How to Track Lifetime Deals: The 8 Fields That Actually Matter
By Dominique Abbey · Published
Short answer: track eight fields per deal — marketplace, purchase date, refund deadline, tier bought, codes redeemed, login email, status, and what it replaces. The refund deadline is the one that costs real money if you miss it, and it is the field a spreadsheet is worst at, because a sheet cannot count down.
Why lifetime deals need tracking at all
A subscription bills you monthly, so it announces itself. A lifetime deal is the opposite: you pay once, and then the product goes quiet. Nothing arrives in your inbox to remind you that you own it. That silence is the whole problem, and it produces four specific failures.
- The refund window closes while you are still "getting to it." Most AppSumo deals carry 60 days. StackSocial is typically 30. PitchGround is 14. Each marketplace publishes its own policy, and individual deals can shorten it.
- Codes go unredeemed. Stacking deals hand you multiple codes, and an unredeemed code is often outside a refund policy once the window passes.
- You buy the same category twice. Three form builders and two screen recorders is the normal shape of a stack nobody is tracking.
- A tool goes dark and you find out when you try to log in. By then, refunding is not an option.
The eight fields worth recording
You do not need a database schema. You need these, per deal:
- Tool name and the login email you used — stacks get bought across two or three accounts, and that is how access gets lost.
- Marketplace — it determines the refund window and who you chase for support.
- Purchase date — everything else is calculated from it.
- Refund deadline — purchase date plus the marketplace window, written as a date, not a duration.
- Tier bought and codes redeemed — the difference between "I own Tier 3" and "I own Tier 1 and two unredeemed codes."
- What it replaces — the subscription you cancelled, or intended to. This is the field that tells you whether the deal actually paid off.
- Status — active, refunded, returned, or dead.
- Price paid — for the only ROI question that matters: did this stack beat what you would have spent on subscriptions?
Step by step: the tracking routine
On the day you buy. Record the deal within 24 hours, while the order email is still findable. Calculate the refund deadline immediately and put it somewhere that will interrupt you — a calendar event with an alert, not a row in a sheet you will not reopen.
Redeem the codes the same week. An unredeemed code is not an asset; it is an intention. Redeem, confirm the tier shows in the product's own account settings, and note the login email.
At the halfway point of the refund window. Actually use the tool for an hour. This is the single habit that separates a stack that pays for itself from a folder of logins. If you have not opened it by day 30 of a 60-day window, that is your answer.
Before every new purchase. Search your own stack by category first. The cheapest lifetime deal is the one you do not buy twice.
Quarterly. Log in to everything. A tool whose founder has gone quiet — no changelog, no support replies, a dead status page — is a tool to migrate off while you still can, not after.
Where spreadsheets break
A Notion board, a Google Sheet, or an Airtable base is a fine place to start, and thousands of buyers track this way. The limit is structural: a spreadsheet records what you type, and it cannot watch a clock. Specifically, it will not calculate a 60-day AppSumo window against a 14-day PitchGround one, it will not tell you on day 53 that a refund is still available, and it will not notice that a founder stopped shipping. Every one of those requires something to check on your behalf while you are not looking.
The failure mode is predictable: the sheet keeps up for the first dozen deals, then Black Friday arrives, six purchases land in a week, and it never catches up.
Doing it automatically
DealKeep is a purpose-built LTD tracker for exactly this routine. It imports your AppSumo purchases through the Chrome extension (or takes a pasted list, a CSV, or a deal URL), auto-tags each deal with its marketplace refund window, alerts you at 7 days, 3 days, and on the day the window closes, flags duplicates before you buy, and runs Founder Track against a database of tools that have gone quiet. The Free Forever plan covers 10 tools, so you can test the routine before committing to it.
Whichever way you track — sheet or software — the rule is the same: record the deal the day you buy it, and put the refund deadline somewhere that will interrupt you. Everything else is bookkeeping.
Frequently asked questions
How long do I have to refund a lifetime deal? It depends on the marketplace, and the exact window is printed on each deal page. Most AppSumo deals carry a 60-day money-back guarantee, StackSocial is typically 30 days, and PitchGround is 14. Individual deals can shorten or waive it, so read the deal page rather than assuming.
Can I track deals from more than one marketplace in one place? Yes, and you should — the whole point is one source of truth. DealKeep tracks deals from AppSumo, StackSocial, PitchGround, SaaS Mantra, DealFuel, Dealify, and direct founder deals in a single dashboard.
What if I already have 200 deals in a spreadsheet? Import it rather than retyping it. A CSV or Excel export of your sheet is the fastest path, and DealKeep de-duplicates on import so a messy sheet does not become a messy dashboard.
Is there a free lifetime deal tracker? DealKeep's Free Forever plan tracks up to 10 tools at no cost. Free Notion and Google Sheets templates exist too, and they work right up until the point where you need something to watch a deadline for you.
Related: LTD Tracker · Best lifetime deals 2026 · Compare LTD marketplaces · Pricing