Developing and promoting apps isn’t an easy endeavor, mainly because app markets are ridiculously crowded. As an app developer, you should only be concerned with improving your app(s) without having to worry about complicated tasks to do things like advertise or take payments.
Every app developer needs to have a great lineup of third-party go-to tools and services to help create, launch, monetize, and market their apps. Here are 25 great resources for app developers that you should try or bookmark right now. The tools and services below are categorized by stages, from development and prototyping to post-launch.
Development & Prototyping
CodeRunner – Not that you don’t already have a coding solution, but you can use CodeRunner to easily write code on your Mac. You can run your code instantly in any language.
Parse – Stop worrying about server maintenance and complex infrastructures and use Parse. Per their website, “Instantly add a powerful cloud database, push notification services, and analytics tracking to your app. Choose from over thirteen native SDKs for mobile, desktop, and IoT devices and discover all that Parse has to offer.”
UsabilityHub – Are you unsure about your app’s design? Use UsabilityHub to test your designs on real people. You’ll learn how visitors will interact with your design before launching and improve your weak spots.
Corona Labs – Corona Labs provides development products to make mobile development easy. Their most popular product, Corona SDK, is a cross-platform mobile development framework that enables developers to create graphically rich apps.
Fluid UI – Fluid UI helps you prototype and wireframe mobile apps.
mParticle – Throughout the development and promotion process, you’ll most likely need to do several integrations to power your app. mParticle allows you to integrate services fast and easily through their single SDK. No changing code or resubmitting for app store approval.
Iubenda – People care more and more about their data nowadays, and you need to give them a reason to trust you and be as transparent as possible. A privacy policy isn’t the first thing you think about when developing your app, but you need it. Iubenda will generate a privacy policy for you.
MacRumors Forums – We all need communities. The iPhone/iPad Programming section of the MacRumors forum is a great resource for iOS app developers to get their questions answered by other iOS app developers.
XDA Forums – iOS app developers aren’t the only ones that need community. XDA is the most popular site for Android developers.
Pre-Launch
Stripe – PayPal’s greatest rival, Stripe’s APIs allow you to accept and manage payments.
Envato – Developing your app is only half the battle. You need to brand it and promote it with mockups and such, which means you need the creative assets to do that. Envato is a great website to get everything you need for your next creative project.
Product Hunt – One of the best free promotion resources is Product Hunt. Product Hunt is a curation of the best new products, every day. If you have a new app that you want people to try before you launch, sign up for Product Hunt. Post-launch is fine as well.
PressFriendly – Looking to get some press for your app right before you launch? Use PressFriendly’s interface to organize your contacts and emails and track emails to tech journalists.
25 Creative Ways to Promote Your App For Free – You’re just about ready to launch your app, and you’re looking for ways to promote your app for free. Check out this article featured in Entrepreneur that outlines the top 25 ways you can promote your app for free.
11 Pre and Post Launch Mobile App Marketing Pitfalls to Avoid – Before you even launch your app, you should read this to avoid common mobile app marketing pitfalls.
Post-Launch
Decisive – In addition to press and free promotion strategies, you may also need to advertise on mobile to drive more downloads for your app. Decisive provides a super easy self-serve platform for you to target your potential users.
Decisive API – Want to save time when advertising? Use Decisive’s API to automate tasks, such as ad creation, report creation, blacklisting, and more.
Mixpanel – Touted as “the most advanced analytics platform in the world for mobile & web”, Mixpanel is a go-to platform for app developers to measure user interactions in their apps.
appFigures – Per their website, appFigures is “A beautiful app tracking platform for app developers and publishers. We automatically grab and visualize everything that matters by combining sales and download numbers, worldwide reviews and ranks, and other juicy data into powerful, easy to understand reports.”
Kochava – The most important metrics you should be concerned about besides engagement and conversion metrics are attribution metrics. Kochava is a mobile attribution and analytics platform. Their SDK provides out-of-the-box integration with over 1200 publishers and networks.
Apsalar – Apsaler is another platform that allows you to collect and analyze in-app behavior data.
Heatmaps.io – Want to know how people engage with your iOS app. Use Heatmaps to visualize and track user finger gestures and discover device orientation preferences.
Appbot – Per their website, “Appbot aggregates app store reviews for all countries on the iTunes, Google Play and Amazon app stores, surfaces user sentiment, bugs and feature requests, and seamlessly pushes this feedback into your app development and support workflows via native integrations.”
App Developer Alliance – The Application Developers Alliance is a non-profit global membership organizations supporting developers. As a member, you can get access to exclusive content, events, discounts, research, and policy issues.
The Mobileys – Does your mobile app, service or product deserve a trophy, $10,000 and a place in the spotlight? Sign up for the annual Mobileys competition produced by Mobile Future. The competition “seeks to spotlight and support early-stage wireless apps, services and/or products that make the world a better place.”
Now that you’ve read about some awesome tools and services, go out there and create great apps!