After buying an account and playing with it a little, I am convinced that Sizle can become indispensable to my work — one day.

I love single-purpose apps and services. They take an idea and distill it to its most functional form. Sizle does exactly this: it supplants sharing docs over email with a link-based conditional access sharing system. Viewing/downloading documents can be protected with a PIN code. Links can also have expiration time (expire at a fixed future date) and a burn timer (expire a certain amount of time after the recipient has opened it for viewing).

The platform also allows invited parties to accept/decline receiving a document and leave comments. A simple analytics system tells us how many times viewers opened a document, and so on.

There are three reasons I am removing 1 taco:

1. The UI is still buggy here and there

2. I am missing an API (e.g. the ability to upload files, generate sharing links, or respond to trigger events like readers approving or declining a document)

3. Long-term service viability might be a problem.

What we buy via AppSumo is an instance of the Pro plan ($15/mo) with unlimited workspaces and 200GB storage per workspace (hence, unlimited storage). Absent the existence of a fair use policy (I couldn’t find one), there will always be the risk that somebody will abuse the system and run it into the ground because of AWS storage costs.

The only actual limitation of this deal is about the number of users per account (10), and this is the only means to drive MRR from lifetime deal buyers. If one needs more than 10 seats, each one will cost $2/mo extra. If it were up to me, I’d also limit storage space instead, and allow LTD users to pay for more space. This would put the service on a much more solid ground.

That being said, the price of the AppSumo deal is so low it is a very easy purchase. I considered buying several codes to further support the deal, but it can’t really guarantee longevity because of the reasons outlined above. There might come a time when Sizzle users will need to choose if they want to pay to keep using the service. Perhaps I should save my cash for that future moment, because I really like this tool, and I feel I will use it frequently.