetSales addresses this head-on by routing your LinkedIn connection through a third-party service called GoLogin. It's free to use and adds a layer of protection that most competitors skip. The setup is a bit tedious, but it's worth the effort if you value your LinkedIn presence.

The automation builder is one of the standout features. There's a full template library covering brand awareness, customer interviews, sales outreach, and re-engagement campaigns. You can get a working automation running with a single click, which is a huge plus for beginners. The builder itself supports zooming and scrolling through complex multi-step sequences, and the visual layout makes it easy to understand what each step does. Contact imports work via LinkedIn search, Sales Navigator, or CSV upload, and the platform pulls in up to 1,000 contacts per import at a pace slow enough to avoid detection.

GetSales also includes a built-in messaging inbox and manual task tracking. For anyone serious about cold outreach — whether on LinkedIn, email, or both — this is one of the most complete tools I've reviewed. I'm giving it a 7.9 out of 10.

Brilliant Directories: Build a Membership Directory Website

Brilliant Directories is a niche website builder purpose-built for creating directory and membership-based websites. Think local city guides, service directories for finding plumbers or electricians, or any site where you want to list businesses and potentially charge for access or listings. This one is an AppSumo Plus exclusive, meaning you'll need the $99/year Plus membership to purchase it — though the 10% Plus discount stacks with the Black Friday pricing.

The platform is impressively deep. There's a full CMS with page and post management, SEO templates, a finance section with subscription plans and coupons, built-in email marketing with inbox and outbox, and even a developer hub with cPanel access for database management and custom configurations. With 835 taco reviews on AppSumo, it's clearly resonating with its audience. The add-on ecosystem is reminiscent of WordPress plugins — I counted 81 add-ons available, all toggleable with a click.

I'd strongly recommend skipping tier one and going for a higher plan. The jump in features is significant: announcement bars, website backups, global search, star rating filters, and more are locked behind the upper tiers. At around $300 for a one-time cost, you're getting an asset that can generate recurring revenue if executed well. The page builder is more form-based than drag-and-drop — you fill out content fields that conform to your selected template — but it gets the job done. For anyone who would have previously turned to WordPress for a directory site, Brilliant Directories is a serious alternative. I'm giving it an 8.4 out of 10.

Mail Lead: Dedicated Cold Email Outreach

Mail Lead is a cold email outreach tool that differentiates itself from GetSales by focusing almost entirely on email, with just a touch of LinkedIn integration. Starting at $49 for 5,000 emails per month, the pricing model is refreshingly simple: unlimited mailboxes, unlimited active leads, and unlimited team members. You're only capped by email volume.

The UI is clean and modern — a welcome change from the clunky interfaces these tools used to have. Email provider support is broad, covering Gmail, G Suite, Outlook, SMTP, Yandex, and Zoho. That Zoho support is notable since it's often missing from competitors. There's built-in email verification with credits included in the lifetime deal, and the campaign builder uses a straightforward step-based approach rather than complex branching workflows. It's less intimidating than GetSales' automation builder, which could be a plus or minus depending on your experience level.

One thing to watch: tiers one and two map to Mail Lead's Pro plan, while tiers three through five unlock the Growth plan with significantly more features. The Growth plan typically costs nearly double on their regular pricing page, and new features tend to land there first. So if you're committed to cold email, tier three is probably the sweet spot. There's also a unified inbox for managing replies across multiple team members, and an embedded TaskMagic integration for automations (though that requires its own subscription). A CRM-style pipeline feature is reportedly coming soon. I'm giving Mail Lead a 7.8 out of 10.

Fable: Interactive Demos and Guides

Fable lets you create interactive product demos and step-by-step guides by recording your screen's HTML — not video. This means users can click through a realistic-feeling demo of your software rather than just watching a passive walkthrough. At $59 to start, with five tiers that scale recording minutes and plan features, it's positioned as a tool for sales teams, onboarding, and internal SOPs.

The recording process works through a Chrome extension. I tested it by creating a guide on editing posts in Ghost CMS. Fable captured the HTML of each screen I visited and its AI copilot, Quilly, automatically generated step descriptions and annotations. It handled most steps correctly, though it did miss a nuance where I typed directly into the URL bar — a limitation of the HTML capture approach. The resulting demo felt like actually being on the website rather than watching a video, which is genuinely impressive.

The editor has some rough edges. Annotation positioning is restrictive, with limited options for placing callouts exactly where you want them. The "effects" feature (presets like Cyberpunk, Sin City, etc.) didn't produce any visible changes in my testing. On the positive side, the AI bot can translate entire guides into other languages with a single command, and there's branding customization available on higher tiers. Compared to Layer Path, which I reviewed previously, Fable feels less polished in terms of UI and editing flexibility. It beats paying monthly for a subscription service, but it's not quite where I'd like it to be. I'm giving Fable a 6.7 out of 10.

Traft: Full-Featured Appointment Booking for Service Businesses

Traft is a comprehensive appointment booking platform built for service-based businesses — salons, fitness studios, healthcare providers, music schools, photographers, consultants, and more. Starting at $69, it's created by the same team behind Amelia, the popular WordPress booking plugin. If you're currently paying for something like MindBody or Acuity Scheduling, this lifetime deal deserves serious consideration.

The feature depth is remarkable. Employee profiles support individual working hours, service assignments, per-service pricing, appointment limits (so your staff doesn't burn out from back-to-back bookings all day), days off with yearly repeats, and special day scheduling for one-off schedule changes. That last one is particularly valuable for businesses using independent contractors who set their own daily availability. Employees and services can both receive badges like "Best Value," "Most Popular," or "Premium" — a smart touch for businesses with tiered offerings.

Services support virtual delivery via Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, with options for recurring appointments (daily, weekly, monthly), buffer times between bookings, and group classes with max capacity settings. Payment processing works with Stripe, Square, PayPal, Mollie, and Authorize.net, plus on-site payments for in-person businesses. Multi-location support, ratings and reviews, coupons, email integrations, and a WordPress embed round out an extremely full-featured package.

The booking experience for end users is polished — customers choose a service, pick an employee, select a time slot, and optionally add extras (like hot stones at a massage studio). White-labeling is available on tier three and above for agencies who want to resell the platform. Traft earns a strong 8.6 out of 10 from me.

Remo: Reinventing Virtual Events

Remo takes the stale webinar format and reinvents it with an interactive, spatial approach to virtual events. Instead of a grid of faces on a Zoom call, attendees navigate a visual floor plan — conference rooms, job fairs, amphitheaters — and can only hear people at their immediate table or area. Move closer to a group, and you join their conversation. It's like a virtual networking event that actually feels like networking.

I did a full-length review of Remo about six months ago and came away genuinely impressed. The platform supports custom floor plans (you can even hire someone to design one), built-in ticketing via Stripe, breakout rooms, Q&A, quizzes, Miro whiteboard integration, and a main stage where speakers can broadcast to the entire floor. It runs on WebRTC technology, which means connections are peer-to-peer rather than routed through a central server — great for quality when your attendees have solid internet, but potentially problematic for audiences with slow upload speeds.

Pricing starts at $69 with a ticketing fee structure: zero percent during the first year (plus $0.99 per ticket), then 2% plus $0.99 per ticket after that. Custom floor plans require tier two, and custom branding unlocks at tier three. Compared to managing virtual events through generic video conferencing tools, Remo offers a dramatically more engaging experience. If virtual events are part of your business, this is worth the look. I'm giving Remo an 8.2 out of 10.

TidyCal: The Best Budget Calendly Alternative Gets an Upgrade

TidyCal is an AppSumo original that has never left the platform, and it's back for Black Friday with new features. If you need a clean, simple appointment scheduling tool — more Calendly than Traft — this is the one. Tier one stays the same feature-wise but is jumping from $29 to $39 after the 48-hour window, so existing fence-sitters should act fast.

The big news is the new tier two agency edition. For $69 (rising to $79), you get multiple team members on a single account, additional calendar connections, a dedicated team page for clients to choose who they book with, and collective meetings where multiple hosts can join a single appointment. Round robin meetings — which automatically distribute bookings evenly across your team — are coming in January or February 2025.

If you're currently paying monthly for Calendly, the math is simple: TidyCal does what most people need for a one-time fee. It's not built for complex use cases like group fitness classes (that's Traft's territory), but for scheduling calls, consultations, and meetings, it's the best value in the category. I previously gave TidyCal an 8.7 out of 10, and the new agency features only strengthen that recommendation.

BeHuman: AI Video Personalization (With Some Growing Pains)

BeHuman is an AI video generation tool that clones your likeness so you can create personalized one-to-one video messages at scale. Think email merge fields but for video — "Hey {first_name}" becomes a video of you (or your AI clone) actually saying the recipient's name. The concept is compelling for sales outreach and personalized marketing.

Unfortunately, the execution didn't hold up in my testing. The text-to-video output was clearly AI-generated, with visible artifacts like mismatched lip syncing and awkward transitions at the end of clips. More concerning were the technical issues: audio recording failed intermittently, Chrome froze repeatedly, and basic UI elements like play buttons led to error pages. The quality of AI video generation has moved fast in recent months, and BeHuman feels like it's fallen a step behind the current standard.

I'm not giving BeHuman a score because it feels unfair — the tool has plenty of positive reviews on AppSumo, so there may be something specific to my setup or a temporary service issue causing the problems. If AI video personalization interests you, check the comments and recent reviews before purchasing. The 60-day refund window gives you plenty of time to test it yourself.

Final Verdict: Which Deals Are Worth It?

This was a strong drop overall, with several standout deals for anyone in sales, lead generation, or service-based businesses. Traft (8.6) is the star of the bunch — a genuinely full-featured booking platform that could replace expensive monthly subscriptions from MindBody or Acuity. TidyCal (8.7) remains the best budget Calendly replacement, now with agency features that make it even more versatile. Brilliant Directories (8.4) fills a specific niche brilliantly, and Remo (8.2) offers a unique take on virtual events that's worth exploring.

For cold outreach, GetSales (7.9) edges ahead if you need both LinkedIn and email, while Mail Lead (7.8) is the better pick for email-only workflows with its unlimited mailbox model. Fable (6.7) is decent but not best-in-class for interactive demos. And BeHuman is a wait-and-see — check recent reviews before committing.

Remember, all AppSumo deals come with a 60-day refund policy. There's no risk in trying any of these tools, but the Black Friday pricing won't last. If something catches your eye, grab it before the prices increase.

Watch the Full Video

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