Getting Started with Apsity: From App Store Connect to Your First Insight in 5 Minutes

Five minutes. That's the real number.

We get asked how long it takes to set up Apsity. The honest answer: about five minutes of active work, followed by one overnight wait. The five minutes cover API key setup and adding your first app. The overnight wait is for cron jobs to collect your first round of data — rankings, revenue, competitor snapshots, and AI-generated insights.

This guide walks through every step. By tomorrow morning, you'll have a dashboard showing your keyword rankings, revenue trends, and the first AI insights about your app.

Step 1: Create your App Store Connect API key

Apsity pulls data directly from Apple's App Store Connect API. To do that, it needs an API key with read-only access. You create this in App Store Connect — not in Apsity.

Here's the process:

1. Go to App Store Connect > Users and Access > Integrations > App Store Connect API.
2. Click Generate API Key. Give it a name like "Apsity Read" and select App Manager role.
3. Download the .p8 private key file. Apple only lets you download this once — save it somewhere safe.
4. Note the Key ID shown next to your new key.
5. Copy the Issuer ID from the top of the API Keys page.
6. Find your Team ID under Membership details (it's the 10-character alphanumeric string).

That's four values: Team ID, Issuer ID, Key ID, and the .p8 file contents. Keep them handy.

Step 2: Enter credentials in Apsity

Open the Settings tab in Apsity. Paste your Team ID, Key ID, and Issuer ID into the corresponding fields. For the private key, open the .p8 file in a text editor, copy the entire contents (including the -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----- lines), and paste it in.

Click Save & Verify. Apsity makes a test API call to App Store Connect. If the credentials are valid, you'll see a green checkmark. If something's wrong, it's usually the private key — make sure you copied the full text, no trailing spaces.

A note on security: your private key is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it touches our database. It's decrypted only server-side, only when making API calls to Apple. We cannot read your key, and it never reaches the browser.

Step 3: Add your first app

Once credentials are verified, Apsity fetches your app list from App Store Connect. You'll see all apps under your account. Pick the one you want to track and click Add.

On the Free plan, you can track one app. That's enough to see how everything works. Starter ($9/month) supports three apps, and Pro ($19/month) is unlimited.

After adding the app, click the Sync button. This triggers an immediate data pull: Apsity fetches the last 3 days of sales data from Apple. Revenue and download numbers should appear within a minute or two. Apple's data has a 1–2 day delay, so you'll see data for D-1 through D-3, not today.

Step 4: Add your first keywords

Go to the Keywords tab. Type in the search terms you want to track — the ones your potential users would search for on the App Store.

The Free plan allows 5 keywords. That sounds small, but start with the terms you care about most. Pick your app name, your primary category term, and 2–3 phrases you think users search for. You can always swap them later.

Keywords don't show ranking data immediately. Rankings are collected by a daily cron job that runs at 3 AM KST (18:00 UTC). So the first set of keyword rankings will appear the next morning.

Step 5: Add competitors (optional but recommended)

The Competitors tab lets you track other apps in your space. Enter an App Store URL or search by name. Apsity takes a daily snapshot of each competitor's metadata — name, subtitle, description, ratings, price — and detects changes overnight.

Why bother? Because when a competitor changes their subtitle from "Simple Budget App" to "AI Budget Tracker", it can shift keyword rankings for everyone in the category. You want to know when that happens.

Now wait until tomorrow morning

This is the "passive" part. Apsity runs 7 cron jobs in sequence every day, starting at 3 AM KST:

1. Revenue sync — pulls the latest sales data from Apple.
2. Keyword ranking — checks your position for each tracked keyword via iTunes Search API.
3. Competitor snapshots — records current metadata for all tracked competitors.
4. AI insights — Claude Sonnet analyzes the fresh data and generates actionable insights.
5. Alerts — sends notifications for rank drops, revenue spikes, and new low-rating reviews.

By the time you check Apsity the next morning, your dashboard will have keyword rankings with difficulty scores, competitor change logs, and AI-generated insights with confidence badges (Fact, Correlation, or Suggestion — so you know what to trust).

What you'll see on day one

Open the Overview tab. At the top, you'll see your revenue and download numbers for the last few days. Below that, the AI Growth Agent section shows insight cards. On day one, you might see:

• A keyword difficulty assessment — which of your 5 keywords are realistic to rank for, and which are too competitive.
• A competitor metadata summary — if any tracked competitors changed something recently.
• Hidden market suggestions — low-competition keywords where indie apps dominate, not enterprise giants.

Each insight card has a confidence badge and a "View evidence" toggle so you can see the raw data behind the recommendation. We built this because AI analysis isn't always right — you should verify before acting.

Upgrading from Free

The Free plan gives you 1 app, 5 keywords, and 7 days of data retention. It's enough to see whether Apsity is useful for you. If it is, Starter ($9/month) bumps you to 3 apps, 30 keywords, 90 days of history, and unlocks AI features like keyword optimization and rank drop diagnosis. Pro ($19/month) removes all limits.

There's no trial period because the Free plan already covers the core experience. Track one app, see your rankings, read the AI insights. Upgrade when you need more.

Common setup issues

A few things that trip people up:

• "Invalid private key" error — The .p8 file must include the header and footer lines. If you copied from a password manager that stripped them, add -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----- and -----END PRIVATE KEY----- back.
• No apps showing after credential verification — Your API key role might be too restrictive. App Manager or Admin roles work. Developer role does not have access to sales data.
• Revenue shows $0 — Apple's data has a 1–2 day delay. If you just set up today, check again tomorrow. Also verify your app actually had sales in the last 3 days.
• Keyword rankings say "Not ranked" — Rankings are collected by the daily cron job. If you added keywords after 3 AM KST today, rankings appear tomorrow morning.

Five minutes of setup, then it's automatic

That's the whole setup: enter API credentials, add an app, pick a few keywords, optionally add competitors. Five minutes of work. Everything after that — daily syncs, ranking checks, competitor monitoring, AI analysis, alerts — runs automatically.

The goal was to make the onboarding as short as possible so you can get to the part that actually matters: understanding what's happening with your app and knowing what to do about it. Check back tomorrow morning and your first insights will be waiting.