ActionDash has been acquired

Recently I received an acquisition offer for ActionDash. I wasn’t looking to sell ActionDash, but the offer did prompt me to give focused thought to the near-term goals of my company, its product lineup, and where I want to spend my time and resources going forward.

It became apparent that selling ActionDash would have two key benefits:

• Allowing my company to streamline its development focus.
• Crucially, a sale would provide the resources needed to properly launch my brand new, long in development (and soon to be revealed!) app.

Ultimately, I decided that the best move for ActionDash, its current and future users, and my company, was to accept the acquisition offer.

ActionDash + Sensor Tower

ActionDash has been acquired by Sensor Tower, the leading, independent, enterprise-focused mobile analytics company. I feel Sensor Tower is a great fit for ActionDash and, most importantly, its users, for numerous reasons.

Crucially, Sensor Tower’s business model and responsible use of data aligns well with my company’s long held practice of respecting user privacy. Sensor Tower is not in the business of collecting and selling personally identifiable information, serving personalized ads, etc. — rather, Sensor Tower might use aggregated, anonymized app usage data from ActionDash to allow its enterprise customers to gain insights such as “engagement in Competing App X increased 20% since its 5.0 update” or “Category Y’s downloads are increasing by 10%”.

I’m also long-time acquaintances with the Android folk who will take over ActionDash development, so I know the app is in the absolute best of hands.

Finally, the reality is Sensor Tower is in a much stronger position to devote resources to growing and improving ActionDash than I am. It is also able to offer features that would simply not be feasible were my company to continue to operate the app. No promises, but I’m also rather excited by the idea that a few of my long-gestating-yet-not-quite-finished ActionDash features could be polished and released going forward.

See here for further details from Sensor Tower about ActionDash’s acquisition.

A win for ActionDash users

Accompanying today’s acquisition news is an exciting new ActionDash update.

In the interests of full transparency, a UI prompt will inform users about the ownership change, and ask users whether to opt in or out of data collection. A gentle reminder: ActionDash has never had a user account or login system, which is typically how a company would tie app usage data to a specific user, and that will remain the same with Sensor Tower.

After accepting the new privacy policy/terms, ActionDash users will immediately notice three key improvements:

• Almost all of ActionDash’s premium features, including Fresh Start, schedules, app usage limits & more, which were previously only available to purchasers of the Plus in-app upgrade, are now unlocked for everyone!
• The price of the Plus in-app upgrade (which now feature gates just two features: biometric authentication & usage history going back more than seven days) has reduced to 99 cents!
• All advertisements have been removed!

Users who do opt in to sharing device usage data will soon be able to access new features that are only possible as a result of collecting such data. As an example, ActionDash will be able to inform you not just about your usage of YouTube, but how your usage compares to others. Users who do not opt in will not have access to such features, but will continue to receive a full featured ActionDash experience.

A few other miscellaneous notes:

• Purchases of the Plus in-app upgrade made during my company’s previous ownership of ActionDash are linked to your Google Account, and will continue to work going forward.
• Action Launcher’s deep ActionDash integration will remain in place.

Thanking you!

I’d like to thank each and every person who used, bought and supported ActionDash during the past 18 months. There was little more than a year between the first line of code being written and ActionDash winning a Google Play Best Everyday Essentials award — this doesn’t happen without dedicated and delighted users-come-evangelists, so again, thank you!

I very much look forward to seeing ActionDash flourish going forward, as I transition from being ActionDash’s steward to its keenest advocate.