I hope this is not off topic for StackOverflow since it is not just software development related but also marketing. But I guess this problem is something we developers are all confronted to.
To monitor and market our iOS app, we use a bunch of third party SDKs:
- Google Analytics to understand what's happening
- a push notification system (e.g. Urban Airship)
- a "smart" review prompting engine (e.g. Apptentive)
- a testing / crash reporting system (e.g. Testflight)
- should you want to run app installs ads, you also need the FB SDK, an SDK to track Twitter conversions, etc.
- you may also want to track where other installs come from via something like Tapstream.
So we are already running more than 6 3rd party SDKs in our app, and it does not feel right:
- each of them will do some kind of hand shake every time the app is opened
- it's as many potential issues
- each of them will have a different web interface
Is there a way to optimise all this, i.e. to have just one SDK doing most things? Or does someone know of a lib to wrap all this stuff under one lib for instance?
There is no getting around a few of these. If you want to talk with FaceBook, Twitter, etc. You will need their SDK no matter the 3rd party SDK you choose.
You could actually write your own setup to track and deal with everything, but there are those that have done it before.
For example, Parse will do:
You could technically throw an "event" into the analytics to track how many folks are using your app that was installed from x store. However, this would require a different version of your app for each store. Sounds like an interesting idea none the less. Tapstreme and others are basically marketing though, not really something required to do something specific. You will need an SDK if they are tracking something specific themselves.
one web interface
There are multiple systems built like this. they are called BaaS or Backend as a Service.
Hope this helps, Cheers