Pros and Cons of Top 5 Mobile App Analytics

Everyone will think once designing and publishing the apps finishes all their work is done. But it's half done. The remaining half starts with Analytics. Most of the companies will use analytics to monitor what's happening with their product after the release for their business growth, customer reviews & feedback. Many of the people were confused to select one from many tools available in the market. After completing the reading of this article, You will be confident enough to select the right analytics tool for your business.

Analytics is a trending practice & key performance indicator of measuring and analyzing the performance of an app/product to understand its behavior and to know the user journey & interactions within the app. You want to improve your business then you must analyze your product. Analytics mainly focuses on 3 things. App marketing, In-App analytics & app performance. Based on my research on various tools following 5 tools takes the top place

1. Google Analytics aka Firebase analytics

This is the most famous Analytics tool not only by brand but also with the features and services provided by it. It will help you to grow your user base on all platforms and In one central location, we can measure everything from user engagement to app crashes. The main feature is it is providing infrastructure to build along with analyzing the app. Firebase integrated with Google other products like Google Ads & AdMob.

Platforms: Many people will say it's an android centric tool but it also provides services to other platforms like iOS & unity
Pricing: It is providing basic services for free of cost

• Spark- Free with limited services
• Flame - 25$ / Month
• Blaze - We can opt for this service based on our requirements. The price will be calculated according to it

Pros

• Application performance and monitoring, A/B tests, Advanced crash reporting, In-depth audience segmentation, Deep linking performance
• You can able to combine App & web data for unified reporting & analysis
• Omni channeled product
• Integrated with google play for conversion tracking and easy & comprehension to use.
• Constant development and enhancing the product

Cons

• No integration with iTunes for conversion analytics
• No cohort analysis
• Usage is difficult for first-time users. We need assistance to explore all the features
• Pricing is not fair for the apps with high traffic

2. Mix Pannel

It is an Event-based mobile analytics tool. Tracks & Evaluates user interactions by creating tunnels and allows users to build custom reports. It increases conversion, engagement & retention. It helps companies to make better decisions and build products by measuring the data

Pricing: Pricing will be based on data points

• Free plan - 5 Million data points per month
• Basic plan - 17 $ / Month
• Enterprise plan - Upon request - For pricing contact in their official website

Pros

• Cohort analysis, Easy to create funnels & track events, In-depth app analysis, easy to create reports, visualize the data in different ways, Top-notch documentation, User friendly, Data will be very detailed way and from multiple angles

Cons

• The support system is weak
• Pricing is pretty high and requires a lot of development time for the setup.
• Sometimes software will be slow if the tracking data is high

3. Flurry

This is the first mobile app analytics tool to monitor various statistics and was acquired by Yahoo. Users can create conversion-based funnels for their client’s mobile apps. It allows users to monitor user behavior across all platforms.

Platforms: ios, android, windows, unity, Blackberry & React native
Pricing:  Free of cost

Pros

• Free of cost with no data limit, Installation will be done in no time, Top-notch documentation, Event & Funnel tracking, Covers all the basic analytics features, Monitor at any time any place across app portfolio, Raw data download, Push notification management
• It provides real-time metrics and we can view metrics individually or in comparison with different platforms

Cons

• Slow support
• In-depth analysis is not robust
• Hard to identify errors and no web integration
• Difficult to export data through excel

4. Localytics

It is a marketing solution for the mobile apps acquired by Upland. A great tool to track retention metrics helps to build stronger relationships with users. Getting to know more about their customers to keep them active with the user app. It targets different customers with different lifestyles with the help of retention, It pinpoints drop-offs.

Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows & Blackberry
Pricing: Free and paid according to the data volume

Pros

• The session, Event and Uninstall tracking, A/B testing, Custom data, etc
• Once the Onboarding app has been done. We can get an overview of the app with the number of active sessions
• Send push notification to highly specific user segments, Unlimited app usage in the free trial
• In Premium and enterprise by using advanced segments custom features like tracking specific user interactions, In-app messaging for targeted groups, etc

Cons

• Limited features for the free trial
• Due to high prices, low budget companies can't afford it
• Limited correlations restrict the complex analysis

5. UXCam

It enables the clients to improve their app KPIs through a deep understanding of user behavior. Its ability to see videos of real user sessions & heat maps to analyze actual user behavior differentiates this from other tools. It will provide more context for user interactions, where users tap, and what elements they ignored.

Platforms: iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, Unity
Pricing:

• Free - 2500 sessions / Month & 1 user licence
• Premium - 2.5K sessions / Month & 5 user licence
• Enterprise - Custom

Pros

• Integration will be done in 5 minutes and easy to use
• Uncover issues with heat maps
• Easy to understand the app with screen flow
• Easy to figure out the dropouts using user journey analytics
• Stop users from leaving
• Customer support is outstanding

Cons

• Free plan with limited features
• Taps are not preserved when videos are exported

To improve your Product KPIs (Acquisition, Activation, Retention Referral & Revenue ) you must choose the right attribution. Attribution will change based on client requirements, budget, and security of data and app performance. In this mobile data-driven development choosing the right analytics tool is a crucial challenge. Hope you understand the factors to consider for selecting the best analytics tool.