In the world of mobile apps, in-app subscriptions have become an increasingly popular monetization method for app developers. However, managing in-app subscriptions can be a challenging task.
Luckily, you don’t have to deal with it yourself. There are subscription management and analytics platforms that can help. Among these platforms, RevenueCat and Adapty are two of them.
Their functionality can extend to serving as an in-app subscription purchase backend, which can assist with the management of subscriptions and offer data analytics and marketing tools for experimentation.
So how are these two platforms different from each other? In this article, we will talk about their feature differentiations, helping you decide which platform you can choose to grow your in-app subscription business.
If you want to compare RevenueCat vs Qonversion, check out this article: RevenueCat VS Qonversion: Which to Choose?
What is RevenueCat?
RevenueCat is a mobile subscription infrastructure platform that helps app developers build and manage in-app subscriptions. Its main features include subscription management, analytics, and revenue reporting.
What is Adapty?
Adapty is an in-app subscription management platform that facilitates app developers and businesses to monetize their mobile apps. Its primary functions include subscription management, analytics, and automated marketing tools, etc.
RevenueCat VS Adapty
RevenueCat and Adapty are alternatives to each other, both offering in-app subscription management services and subscription data analytics. However, what sets these two platforms apart from each other? Let's take a closer look and find out.
Subscription Purchase Backend SDK
Both RevenueCat and Adapty provide Software Development Kits (SDK) that app developers can integrate into their apps to streamline subscription management, pricing, and analytics.
To handle receipt validations and subscribers' access, and to maintain purchase backend infrastructures when the app stores modify their code, both platforms mandate the installation of their SDK into your apps.
The management process of these platforms is somewhat similar, making it difficult to determine which is superior.
But maybe you have to take the frameworks you are using to build your app into account. The number of frameworks RevenueCat supports are more than Adapty does.
RevenueCat offers SDK for iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, Cordova, Unity, macOS / Catalyst and Ionic; while Adapty supports SDK for iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, and Unity.
There may be more choices coming from Adapty someday, but if you are now in need of a subscription management platform, and your app is built under the framework of Cordova, macOS / Catalyst or Ionic, then you can go directly with RevenueCat.
If your app is built under the framework that both of these platforms support, then you may consider other factors before you make the final decision.
In-app Subscription Analytics
Data analytics plays an important role in the success of any business in today’s digital world. The reason is quite obvious: you can’t identify and address the biggest problems that may impede the growth of your business without concrete data.
In the field of subscription apps, data means the same significance. So if you want to grow your in-app subscription business, take good care of your in-app subscription data.
Luckily, both RevenueCat and Adapty enable you to track and analyze your in-app subscription data, offering critical subscription metrics and KPIs. With data, you can get a better understanding of the growth status of your subscription apps and make data-driven decisions.
The subscription analytics metrics offered by these two platforms are almost identical, however, the cost of accessing them varies.
With Adapty’s Free plan, you can get access to metrics like revenue, MRR, ARR, ARPPU, subscription renewals and cancellations, trials, billing issues, and more.
If you subscribe to RevenueCat’s Free plan, you only get access to these metrics: active trials, active subscriptions, MRR, revenue, new customers, and active users.
So it seems that you will get more bonuses with Adapty’s Free plan.
For advanced analytics, such as funnel analysis, cohort analysis, retention analysis and conversion rate, whichever platform you choose, you have to subscribe to the paid plan to get access.
Here, I can’t resist mentioning another subscription management and analytics platform for mobile apps—Appflow.ai, whose Free plan offers access to all the basic and advanced in-app subscription data analytics.
The metrics Appflow.ai provides are almost the same as Adapty and RevenueCat, but with advanced funnel analysis as a super bonus, which can help track the effectiveness and real value of different marketing channels, such as tracking the performance of Apple Search Ads.
Back to the topic, it seems that Adapty’s Free plan can bring you more benefits than that of RevenueCat in terms of free subscription analytics metrics.
Integrations
Integrations are important if you want to view the whole subscription app business on the same dashboard and in a broader way. Integrating with other attribution and analytics tools enables you to see the full image of how your subscription app performs, which can help you make better decisions.
RevenueCat and Adapty both empower you to put the subscription data from different resources in the same place—by integrating with third-party tools.
RevenueCat, for now, supports integrating with these 27 platforms: Adjust, Appsflyer, Branch, Facebook Ads, Apple Search Ads, SplitMetrics Acquire, Amazon S3, Amplitude, Mixpanel, OneSignal, Google Cloud Storage, Webhooks, Firebase, Braze, CleverTap, Intercom, Iterable, mParticle, Scheduled Data Exports, SearchAdsHQ, Segment, Singular, Slack, Statsig, Superwall, Stripe, and Tenjin.
Adapty, at present, supports integrating with these 17 platforms: Adjust, AppsFlyer, Branch, Facebook Ads, Apple Search Ads, SplitMetrics Acquire, Amazon S3, Amplitude, Mixpanel, OneSignal, Google Cloud Storage, Webhook, Firebase and Google Analytics, Airbridge, AppMetrica, Pushwoosh, Asapty, Airship.
As you can see, both platforms have some unique integration partners. If you have a specific intention to integrate one of those third-party platforms that are only available in one platform, choose the one. If not, you need to continue to compare other aspects.
Customer CRM
Want to understand more about your app subscribers? The solution is to build a CRM system and create user profiles. Thanks to the subscription management and analytics platforms, you don’t have to do it manually. Both these platform helps create the CRM system for you at an individual level:
RevenueCat-user-list
Adapty-customer-list
RevenueCat-user-profile
Adapty-user-profile
As you can see from the above screenshot, RevenueCat tends to offer more concise information about users; while Adapty gets more detailed user information for you.
With more or less information, the price you need to pay is not the same of course. Adapty seems to try making a great deal out of the rich user information it offers, so you need a paid plan to get access to the user lists and profiles. For RevenueCat, you get free access to user lists and profiles, but if you want to create custom user lists and export the list, then you need to subscribe to a paid plan first.
If you want a totally free subscriber CRM system with detailed user information, check out Appflow.ai, the best free subscription management and analytics platform for growing your subscription apps.
Appflow.ai-user-list
Appflow.ai-user-profile
Paywall A/B Testing Tools
Most in-app subscription analytics platform, apart from managing and analyzing in-app subscriptions for you, also offers marketing automation and testing tools for you to enlarge your subscription business.
Both RevenueCat and Adapty provide A/B testing tools for their users to test the paywall remotely and help find out which works the best. However, there is one difference between these two platforms: Adapty has a built-in paywall builder while RevenueCat has not.
A paywall builder is handy when you want to save time and not bother developers that much— you can design the paywall and publish it remotely on your own without much involvement from developers. It will save you a lot of waiting time before you validate your idea coming from data insight.
Unfortunately, both of these platforms lack marketing automation tools, such as the most commonly used push notifications and in-app messages.
Although developers can make the push and in-app messages themselves, you have to wait for a long time. Sometimes the marketing campaign will be delayed and when you don’t send the push at the right time, the app users will never come back, most likely.
Luckily, Appflow.ai offers all the marketing automation tools and paywall A/B testing tools in one dashboard together with all-around subscription management and analytics. You can also check it out when choosing the right subscription management platform.
Pricing
Price can be the final factor that depends on your choice. RevenueCat and Adapty have different pricing models.
RevenueCat provides three subscription options, namely Free, Starter, and Pro. The Free plan comes with limited features, such as subscription SDK, overview metrics, and customer profiles.
The Starter plan costs $8 per month per $1000 MTR, while the Pro plan costs $12 per month per $1000 MTR.
Opting for the Starter plan unlocks access to several integrations, charts, custom lists, and 5 admin user seats. Meanwhile, the Pro plan grants access to all integrations, pricing experiments, and 10 admin user seats.
RevenueCat-pricing
Adapty also has three subscription plans: Free, Pro, and Pro+. The Free plan unlocks the subscription SDK, basic subscription analytics and remote paywall configurations.
The Pro plan starts at $99/month for the first $10K MTR, for MTR exceeding $10K MTR, it will cost an extra $9.99 for $1K MTR. The Pro+ plan starts at $499/month for the first $40K MTR, for MTR exceeding $40K MTR, it will cost an extra $11.99 for $1K MTR.
A Pro plan enables you to get access to paywall A/B testing, subscriptions CRM and cohorts, advanced analytics and integrations.
If you purchase Pro+, you can have access to ETL integrations, no-code paywall builder, cohort by days and also a table view for remote paywall configuration.
Adapty-pricing
Conclusion
In conclusion, both RevenueCat and Adapty offer valuable tools for mobile app developers to manage their in-app subscriptions. The choice between the two platforms ultimately depends on your app's needs and your budget. Regardless of which platform you choose, both RevenueCat and Adapty can help you optimize your in-app purchases and increase revenue.
Try the Best Free In-app Subscription Management Platform—Appflow.ai
Both RevenueCat and Adapty have limited metrics on their free plan. So, if the metrics/analytics you want to track are not included in their free plan, Appflow.ai is the best alternative for you.
Appflow.ai is the best free in-app subscription management and analytics platform that help mobile app developers build subscription purchase backend structure and grow their app business.
With a motto of helping apps grow before growing together, Appflow.ai offers great services in their Free plan: subscription purchase SDK, all subscription analytics dawta&metrics, retention and conversion chart, advanced cohort and funnel analysis, Apple Search Ads post-install measurements, etc.
All paid plans have a one-month free trial with no credit card required.
Create a free account and begin growing your in-app subscriptions today!
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