Amazon sellers like yourself have their work cut out for them. You need to source products from retail or online stores and make sure you don't buy a heap of products that sit collecting dust, because you can't sell them on Amazon.
On top of that, you have to do things like optimize your listings to maximize their visibility and conversions, generate more positive reviews, and come up with the best price points for products.
To make these tasks easier for you to manage and perform in your Amazon FBA business, there's a huge choice of software tools on the market.
Two such tools are SmartScout and Jungle Scout. And in this comparison post, we aim to end the Smartscout-Jungle Scout debate once and for all.
We’ll examine the benefits of each product research tool, their pros and cons, and which of the two is the best for you. Let’s begin!
What is Jungle Scout?
Jungle Scout is one of the more prominent software suites built for Amazon sellers. It has a heap of features that are designed to help you make informed decisions and sell more products on Amazon, regardless of whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned Amazon seller.
It starts with the tool’s Opportunity Finder, which makes filtering and uncovering high-demand and low-competition keywords much easier. This feature also shows you the sales performance and competitive insights of the products associated with the keywords. Use the information provided to discover untapped product niches with which you can profit!
To help you validate product ideas generated from the Opportunity Finder, go to the tool’s Product Database. Filter the products according to category, sales rank, and other metrics to determine the profitability of each. Its FBA Calculator also lets you factor in the fees and costs associated with each product to help you determine the best product to sell.
Once you’ve decided on an Amazon product to sell, you can delve deeper into its keyword data using Jungle Scout’s Keyword Scout. It pulls the search volume of exact and broad keywords relevant to your product and how it fluctuates depending on its popularity and seasonality.
It also lets you conduct competitor research by looking up keywords that drive the most traffic to similar sellers as you, with additional data like ad tracking and pay-per-click (PPC) costs. This feature enables you to refine your search engine optimization (SEO) and PPC strategy to increase your product’s visibility and generate more buyers.
Finally, To help you rake in more Amazon product sales, you must get customers to share their positive reviews. Jungle Scout simplifies the process with its Amazon ToS-approved Review Automation feature.
Set sending customized review requests to all buyers on autopilot instead of doing it manually to save you time that you can use for other tasks.
Pros and Cons of Jungle Scout
Pro: Simple Product Research Tool with Reliable Accuracy
As a straightforward product research tool, Jungle Scout aims to streamline the hunt for profitable products using precise data. This means you get actionable insights with high accuracy, stemming from their extensive database and analytics, so you can sell Amazon products that make money, plain and simple.
Con: Instability
Users have reported moments when Jungle Scout became unresponsive or slow for a few minutes. While it may not be a regular occurrence, these slow-downs can hamper your experience of using the tool to its fullest extent.
Pro: Excellent Customer Support
If you encounter any issues with Jungle Scout like the one above, its helpful customer service will go out of its way to get you unstuck. Its team is also more than happy to answer any of your questions about the tool and how to properly use it.
Con: No Free Trial
Unfortunately, you cannot take Jungle Scout for a test drive. You have to immediately shell out at least $49/month (or $29/month paid annually) to benefit from its features. On the upside, you have a 7-day money-back guarantee if you think the tool isn’t for you. Nonetheless, this is far from a free trial option people would want from a platform like this.
What is Smartscout?
Smartscout is fastly growing in popularity, albeit not quite as well-known as Jungle Scout. This software has a heap of tools and features to help discover selling opportunities for your Amazon business.
It begins with the tool’s Seller Data feature that lets you find FBA sellers, wholesale products, and private label brands. With this feature, you can either reach out to sellers and offer your advertising services (if you're an agency that helps sellers) or you can reverse engineer their stores and find profitable products to sell on Amazon.
You can filter the seller data by location, category, in-stock rate, and monthly revenue to help you uncover the right opportunities for your Amazon business.
Another great SmartScout feature for Amazon sellers is the UPC Scanner. This features allows you to enter the product UPC of ASIN and get valuable data you wouldn’t find anywhere else. It can show you data like buy box share, number of sellers, monthly revenue estimates and more. The great thing about the UPC scanner is that you can upload a csv and do this in bulk.
Once you’ve created Amazon pages for products you sell on the platform, you can then optimize your pages using Smartscout’s Keyword Detective.
They Keyword Detective tool compares your pages against their respective competitors on organic search and paid ads using factors like Product Relevancy, Search Term Intent, and others so you can improve the performance of your product pages.
The data provided allows you to copy your competitor strategy or capitalize on their weaknesses to leapfrog over and outperform them in your organic search and paid ads campaigns.
The features above will help you find the right products to sell quickly. But you still have to assign keywords and descriptions for each page manually, which could take hours of your time.
With the AI Listing Architect listing builder, you can automate the process and create high-converting listings with a few clicks of a button.
Pros and Cons of Smartscout
Pro: Simple and Intuitive Interface
SmartScout boasts a user-friendly interface that makes navigating its features a breeze. It displays data clearly and in an organized fashion so you can quickly find the information you’re looking for without getting lost.
You can also browse Amazon’s 42k subcategories using the software without any issues. You can use its search feature to find specific subcategories or browse its listings to uncover subcategories you didn’t know existed. This is where some real opportunities can be found.
Con: Limited Features (currently)
While SmartScout has useful features in its arsenal that Amazon businesses will appreciate, it doesn’t offer as much functionality as some other tools in the market. This is partly by choice, though, as Smartscout clearly focuses on doing less, exceptionally well. If you want a behemoth all-in-one tool then Jungle Scout offers more features, but most most users won't even use 10% of the features (in my experience).
Pro: Offers Free Trial
Before choosing from Smartscout’s premium plans starting with its Basic Plan at $39/month (or $20/month paid annually), SmartScout offers a free trial across all its plans.
The only plan that doesn’t have a free trial is the Enterprise Plan, as it requires you to chat with its sales team. Otherwise, you don’t have to spend a cent if you just try out the tool and see if it’s for you.
Con: Overwhelming Information
Once you get the hang of SmartScout, you can use its data effectively and get your Amazon business rolling. But before you get to this point, there may be a steep learning curve you’ll have to undergo first.
In particular, SmartScout highlights its features in different tabs in the dashboard, which could confuse new users.
More experienced sellers may not find the information in SmartScout overwhelming, but if you are a newer seller then you may need to spend some time understand the data and what it all means.
Pro: The Best For Finding Wholesale Opportunities
Without a doubt, Smartscout's features are the best available on the market if you're an aspiring, or experienced, Amazon wholesale seller. Find products, find suppliers, buy in bulk, profit. The process might sound quite simple and while it's not difficult, it's not necessarily easy either. I would suggest you read my Smartscout review to get a full in-depth look into how this product works.
Main Differences Between Jungle Scout and Smartscout
Based on what both tools can do for your Amazon business, the distinction between Jungle Scout and Smartscout has never been clearer than it is now.
Judging both platforms based on their features, Jungle Scout is geared towards Amazon private label sellers. Let me tell you why.
Private label sellers need to find niches to help them bring products to the market. Once they've found a potential opportunity, they need to start optimizing their listings for specific keywords and running PPC ads. Junglescout has the tools inside its software to handle these tasks.
Now, we've already established that SmartScout has fewer features, but this doesn’t make it any less of a product. In fact, Smartscout is more geared towards Amazon online arbitrage sellers and those who are diving into selling wholesale on Amazon.
Smartscout has features that not only help you find great online arbitrage deals, but also amazing wholesale deals and wholesale suppliers for your Amazon business. No other tool I know about has features so powerful.
JungleScout vs SmartScout Pricing
The pricing comparison between these two Amazon software tools is quite simple. Let's start with Jungle Scout.
Jungle Scout Pricing
Jungle Scout has 3 main pricing tiers, plus a custom enterprise option that requires you to speak with a representative from JungleScout.
If you opt for monthly payments, Junglescout starts at $49 per month and goes up to $69 and $129 per month for the Suite and Professional plans. These prices come down to $29, $49, and $84 per month respectively if you opt to pay annually.
SmartScout Pricing
Smartscout has a slightly cheaper entry level basic plan starting at $29 per month and increasing to $97 and $187 per month for their essentials and business plans.
If you opt to pay annually, these subscription plans reduce to $25, $75, and $158 per month.
Which of the Two Product Research Tools is for You?
Now that we’ve discussed the main differences between Jungle Scout and SmartScout, let's discuss which one is going to be right for you.
Jungle Scout is a huge suite of software tools, with a lot of focus on keyword research (SEO), PPC ad optimization and listing optimization.
Without a doubt, JungleScout is geared towards Private Label sellers.
On the other hand, SmartScout is perfect for online arbitrage sellers and wholesalers.
Some of Smartscout's tools like the subcategories, brands, and traffic graph features are worth their weight in gold and will help you take your Amazon selling business to the next level.
Frequently Asked Questions
SmartScout is a software designed for Amazon sellers, helping them with product, competitor, and supplier research and analysis. It offers insights into various brands, their revenue, and expansion opportunities across marketplaces. You can also dive deep into Amazon's subcategories to find products to sell.
SmartScout is considered the best tool on the market for Amazon FBA wholesale sellers. The subcategories and brands features are perfect for finding products and wholesale suppliers.
No, Jungle Scout is not owned by Amazon. It is an independent company that provides features like keyword research and product database search to help Amazon sellers conduct market research and analyze sales data to grow their Amazon private label business.
