A friend just asked about services that could capture all relevant events in an iOS app, whether crashes, user activity, or ad hoc metrics. I told him about how I use Crashlytics but mentioned there are a lot of very similar services.

I decided to do some searching, and this is what I found in just a few minutes:

Yahoo (was Flurry): analytics
– https://developer.yahoo.com

Twitter Fabric (was/is Crashlytics): crash reports, analytics, test distribution, push
– https://get.fabric.io/kits
– https://fabric.io/kits/ios/pubnub (integration with external service)

PubNub: analytics, push
– https://www.pubnub.com

Microsoft HockeyApp (was/is HockeyApp, was Application Insights): test distribution, crash reports, (test) analytics
– http://hockeyapp.net/features/
– http://hockeyapp.net/blog/2016/03/11/welcome-application-insights-users.html

Localytics: analytics, push
– http://docs.localytics.com/dev/ios.html
– https://www.localytics.com/features/push-messaging/

Google: analytics, crash reports, push
– https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ios/v3/
– https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ios/v3/exceptions
– https://developers.google.com/cloud-messaging/ios/start

Apple (was/is TestFlight): crash reports, analytics, test distribution, push (obviously)
– https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/recipes/xcode_help-crashes_organizer/ViewingCrashReports/ViewingCrashReports.html
– https://developer.apple.com/app-store/app-analytics/
– https://developer.apple.com/testflight/

Apteligent (was Crittercism): crash reports, analytics
– https://www.apteligent.com

Splunk Mint (was Bugsense): crash reports, analytics
– https://mint.splunk.com

Amazon Mobile Analytics: analytics, push
– http://docs.aws.amazon.com/mobile/sdkforios/developerguide/analytics.html
– http://docs.aws.amazon.com/mobileanalytics/latest/ug/welcome.html
– https://aws.amazon.com/sns/

Oracle (was Push.io): push
– https://www.oracle.com/marketingcloud/products/cross-channel-orchestration/mobile-marketing.html

Urban Airship: push, analytics
– https://www.urbanairship.com

As you can see, all the major players want to be in this, and there has been a consolidation of the industry as they bought up the existing, smaller companies. Basically, if they know what users are doing, they can sell better ads and send better targeted marketing push messages. Logical, but a bit depressing!