Purchase Protection Policy

Welcome, Sumo-lings, to our Purchase Protection Policy! Here we will explain AppSumo’s role in our digital marketplace. In particular, we want to tell you about what we do to help protect our beloved Sumo-lings when you buy digital products on the marketplace.

Let’s be clear. AppSumo operates as the #1 digital marketplace for entrepreneurs. Although we’re proud to be #1, third-party creators and developers (whom we call our Partners) do the hard part. They create the products that we sell to you and almost always do it well. Almost always?! Yes, this means that there are occasions in which you or other Sumo-lings are unhappy with a product that they purchased on the Marketplace. 

When you are unhappy, we are unhappy. Often, we do things that restore your happiness with respect to the Partner’s product (this can include refunding your money). Unfortunately, it’s not possible for everyone to be happy all the time, but here at AppSumo, we always try.

Here is what we will do when things aren’t working out between you and that [insert expletive here!] product.

And for full transparency - here are the Terms that Partners must agree to as of July 1, 2023. These are terms we establish to protect customers but are ultimately an agreement by the seller, or Partner, to fulfill to the Buyer, aka Sumo-ling, and we act as a facilitator of the sale and will help enforce the agreement but as we can't control how a company runs their business, can't be liable but we do offer some amazing guarantees in our Customer Protection Policy:

http://appsumo.com/partner-terms

Let’s first make sure we’re on the same page, so a few definitions:

• Customers. You are considered a customer if you purchase any product from the AppSumo store. But note that in this context, we have two types of customers: Plus Customers and Non-Plus Customers.
  • Plus Customer - A customer is considered a Plus Customer if they have an active AppSumo Plus membership. If you purchased a product and are a Plus Customer at the time of the product closure, you are eligible for a full refund under the Protection Policy. This also applies to folks who were not Plus Customers when they initially purchased the product, but became Plus Customers before the closure announcement took place. 
  • Non-Plus Customer - If you purchase a product from the AppSumo store but do not have an active Plus membership, then you are a Non-Plus Customer. That means you are also a Non-Plus Customer if you were a Plus Customer when you purchased the product but canceled your membership before the closure announcement took place. In these cases, you are not eligible for a full refund. 

Regardless of your Plus status when you purchased the product, what we consider is your status during the business closure event.

Also, the protections described here are afforded only to Eligible Customers. Eligible Customers are Customers who notify the AppSumo Support team of these issues within certain time periods dating from the day they purchased the Product at issue. That date is the Purchase Date. If a Customer purchased multiple codes or upgraded its licenses on multiple dates, each of those dates is the Purchase Date applicable to that specific code or license upgrade.

• Products

We have two classifications for the digital products (“Products”) sold on the Marketplace:

• Select Products - These are premium products. We handpick and heavily vet Select Products to high standards that go through testing from peers like yourself.
• Non-Select Products - Again, what a name?! These products go through a light vetting process. Although there are many gems in this bunch, the AppSumo team is not very involved in the launch of Non-Select Products as we are with the Select Products.

• Product Closure - A Product Closure happens when Customers no longer have access to the applicable Product because the Partner ceases to offer it. The date when the Product Closure happens is the “Closure Date,” which is typically the day the Partner announces that its Product will cease operating. In circumstances in which a Partner ceases to operate its Product for some, but not all, customers, AppSumo’s team will reasonably determine the Closure Date.

• Deal Types

We generally have two types of subscriptions we offer with our deals:

• Lifetime - These are subscriptions where you pay once and you don’t have to pay again for access to the product. This is not for the lifetime of the customer, but the lifetime of the product. In SaaS, although an overwhelming 90% of startups fail, AppSumo SaaS Select tools have a track record of less than 5% becoming a bad investment. Not even the S&P 500 can beat this. But, like any investment in early stage startups, there is a risk it may not work out. Our goal is to ensure you at least get savings to justify the purchase within a few months.
• Annual - These are subscriptions where you get access to a product for a year, and depending on the terms, you can renew at a discounted rate or at a regular rate. These deals are no different than recurring annual plans you normally purchase outside of AppSumo except you have exceptional savings the first year and perhaps subsequent years.

• Partners -  As we mentioned above, a “Partner” is the person or organization that created the digital product and lists it for sale on the Marketplace. Partners enter into agreements with AppSumo that obligate Partners to abide by certain contractual provisions. The contractual provisions that Partners are bound to include:
  • Maintenance and support obligations - Partners are required to maintain the Product and resolve Customer issues within 14 days. They must do this even after their contract with us is terminated.  
  • Partner goes out of business or sells to another company - There are provisions in place that encourage the Partner’s successor to maintain the Product or “suffer the consequences.” On occasion AppSumo has gone so far as to have the successor refund purchasers of the product acquired. 
  • Product Name Changes. Sometimes Partners change the name of the Product, plan, or tier after a Customer purchased it on the Marketplace - Partners agree to “map” the deal that the Customer purchased to the plan or tier then currently offered by Partner that it most closely resembles. Partners also agree that AppSumo makes the final determination as to which plan it most closely resembles. 
  • Product Feature Reduction - Generally, Partners know and agree not to eliminate or reduce key features of their Products after they are listed for sale on the Marketplace. However, as we all know, technologies constantly change and evolve—software in particular! 

Customers alert us when a Product feature is removed or no longer functions as it once did. If Partners do not intend on restoring the feature at issue, AppSumo’s team investigates as to why the feature was removed. 

• Is the Partner pivoting removing daily reports for ALL of their customers, not just for lifetime subscription customers but ALL of their regular paying customers as well? We likely would consider that a “Good Reason” since that applies to everyone and not singling Sumo-lings out. 
• Is the Partner reducing the number of profiles Sumo-lings get when it allows unlimited integrations for all its other customers?! That reflects a “Bad Reason.” 

Making these decisions is more of an art than a science, and sometimes the edge cases are extremely difficult. We promise to be reasonable when we make the decision (no coin flips), but Customers must understand that products operate a business and often make healthy changes with the intention of scaling. Think Netflix removing sharing of passwords recently - that’s a move they made regardless of when you bought a subscription.

Protection Policies

Here is a list of our policies regarding how we help our Eligible Customers in times of trouble, broken out by Customer types. 

Unfortunately, we cannot (and do not) guarantee to you that we will succeed in our attempts to make Partners live up to their end of the bargain with customers. But we do try. We have an entire team of AppSumo employees dedicated to Partner Relations. Believe us, they work tirelessly to facilitate resolutions with Partners. We wish we could ensure that your favorite Product will work perfectly forever, but ultimately, we can’t because we don’t control the Product nor how they run their business.