Helium10 and Jungle Scout: Over half of Amazon Sellers use one or both of these two tools to help do product research, find keywords, stay on top of inventory, optimize listings, and so much more. Each powerful tool offers similar functionality but with a few key differences, and both have become a huge part of the Amazon Success equation for many Sellers. We use both to assist in our Amazon work, and your needs may require that as well. Read on for a few pros and cons of each software, and how to decide which is best for your needs.
Jungle Scout
The original Seller assistant: Jungle Scout was the first tool of its kind, created to provide data and resources that help merchants thrive on Amazon. Everything started with their fantastic browser extension that shows users an opportunity score, price, reviews, daily sales, sales history, and many other metrics that help you evaluate an Amazon listing. Their tools and capabilities have grown over the years and they remain one of the best choices for Seller help.
Some of the reasons to use Jungle Scout over Helium10 are
- Simpler user interface
- Easier to sort through search results
- Relevant keyword suggestions
- Affordable Pricing
- Great product research tools
- Product supplier database
- Supportive community
The Jungle Scout program is easy to use and has a few exclusive features that give it an edge in areas such as keyword and product research. Their keyword research tool doesn’t offer as many suggestions as the Helium10 alternative, but the keywords are almost always more relevant, and there seem to be more unique keywords. Keyword Scout tells you what the PPC bid is for each item, and the level of difficultly to rank for each keyword.
Jungle Scout product research tools draw from a database of over 70 million products. Which makes them one of the fastest ways to find a profitable item. Merchants can easily view Amazon listings and sort by strong or weak competitor offerings. Their product tracker allows users to view past product sales and pricing trends.
Their supplier database even allows you to enter any ASIN and find the supplier. You can then contact the supplier with confidence and source your own, improved product.
Jungle Scout claims to have data up to 14% more accurate than Helium10. Accurate data may be the number one issue at the end of the day. Sellers need the best data to make good decisions and choosing Jungle Scout should be a no brainer if their research tools are that much better. However, we have not noticed a significant accuracy advantage in our own testing, and we find both Jungle Scout and Helium10 to offer similar accuracy.
Other helpful tools include Product Alerts and Opportunity Finder. Opportunity Finder helps you locate niche products by showing you which products are selling for a particular keyword.
Product Alerts will help you manage your large product catalog by browsing the listings for you and letting you know when there is a change that might need your attention. This is a helpful feature and one that we use, but the alerts are not always accurate. For instance, you may get an email saying there has been a new review, only to visit the listing and find nothing.
Product Alerts will help you manage your large product catalog by browsing the listings for you and letting you know when there is a change that might need your attention. This is a helpful feature and one that we use, but the alerts are not always accurate. For instance, you may get an email saying there has been a new review, only to visit the listing and find nothing.
An additional benefit of using Jungle Scout is access to their social media groups that offer one of the largest communities of supportive Sellers. The extra help certainly makes it a great choice for beginners. Their messaging and marketing are always friendly and upbeat, and they foster a lot of communication with polls and questions.
Pricing
Perhaps the reason that many choose to use Jungle Scout is for the great pricing. Jungle Scout subscriptions start at $29/month for basic level services and the full browser extension, but does not give you access to many of their product or keyword research, review automation, or listing optimization tools.
Spending an additional $20 per month will upgrade your access to suite level, which very nearly unlocks the full capabilities of the Jungle Scout product with a few exclusions. You won’t be able to track as many products or keywords and you can’t see as much historical data. Jungle Scout has some of the best product tracking software, so this does matter.
Spending $84 every month will upgrade your business to the professional level, which is important for any merchant with a large product catalog. In addition to higher usage potential, you also get priority onboarding that will let you get off the ground running.
Helium10
While Jungle Scout pioneered the Seller assistance tool suite, Helium10 claims to have perfected it. Many of the tools are similar to those offered by Jungle Scout, and we find that we largely prefer the offerings from Helium10 when used to accomplish the same task. These are some of the biggest reasons to choose Helium10 over Jungle Scout.
- Every tool in a single package
- Excellent integration between tools
- Helpful training and workshops
- Higher number of keywords in search results
- Great listing builder
- Competitor research
- Keyword processing
- Great browser extension
We enjoy that the tools simply export and share data, which speeds up our work by allowing us to get everything done in one place. We will go into more detail about how we actually use these tools below.
Both companies offer a browser extension, but the Helium10 version is the one that we activate when working on Amazon. We love how easy it is to track Best Seller Ranking over time, and the X-Ray view is great for seeing past product sales and pricing data. The review downloader is very helpful during product research and can even be used when setting up a Shopify store so you don’t need to start your reviews from scratch. We don’t always agree with how the extension assigns grades to a listing, but it is a helpful starting point for those without a lot of Amazon experience.
Although we prefer the Jungle Scout keyword tool for unique and helpful suggestions, Helium10 keyword research really shines when it comes to reverse ASIN searches. The Cerebro tool will tell you every keyword that a competitor listing is currently ranking for and how to beat them. It also shows you similar competing products, and assigns a Cerebro IQ score to every keyword. This is a simple and quick method of judging opportunity quality. Our PPC team reports using Cerebro more than comparable Jungle Scout tools.
Their Magnet keyword tool is adequate: We find that it often suggests far too many irrelevant or far-out and seldom searched keywords, but it can do the job. The best part about it is the ability to export directly to their Frankenstein keyword processing tool. This helps save hours of combing through keyword lists and condenses everything to a short list of terms that you can then export straight to their listing builder.
The Scribbles listing builder is a tool that we use quite often. The feature we love is the ability to see where your chosen keywords are used. Once you import a keyword list and click “apply”, the tool will underline keywords in your listing text and cross out words that have been used. This is particularly helpful to ensure that your titles, bullets, and descriptions contain an adequate number of keywords, and to see which keywords are missing. The unused keywords are valuable additions to the back-end search terms field on Amazon.
Helium10 offers many other useful tools, such as their own product research engine, Black Box. This may not be as good as Jungle Scout, but it is quite competent. Their product rank tracker provides great data and really makes it easier to notice if your listings are performing as intended after your changes. Refund Genie is a big help to those learning to manage FBA accounts. It will search for products that Amazon has lost or damaged and not reported to you. Refund Genie automates the complicated and annoying process of filling out Amazon reimbursement reports.
Pricing
Helium10 is a significant investment and may only be worth it to those with larger product catalogs. The pricing starts at $97 per month and goes up to $197 for the diamond package and $397 for elite.
A smaller Amazon account with only one user could operate very capably with the $97 platinum package, but larger businesses may need to upgrade to the Diamond suite. This offers more user logins and the ability to track many more listings and keywords, manage additional markets, connect more accounts, and more. There is one more tier above Diamond, but in our opinion, there are minimal occasions when a merchant would need everything offered by the $397 per month Elite plan.
Helium10 does offer a 30 day free trial to those looking to see if it would be worth it. Unfortunately, the full 30 days only includes Frankenstein, Scribbles, and Profits. The other tools are limited to 10 uses, which may be gone far shorter than 30 days.
A smaller Amazon account with only one user could operate very capably with the $97 platinum package, but larger businesses may need to upgrade to the Diamond suite. This offers more user logins and the ability to track many more listings and keywords, manage additional markets, connect more accounts, and more. There is one more tier above Diamond, but in our opinion, there are minimal occasions when a merchant would need everything offered by the $397 per month Elite plan.
Helium10 does offer a 30 day free trial to those looking to see if it would be worth it. Unfortunately, the full 30 days only includes Frankenstein, Scribbles, and Profits. The other tools are limited to 10 uses, which may be gone far shorter than 30 days.
Which is best for your business?
These tools offer powerful solutions for Amazon Sellers, and we use both. We use many keyword research tools, but often find that the Jungle Scout results are easier to sort through and find relevant keywords, or new ideas. The Helium10 reverse ASIN search is a great tool, as is their keyword processor and listing building. A Seller could track product and keyword ranks in Helium10, and use Jungle Scout for listing Alerts. Sometimes, a second opinion is great, and one could use both tools to confirm a product hunch.
If your business has the financial freedom to use both tools that would be the best option, and they do pay for themselves with their valuable insight. However, if you can only afford a single suite, Helium10 may be the best value, even though it is a much larger investment. Jungle Scout is an excellent, more affordable option, and is our recommendation for every smaller Seller or Amazon beginner.
The helpful Jungle Scout community and support is priceless for those just starting their Amazon journey. Stay tuned for additional posts as we outline more impressive features and examine the unique capabilities of these revolutionary programs.
If your business has the financial freedom to use both tools that would be the best option, and they do pay for themselves with their valuable insight. However, if you can only afford a single suite, Helium10 may be the best value, even though it is a much larger investment. Jungle Scout is an excellent, more affordable option, and is our recommendation for every smaller Seller or Amazon beginner.
The helpful Jungle Scout community and support is priceless for those just starting their Amazon journey. Stay tuned for additional posts as we outline more impressive features and examine the unique capabilities of these revolutionary programs.
