Apilayer is known for developing various amazing tools including streetlayer, ipapi and most recently, Userstack, a REST API. Userstack reveals important website user data sets about visitors, including the browser used, the device and its OS in a format that is very easy to use.
There was a time when developers had to maintain several code bases to be able to support various web browsers. To prevent websites from becoming a mess, user agent data was used to deliver different blocks of code to website users depending on the browser that was utilized.
Fortunately, this is no longer required and nowadays tools like userstack allows developers to use that data to build better users experiences.
Userstack evolution
The userstack API was launched about 4 years ago and was known as the UserAgent API at the time. As developers across the globe started using the API, apilayer revamped it completely and also up-scaled it to fit enterprise requirements such as dedicated support, 256-bit SSL encryption and a 99.9% SLA.
Nowadays userstack is totally scalable and is able to meet even the most stringent requirements. Irrespective of whether it’s a complex online shopping website that handles more than a million requests per month, or a simple product landing page handling a couple of hundred requests each day, userstack is able to handle the load. Intuit, Apple and Accenture are some of the well-known brands that use the userstack API in their tools and products.
Use Cases
User experiences are critically important to convert visitors to subscribers, customers or users. The keys to success include the retention rate, the product or content itself and the onboarding paradigm. The fewer steps between a visitors and your newsletter, product or service, the bigger the chance of getting a loyal user base.
Stop Crawlers and Bots
If scrappers steal unique content from your website or bots are used to attack a site, userstack can be used to detect and then block them, or get them stuck in a honeypot. When doing this, make sure you exclude legitimate crawlers such as security crawlers and search engines.
Custom Content
Online shopping may well eventually cause the demise of retail stores. Although huge players like eBay and Amazon dominate the online shopping space, excellent products, a strong brand, and a clever strategy could boost any e-commerce venture. Sometimes a great product is not even needed as the drop shipping industry has proven time and again. Companies that for example sell cell phone accessories could use userstack to show products that match the device the visitor is using.
Native Apps
Apps are typically only ready when they have been prototyped and tested for many months. At that stage, the content manager will upload the final version of the promotional material, get the landing page up and ready, and the promotion campaign will finally return the first potential users. Userstack could now be used to direct users to the correct download link depending on the device they’re using. iOS users should be directed to the App Store automatically while Android users should be taken to Google Play. This eliminates additional steps in the onboarding process and improves the likelihood of conversions.
Functionality
You can test userstack’s functionality in about 5 minutes flat. Simply sign up for the free version, obtain the access key from the dashboard in the account and run the request.
The following data sets will be returned :
- User-Agent string;
- Entity type (mobile-browser, browser, app, email-client, crawler, feed-reader, and offline-browser);
- Associated device’s brand, name and URL;
- OS data including name, family, code, family vendor, family code, and icon;
- Device specs: type (tablet, desktop, console, smartphone, wearable smart TV), brand name, URL code, and device name;
- Browser detail: name, major version, version, and rendering engine.
The crawler module is an additional data module available for paid subscribers. This module identifies bots crawling sites, including monitoring, search-engines, screenshots, scrapers or security crawlers.
Easy to use
Userstack is very easy to use as it was specifically designed with both professionals and beginners in mind. Userstack can be accessed by virtually anyone thanks to the code being easy to understand, real-time support and an extensive knowledge library.
For most scenarios, it will take less than 10 minutes to implement userstack on a specific platform. The API also features 10 endpoints that cater for most popular programming languages, including Python, PHP, Node.js and Ruby.
GDPR
Userstack is GDPR compliant and this is critical for and big brands and freelancers. Userstack API’s compliance may be a very good solution for smart-scale projects to safeguard user data integrity. It may also be used as a cost-effective tool to implement data flows that are GDPR compliant. Userstack’s GDPR compliance should strengthen an organization’s data processes substantially.
Pricing
Userstack is available in 5 tiers, the lowest of which is the free forever tier. The free tier does however not include HTTPS Encryption support, which could be a problem. HTTPS encryption is however available at a mere $9.99 per month ($7.99 for 1 year subscriptions). The lookup cap is also extended to 50 000 requests per month and includes Crawler detection. The other Tiers add bulk lookup functionality and increase the number of monthly request.
If the lookup limitations of a tier are exceeded, the excess won’t be charged for, nor will you be blocked from accessing the API, unless the quota is constantly exceeded by more than 20%.
The pricing model is aimed at catering for any use case scenario, while not limiting how interactions with users are designed.
API Keys
Data is power in today’s digital age. Raw data is however not very useful unless the right tools are used to organize data and extract patterns that can be used to shape products and services. Userstack should be in every developer’s toolkit as it is resilient, accurate, scalable and complies with core data protection practices. Userstack can in fact spell the difference between the success and failure of your company.
