Comparing appFigures and AppAnnie - Updated

Since the launch of the App Store, because of the lack of processed informations on application sales from Apple, many sales analytics services  went online. One of the first that I started to use was www.appfigures.com. Then another one went on called www.appannie.com. In this blog post, I want to put them side by side and tell what are their respective strengths.

Update: someone reading my blog post sent me a tip asked me to give a look at Distimo Monitor. Scroll down to the end of this post to see what I found out.

What I like about AppAnnie:

• Global view on user reviews count... easier to keep track of the reviews globally
• Better visual organization (vertical split view)
• New user comments included in the daily email reports
• Current trends in the App Store with the Top 5 Matrix - so in gives a more global view of the current trends in the App Store, not just your own apps
• Indicator about which application is featured in which store - nice to know as it may explain sales peek
• Graphs are not based on Flash player to display
• More complete historical ranking information like Highest Ranks, Highest Grossing
• Cheaper - currently in beta - free

AppAnnie graph look

What I prefer from AppFigures:

• Ranking graphs seems constantly more up to date
• Daily email reports are well organized
• There is an API, and an iOS app is already available on the App Store (but it needs a lot of refinements) - AppTrends (iTunes link)
• Ability to export to Excel a few tables
• Add events overlay to the graphs to correlate promo events with actual sales
• More charting options (line, bar, cumulative)
• Sales reports are available earlier (because of higher processing power?)
• Overlay option of ranking information on top of sales
• Translation of user reviews (!)

AppFigures graph look

Distimo Monitor was unknown to me up to now. I've setup my account for testing and comparison purposes. Since nearly a week of using the service, here are my findings.

• This service is really multi-platforms: Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 and Ovi stores are all supported. 
• Events from the App Store (like an updated version of your app) can be shared on social network like Twitter, which is a nice addition compared to other services.
• The general look of their Dashboard is more technical, presentation is nice but not as refined as AppFigures or AppAnnie.
• Report allows far more and better reporting customization which can be saved as presets. This is one of their distinctive strength I would say.

I'l keep you posted on any new findings regarding these services.

Based on this, I hope you'll be able to make a better decision when time comes to choose between those two app sales analytics services. Any experience you want to share about one of those? Post a comment!