Impala Studios: Migrating an app to Adapty from a competitor’s solution

Introduction

Impala Studios is a global development studio specializing in creating, publishing, and maintaining mobile applications aimed at simplifying users’ daily lives. As a leading European-based publisher, they deliver top-notch applications through advanced technology and customizable content.

Being an advanced developer and publisher of their own apps, Impala understood the importance and convenience of using a separate subscription and revenue management system for integrating in-app purchases and having a ready-made backend that comes along. Such a solution usually solves several problems for app developers, from purchase validation to tracking analytics. 

After some time using a popular framework, the team once experienced a sudden significant technical issue with the service that lasted almost 2 days. The vendor’s support team was not responding for almost a week and in the end, they couldn’t restore the data for the period the issue took place as the service hadn’t been tracking renewals and new purchases for all that time. Such an attitude and profit losses didn’t leave a good impression.

In addition, the service couldn’t offer certain features that would be helpful to the team, and it was generally slow in terms of update consistency. All this led to the necessity of looking for an alternative solution that would be more reliable and constantly evolving. That’s where Adapty came into play.

Unpacking the migration motive

There were several things the Impala team looked for in their new solution:

During the introduction call with the Adapty team, Impala realized that the new product not only provided the same stack of main features for integrating in-app subscriptions and working with revenue but also solved the issues that were bothering them. Moreover, Adapty surpassed its competitor with a few useful features, like advanced paywall A/B testing and user targeting. 

Despite having learned about all the advantages of Adapty in comparison to their current solution, the team was still hesitant to migrate. To minimize the friction, the Adapty team created a Slack channel where the Impala developers could post their questions and concerns. The first step was to migrate one app and get familiar with the system. The whole migration process was also curated by Adapty developers and the support team.

The Migration Journey

In general, the process of migration to Adapty from any other vendor is quite simple and involves a few steps:

In the case of Impala Studios, we followed the same route. Most of the questions (technical, financial, marketing-related, and other) were answered during the first demo call. There, the Impala team also learned about the stages of the migration process. Since Impala Studios is a publisher that possesses several apps, they were cautious about transferring them all at once, so the agreement was made to transfer one app and test the new service.

The first step was installing Adapty SDK and replacing the SDK of the previous framework. Several SDK methods had to be replaced, like SDK activation, getting products, making purchases, etc., since they differ in naming and logic. 

All this led to the necessity of looking for an alternative

A vital part of integrating Adapty SDK after another solution is creating new paywalls and adding products, which was also done with the help of the process documentation.

The second step was to Switch App Store server-side notifications to Adapty. This step is required for Adapty to properly process the subscription data. It’s a simple step that implies pasting Adapty’s URL into Impala’s App Store Connect. It was a matter of a few minutes.

So the next step was to test and release a new version of their app. Relying on our purchase testing guide, Impala successfully made a Sandbox test purchase which quickly led to the release of the new version of the app in the App Store.

As the final step, Impala asked the support team of their previous IAP framework for historical data in the suggested format that we later successfully imported into their Adapty account. The analytics in such cases works correctly instantaneously, so they could see all the data in the dashboard right away. All the new subscribers started getting their premium access through Adapty by default, and those who had already purchased the subscription moved to Adapty as soon as they opened the new version of the app.

Overall the migration process took less than a week from the SDK integration to the release of the new app version and was carried out under the observation of the Adapty support team. After being tested for a month, the test app showed stable work of the service, which convinced Impala of Adapty’s reliability. Along the way, they were testing the marketing and analytical capabilities of the service, which were also important to make the final choice.

Leveraging Adapty’s Capabilities

From the start of using Adapty SDK, the Impala team seized the advantages for growth that it provided along with the IAP integration. Having convenient and effective instruments for creating and managing paywalls was also vital in choosing Adapty. 

The analytics started working on day one of integrating Adapty SDK and the Impala team had enough time to assess the convenience and possibilities of the analytical side of Adapty. The dashboard supporting almost 20 useful mobile metrics, including different subscription states and detailed segmentation by product, duration, and numerous other attributes, produced a positive effect on the team. They noted a faster load speed for charts and overall quicker access to the data than it was with the competitor’s service. 

In addition to the more advanced charts like Retention, Cohorts, and LTV, a great deal of interest was invested in the LTV and revenue prediction model that allowed them to see their monetization perspectives.

Sergey Lagutyonok
Product Manager at Impala Studios

“We’ve been using Adapty’s analytics for a long time, but the predictive analytics feature turned out to be our crystal ball for future growth. We highly rely on it to forecast our future revenue streams and adjust our investment strategies with more precision.”

With the Paywall Builder and remote config tools, the Impala team made sure they could quickly and easily change products, prices, and design elements on their paywalls. The variety of paywall templates and quick localization process made Adapty look more attractive.

The A/B testing tool, utilized to find paywall variants with better conversion rates, also attracted attention thanks to its targeting possibilities. The ability to distinguish between different user audiences based on numerous attributes, including custom ones, significantly facilitated finding the right target audience for an app. The “audiences” were later used for displaying different paywalls to different customer groups, or running paywall A/B tests. This allowed for finding new lucrative audiences and coming up with the best offers for them.

The results

The migration process turned out to be rather quick and painless for Impala. The team didn’t experience any friction in the process and all the SDK features were working by the book. The app Adapty SDK was tested on worked perfectly in terms of IAPs, and new features for revenue growth provided by Adapty made the Impala team interested in migrating the rest of their apps.

Using Adapty’s remote config resulted in a notable 2x reduction in time spent on the development and release of new paywalls. This in turn reduced time on launching certain A/B tests by half.

With Adapty, Impala Studios gained a highly reliable service that’s constantly evolving and updated twice a month. Since the start of our business relationship, the Impala team has been fully satisfied with the service and occasionally makes inquiries on minor updates needed for a more productive working process.

Sergey Lagutyonok
Product Manager at Impala Studios

“Adapty goes beyond simple subscription management. It’s a comprehensive platform that empowers developers to optimize every aspect of their app’s monetization strategy. Whether it’s A/B testing paywalls, predicting LTV, or analyzing subscription metrics, Adapty is the ultimate toolkit for app success.”

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