The Apple App Store and Google Play are two of the most popular platforms for developers to market and sell applications. With over 2.1 million Android apps and 1.8 million iOS apps, the competition is fierce. But there are other app stores with great free apps that can help developers launch their applications. GetJar, founded in 2004 by Ilja Laurs, is an independent app store created by app developers for app developers as a platform for beta testing applications.
It has more than 0.85 million applications available on the platform and is backed by investors from Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management. AppValley is one of the leading third-party app stores for iOS, offering its users one of the largest selections of free content, along with modified and unofficial content for iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads. It quickly rose to fame as the second best app store alternative to the Google Play Store. SlideMe is another alternative to the Android app store that makes app security a priority, as all SlideMe apps are scanned for viruses and vulnerabilities, including the Master-Key exploit, before they are reviewed and approved by their publishers.
It also has a strong community of developers and app advisors who help developers with code snippets, bug fixes, and more. 1Mobile is a free marketplace of multiple mobile games, web applications, and even videos, making it easy for end users to find apps. Developers can test beta and free versions of paid apps in this major app store. Once they meet the security criteria, they can publish their applications.
1Mobile also has a built-in recommendation system that helps apps attract an audience as soon as they reach the market. The Windows Store and Amazon Appstore cover a significant portion of the market (400,000 and 340,000 mobile apps), so these alternative app stores can help app owners take advantage of that unexplored user base. AuroraStore claims to be more transparent than other Play Stores, allowing users to check the number of trackers and ads in an application before downloading it. Each application profile provides a description, rating, screenshots, compatible platform, and application review section.
Mobile9 has one of the smallest percentages of active developers but offers a high download rate. It also adopts a highly transparent application promotion model, which offers cost-per-install (CPI) pricing, unincentivized user traffic, fraud detection algorithms, limits per app promotion campaign and per day, and segmentation by user as your CPI offer increases.
