Dynamic deep links hosted by Google Firebase are on their way out, so it’s time to look for the alternatives. I’ll cover the few open source projects I’ve seen as well as the top paid options.
Open Source & Free
Really, all this work just to provide a link to your app? Yeah, it’s really a lot. I’ve been working lately at building a link sharing into my own mobile app attribution project hence realizing that the simple idea of linking one app to another is some black magic.
| Project & Notes | Android/iOS | Redirect to App Store if App Not Installed? | Install Tracking: Deferred Deep Links | Analytics Dash |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FlowLinks (GitHub): FlowLinks is a Firebase extension which aims to provide a drop in experience for replacing Dynamic Links. Sets up a hosted domain to manage redirecting to iOS or Andorid apps. | Yes/Yes | Yes | No | Planned |
| App_Links is a Flutter project that seems pretty mature and has good documentation. Supports other deep link start points such as Windows/Linux. | Yes/Yes | No | No | No |
| OpenAttribution (GitHub), which I work on, is a work in progress. Feel free to join in to help develop a free open source MMP. | Yes/Yes | Planned | Planned | Yes |
| DeepLinkDispatch by AirBnB very popular and used by a lot of apps. Robust handling of many deeplinks for ecommerce. 4k+ stars on GitHub. | Yes/No | No? | No | No |
Paid Link Sharing
| Company & Notes | Android/iOS | Install Tracking:Deferred Deep Links | Analytics Dash | MMP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AppsFlyer is the largest mobile attribution / MMP by a significant amount. Their deep linking tool is OneLink. Designed for marketers who buy ads from multiple ad networks. Many features from fraud detection, cost aggregation etc. | Yes/Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Branch is the most robust option for managing thousands of deep links. Their MMP offering is not as strong as others, but Branch.io link management and deep linking offering for e-commerce is great. | Yes/Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Adjust used to be a leader in attribution 10 years ago but has since been acquired by the ad network AppLovin. Adjust still has a strong MMP option but might not be a good decision for business reasons due to conflict of interests with it’s parent, hence its declining market share. | Yes/Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| DynaLinks lower cost paid alternative to an MMP. | Yes/Yes | Yes-Android, No iOS | Yes | No |
| Bit.ly has SDKs and offers deep link services on some paid tiers. | Yes/Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Airbridge.io has paid options for DeepLinks that look robust. Though their client base is still small they are definitely up and coming, so might have a more modern streamlined take on deep linking. | Yes/Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Further exploration
There are other paid attribution and MMPs which I keep track of on AppGoblin’s top MMP ad attribution ranking:
If you know of any others that should be on that list, either reach out via AppGoblin’s GitHub/Discord or feel free to contact me directly.