By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Should you use RevenueCat or roll your own billing? For most Android teams shipping subscription apps with fewer than 10,000 monthly subscribers, RevenueCat will save you 80-120 hours of…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Unity LevelPlay for Android is not my first recommendation for indie Android developers who need an in-app purchase platform — it’s a mediation and monetization SDK built primarily around…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer RevenueCat is the best in-app purchase platform for indie Android devs because it eliminates the single worst time sink in Android monetization: wrestling with Google Play Billing Library versioning,…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Amplitude is the best mobile analytics platform for Android apps in 2026 because it delivers event-level behavioral analytics with sub-200ms ingestion latency, a generous free tier of 50,000 monthly…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer RevenueCat is the subscription infrastructure SDK I’ve kept in production across 6 of my Android apps for the past 3 years, and the reason is simple: it replaced approximately…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Google Play Billing Library is the only way to handle in-app purchases and subscriptions on the Play Store, and after integrating it across 9 production apps over the past…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer RevenueCat saves you approximately 80-120 hours of billing infrastructure work upfront and eliminates the ongoing maintenance burden of handling Google Play Billing Library version migrations yourself. If your app…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer AppsFlyer Android SDK is the attribution layer I recommend indie Android developers add alongside either Firebase Analytics or Mixpanel, because neither product alone tells you where your paying users…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Google AdMob with bidding (formerly AdMob Mediation) is the best ad mediation platform for Android apps in 2026 for most independent and mid-size Android teams — it handles waterfall-to-bidding…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Adapty vs Qonversion comes down to paywall flexibility versus analytics depth: Adapty wins for teams that need server-side paywall A/B testing and remote configuration without app updates, while Qonversion…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Adapty is the subscription management SDK I’d pick for Android teams that need server-side paywall control, A/B testing on pricing, and Google Play Billing Library abstraction without building their…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Google Play Billing Library is the only way to sell digital goods on the Play Store, and after integrating it across 9 production apps over 6 years, I can…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer RevenueCat is the subscription infrastructure SDK I’d recommend to most Android teams shipping in-app purchases today — it eliminated approximately 400 lines of Play Billing Library boilerplate from my…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Mixpanel Android SDK is not a push notification platform — it’s a product analytics SDK — but it’s the analytics layer I pair with every push notification stack because…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Adapty is the best in-app purchase platform for indie Android devs who need server-side receipt validation, paywall A/B testing, and analytics without building their own billing backend. It handles…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Amplitude is the best mobile analytics platform for Android apps in 2026 because it delivers the deepest behavioral cohort analysis with an Android SDK that added approximately 1.2 MB…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Firebase Analytics for Android remains the strongest default analytics platform for most Android teams in 2026 — not because it’s perfect, but because the zero-cost event tier, native integration…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Mixpanel vs Amplitude is the analytics comparison I get asked about most by Android teams, and after running both SDKs in production across three apps over the past 14…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Branch.io Android SDK is my top pick for push notification infrastructure on Android in 2026, primarily because it combines deep linking with notification-driven re-engagement in a single integration —…
By Daniel Park — 11 years Android/mobile development, former Google Play developer relations contractor, 25+ shipped apps — based in San Francisco, CA The Short Answer Firebase Analytics for Android is the attribution platform I recommend most Android teams start with in 2026 — not because it does everything, but because it handles 80% of…