Analyzing and responding to user reviews is a critical when you’re developing an app. Users provide CRITICAL feedback and it is imperative that as developers we read and react to users.
A very convenient way is to have new app reviews automatically sent to Slack. There are several services which do this and below is a comparison of the different App Review Monitor offerings.
Appbot
- $49 per month is the cheapest plan on a monthly payment basis.
- This allows up to 15 apps to be added.
- Integrates with Slack and Trello.
- Tracks reviews from the following stores: iOS, Mac, Google Play, Amazon, Windows Mobile & Windows PC.
- Verdict: Pretty expensive!
Launchkit.io
- Send reviews to Slack.
- Price is $0 “Always Free”…
- Nifty feature on signup that you can opt to track all of your companies app with the click of a button (saves time if you have lots of apps)
- You can also set up a feature to auto-tweet reviews.
- Apparently takes up to 1 hour for the account to be activated.
- Launchkit also has a variety of other services that might be worth exploring: Screenshot Builder, App Website Builder, Sales Reporter and a variety of other tools in Beta.
- Verdict: Looks like a cool FREE tool, the major downside seems to be that it is ONLY for the iOS App Store.
Appfollow.io
- Covers multiple App Stores – iOS App Store, Google Play & Windows Phone Store.
- Integrates with Slack, Trello and Hipchat.
- 2 week free trial.
- Free Plan includes up to 2 apps and reviews from 2 countries.
- Paid Plans range from $9 per month (5 apps, 3 countries) to $39 per month (30 apps, 10 countries).
- Verdict: Relatively cheap, integrates with multiple App Stores, so this is a pretty good option for developers with multiple apps across multiple stores. A good option!
AppStore Review Notification for Slack by Bell Apps
- 100% Free.
- Reviews from iOS App Store ONLY.
- Minimalist functions and UI.
- Verdict: Probably better to go with the friendlier UI of Launchkit since they are both Free and iOS only.
ReviewBot
- Slack integration.
- Covers iOS App Store and Google Play.
- Free plan includes only 1 app.
- Top tier plan ($5.99 per month) includes only 4 apps.
- Verdict: cheap, covers the 2 major stores. If you have a big app portfolio, this option is probably less than adequate.
AppFigures
- App Store Review feature available only for paid users.
- Costs $4.99 per month plus $1.99 per app (with first 2 free).
- Free 14 day trial available.
- Covers a wide range of stores: iOS App Store, Google Play, Windows Store, Amazon AppStore, Steam, Mac App Store, Apple TV.
- Other features include Sales & Downloads tracking, Rank Tracking, Ad Monetization (although most of these features are provided by App Annie for free, so not clear what value they are providing here).
- Verdict: can get expensive if you have a lot of apps, but good if you only have a few apps and need cross platform support.
ReviewCatz
- App Store Review monitor for Google Play only.
- Currently in Beta.
- I signed up but after 5 minutes still didn’t have dashboard access.
- Verdict: need to improve their onboarding. If they offer this service free, could add this Google Play only service to a free iOS only service such as Launchkit and then cover the 2 major stores.
Build your own (IFTTT / Zapier)
- Services like IFTTT or Zapier let you create connections between existing web apps.
- Example: IF new review posted in RSS feed of app THEN post this to Slack.
- There are some “recipes” and “zaps” that already exist that you can potentially use.
- I’m not so familiar with these services myself but I know of them, you might want to give it a go. I think IFTTT is free at least as far as I could see from a quick internet search.
Create your own App Review Monitor Tool
- In the end, these review monitors are super simple web apps to create.
- All the is needed is to track an RSS feed and post to a slack channel.
- You can probably find a developer on Upwork to create this type of App for about $200 US, which will pay back the cost of most of these services within a few months.
- Potentially you could even sell the product at a more reasonable price than the competitors and make some money off it (free business idea for you!).
- The various tools above try and differentiate themselves by adding on a bunch of different features (e.g. Keyword Analysis / ASO tools), but these are not needed for the core feature of posting new app reviews to slack.
Summary
Since we have a large and growing portfolio of apps, the service that makes most sense for us at the moment is AppFollow.io.
However, creating our own tool will be high up on the list, since the price we’ll pay ($39 per month) means that the cost of development will pay itself back in a matter of months.
If you run an App Review Monitor tool I would recommend making it a totally free service and then upsell your other tools and features, since to develop a review monitor is such a simple task.
Know of any other or new app review monitoring tools that can post reviews to Slack? Add them in the comments below.
