“Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.” — W. Edwards Deming
August 15, 2021 by Jonas Kurzweg
Choosing the best mobile app analytics tools for your app can easily be overwhelming. After all, there are so many vendors on the market already, and more are being added every day!
According to a Harvard Business Review study, researchers found that “businesses that integrate multiple sources of customer and marketing data significantly outperform other companies.” They also had dramatically higher total shareholder returns.
Want a crash course in app analysis techniques? Download our FREE guide UX app analysis techniques to win over customers.
It’s time to compare the best mobile app analytics tools and platforms on the market today. We did extensive research to find the 11 best tools for you to consider.
“Build, improve, grow.”
Platform: iOS / Android / Unity
Price: Free / Paid
What it does: Firebase doesn’t just focus on analyzing your app; it also provides the infrastructure to build it.
A strong advantage of this mobile analytics tool is that multiple features like analytics, crash reporting, hosting, and A/B tests all come in one product.
The pricing is fair for apps with low traffic, but it can get expensive for established apps. Firebase is a tool that you’ll find in the SDK stack of many popular apps.
Hosting.
Crash reporting.
Test Lab (for Android).
Application performance monitoring.
Cloud messaging.
Google Ads.
The mobile app version of Google Analytics is included in Firebase.
You may also be interested in: 12 Product Management tools the best Product Managers use
“Deliver the perfect app experience.”
Platform: iOS / Android / React Native / Flutter / Xamarin / Unity
Price: Free trial / Pricing upon request
What it does: UXCam enables app professionals to improve their app’s KPIs through a deep understanding of user behavior.
UXCam offers benefits that other app analytic tools don’t:
1. Uncover the true causes of friction and frustration. Heatmaps show you where users tap and which elements they ignore, and you can read here why UXCam's mobile app heatmaps separate it from other heatmap tools. If you're familiar with Hotjar and use it on your website, you will also want to find out why UXCam is the alternative for mobile apps.
2. Get more context on where and why users drop out. Find out how users behave during your funnel.
3. Replicate and reduce crashes. Save valuable developer time by replicating every crash in under 30 seconds.
4. Understand the complete user journey with video session replays.
UXCam shows you the big picture and gradually drills the analysis down to individual user journeys. If you need help mapping your user journeys before getting specific, check out our complete guide with examples and FREE templates.
Customers have reported higher conversion and retention rates since they started using UXCam.
Want to see what your users see? Try UXCam for free.
Integrating UXCam into your mobile app takes 5 minutes and 2 lines of code.
What customers say about UXCam
“For that bug alone, UXCam paid back our year’s subscription.”
“UXCam is the core tool I use to build my product.”
Easily understand the complete user journey.
Uncover user struggles automatically.
Find issues (crashes, UI freezes, handled exceptions) and opportunities on each screen.
Analyze heatmaps.
Spot hidden bottlenecks with Screen Flow.
Understand where and why users drop off with Funnel Analytics.
Easily find sessions that matter with Session Recording.
Automatic element tagging — no additional code required.
Not really a feature but UXCam recently ranked #1 leader in Usability and Implementation for mobile app tools on the review site G2.
If you have any questions about UXCam, reach out for a FREE demo.
“Product analytics for product people.”
Platform: iOS / Android / Web
Price: Free / Paid (starts at $25/month for 1K users)
What it does: Mixpanel tracks user interactions and allows you to build custom reports.
This app analytics tool lets you evaluate user actions by segmenting them and by creating funnels.
Additionally, Mixpanel shows you information about data points such as location, device, channels, and more. Mixpanel can also be used for targeted communication via push notifications.
A/B testing.
Push notifications.
Funnels.
Engagement tracking.
Mobile and web.
You might also be interested in: How To Do a UX Competitor Analysis for Your Mobile App (FREE Template!)
“Flurry grows with you.”
Platform: iOS / Android
Price: Free
What it does: Flurry is Yahoo’s answer to the increasing demand in the app analytics market. It allows you to monitor user behavior across all platforms at no cost.
It should be noted that Flurry is free because they may share your data — anonymously — with third parties.
Free app analytics.
Events.
Funnels.
Segments.
Cohorts.
You may also be interested in: Best tools to run mobile app A/B testing: Enhance experiments with qualitative data
“Analytics for modern product teams.”
Platform: iOS / Android
Price: Free / Paid (starts at $2K/month)
Free up to 10 million user actions per month. If your app exceeds that, you must go for an annual contract that starts at $2K/month on the lowest plan.
What it does: Amplitude is a robust quantitative analytics tool. Its features and use cases are comparable to those of Mixpanel.
Real-time app analytics.
Retroactive funnels.
User segmentation.
Scalable analytics.
Retention rate detection.
“360° web and mobile analytics.”
Platform: iOS / Android / Web
Price: Free / Paid
What it does: Countly provides an overall analytics picture for web and mobile. It offers a real-time, open-source mobile analytics application that can be hosted on your own servers.
Open-source application.
Extensible via plugins.
On-premise or private cloud.
Retention analysis.
Funnel analysis.
You might also be interested in: Push Notification UX: The Full Guide 2022
“For the ultimate iOS developer.”
Platform: iOS / tvOS
Price: Free
What it does: Apple App Analytics is included with the Apple Developer Program membership and doesn’t require any implementation.
Although with limited capabilities, it’s a decent mobile app analytics tool. It should be paired with another more advanced one.
Usage data.
Sales data.
App Store data.
“Know why they come to your apps. Know why they stay. And know how to keep them.”
Platform: iOS / Android
Price: Paid
What it does: Adobe Analytics gives you the tools you need to understand your users.
This app analytics tool is priced for enterprise clients only. Adobe Analytics provides you with real-time analytics and detailed segmentation.
Flow exploration.
Fallout analysis.
Custom histograms.
Cohort analysis.
Contribution analysis.
“Product analytics for driving growth.”
Platform: iOS / Android / Web
Price: Free
What it does: Facebook Analytics allows you to see how users are engaging with your product across all devices and platforms. You can view user behavior data and compare it with Facebook’s customer data.
Retention.
Funnels.
Demographics.
Segments.
“Your results matter.”
Platforms: iOS / Android
Price: Free / Paid
What it does: Localytics, which was acquired by Upland, is a marketing solution for mobile apps. It offers a robust push notification capability.
Apart from that, it’s a great tool to track retention metrics & attribution models across your apps.
Sessions and events.
Retention.
Attribution.
Uninstall tracking.
LTV.
Mobile CRM.
Cloud support.
“Interceptd keeps fraudulent installs out, and lets valuable users in.”
Platforms: iOS / Android
Price: Two- to four-week free trial / Price upon request
What it does: Interceptd is an ad fraud solution that keeps out fraudulent installs and optimizes your clean traffic.
While protecting companies from an average of over 30% fraudulent mobile ad traffic is a big feat, eliminating ad fraud also has data and analytics implications that cannot be ignored. You get access to clean data by eliminating the fake installs, the fraudulent clicks, and the simulated in-app purchases and registrations.
Block fraudulent clicks, installs and in-app actions.
Optimize your clean traffic.
Get access to accurate and clean data.
In-app event tracking and analytics, including graphs and flowcharts.
Track fraud and your KPIs via customizable reports.
Stay on top of metrics such as effective ROAs, customizable cohorts and revenue events.
It’s important to remember that, while each system is different, it’s crucial to view the entirety of the customer journey while using your product.
Analytics tools are a big part of the mobile SDK ecosystem:
You may also be interested: The complete SDK guide e-book
This graphic shows the big picture of the SDK ecosystem. Another tip for ensuring nothing is missed: Integrate both qualitative and quantitative mobile analytics into your analytics stack.
This concludes the list. We’ll update this article regularly to catch up with the fast-moving analytics world.
P.S. The fastest-growing apps in the app store use UXCam.
FAQ
A mobile app analytics tool is a software that helps you to monitor your app’s performance. Usually, these tools require the installation of an SDK (Software Development Kit) on your app.
You need to install the SDK of your analytics vendor on your app. This requires adding a short piece of code. Make sure that you install both quantitative and qualitative analytics.
Mobile app analytics is the process of capturing, measuring, and analyzing user behavior data gathered from mobile platforms such mobile phones, iPads, and mobile sites. The data is generated whenever users engage and interact with the mobile applications. The information collected can be analyzed to measure how effective mobile platforms are in getting customers to complete an action.
Without app analytics, you won’t know which features of your app are performing well and which are not. You’ll miss hidden opportunities and bottlenecks.
UX, marketing & product nerd. Coffee enthusiast. Working at UXCam. Leave me comments if you have any!