Merlin Reviews

I really used to like using merlin. Now it's super slow to the point it's pretty much unusable.

Now the tool is very very slow and not at all usable.
I am not sure whether it is for lifetime deal users or all?! Seems waste of investment.

I tried using Merlin without login in from another device, in that case the output was quick. But when same prompt done from my pro account, it takes infinite time.
Not sure why they have made the service of low quality with lifetime deal users!!

This once-great product has slowly, without explanation, become a credit hog.

Now it barely works at all - it just sputters for hours when "thinking" about a prompt.
The behavior and lack of response from the company reminds me of Reelcraft. If you haven't been using your copy, keep an eye on it because where there is smoke, there is fire.

I guess LLMs are not the way to go on Appsumo. It seems to attract calculating vendors with bad intent. In fact, there is another "playground"-like product I bought at the top tier that has done nothing wrong to date, but I am refunding it because I just feel that these deals are not safe.

I want to be clear, AppSumo is a great company and has honored its "got your back" promises, and beyond. Most of the products are great. Even Rumble Studio, which was on years ago, notified AppSumo customers of a massive update that grandfathered us into.

But kinds of vendors in the LLM and Text to Talk industries are not panning out as they draw thieves and flies. I think I'll stick to the course publishing and LinkedIn search vendors.

I purchased TIER 2 with 12,000 credits to use the various LLMs freely and without limitations (at least for me), but now I am forced to purchase the PRO plan from Merlin for €12/month (at best) in order to freely use the more advanced models, which still use up credits.
I believe this is a total lack of seriousness on the part of Merlin AI and, if AppSumo was aware of this policy on the part of the latter, on its part as well.
At the moment, it is only possible to use models that cost 1 credit per request:
GPT 4o mini
Gemini 2.5 flash
Deepseek v3(US-hosted)
Gemini 2.0 flash
Claude 3 Haiku

Merlin is no longer the tool it once was.

* They are nickle-and-diming users without clearly stating in their UI that things like "web search" cost 2x points for every request --- has anyone else heard of such a thing?
* They LIED about my usage and FAILED to produce (on TWO occasions now) a record of my points and exactly why my points disappeared so quickly, even though they have a record because they explicitly refer to it
* When asking about this and showing them the math, they explained my usage by referring to queries I didn't make at the time I sent the email which shows they are not paying attention
* Have had multiple tickets closed immediately after they were replied to, rather than seeing if I was satisfied - this is a BIG no-no, as I have had follow-up questions every time

I was an early adopted from AppSumo into Merlin and invested a bunch of money into them (one of my biggest AppSumo purchases ever). It's sad to be treated this way after as much as I've loved and enjoyed using this product. This is a failure of 1. the UI not being clear, 2. Lying/falsifying usage stats (if they weren't lying I assume they would want to prove it like I asked them to), 3. Really poor customer service.

Please get it together Merlin. It's rough being treated like a second-rate customer when I was an early-believer in you.