ASO agency review · September 2026
The ASO Project is a US agency, founded in 2014, that sells App Store Optimization and Apple Search Ads in tidy monthly packages. Packages are easy to buy, which is the point. They are also easy to keep paying for long after the work that mattered has shipped. Here is how to tell the difference.
Thinking about hiring The ASO Project? Avoid. Let me explain what a package really buys.
Gabriel Machuret · September 2026The ASO Project is exactly what it sounds like: a US agency, around since 2014, that does ASO and Apple Search Ads and not much else. I respect that focus. It is rarer than it should be. What I want to talk you out of is the way they sell it, because the monthly package model is the most comfortable way to overpay for App Store Optimization ever invented.
Here is the structure. You pick a tier. The tier includes keyword research, metadata updates, creative recommendations, and a monthly report. The fee recurs. On the surface this is fair: a known price for a known service. Look closer and ask what the service actually consists of in month five. The keyword research was done in month one. The metadata was rewritten in month two. The screenshot test shipped in month three. From then on, the package delivers monitoring, minor tweaks and the report, at the same price as the month the real work happened.
This is not a trick. It is how agencies make ASO fit a subscription. The stores do not respond in monthly increments. They respond to decisive changes, then go quiet for weeks while the ranking settles. A package bills the quiet at the same rate as the change. The agency needs this, because a business built on recurring revenue cannot afford engagements that end when the work does. You do not need it. You need the work, and then you need to leave it alone.
The Apple Search Ads half of the offer makes this worse, not better. Managing paid search is a legitimately ongoing job, and bundling it with ASO gives the package a reason to keep going. It also means the monthly report has something moving in it every month, which is the paid side, and the organic side rides along. Ask a package client which organic change shipped last month. Then ask which paid campaign was adjusted. The second answer will be longer.
Compare that with hiring one consultant on a fixed scope. The teardown, the rewrite, the test, the handover, with dates against each. When the work is done, the invoice stops. You own the keyword map and the test log. Your team learns to make the next change themselves, and to recognise when no change is the right call. The total is a fraction of a year of packages, because you are only paying for the months in which something happens.
To be fair to The ASO Project: for a company that wants a predictable monthly line item, a US-based team, and Apple Search Ads managed alongside organic, the package model is honest and the focus on ASO is genuine. For an app that needs its listing fixed and then left to work, a package is a subscription to waiting. Send me their proposal and I will show you which months contain the work and which months contain the report.
02 — The ASO Project vs one consultant
Same goal: more installs from searchOption A — The ASO Project
Monthly package tiers
An ASO specialist, via an account manager
≈ $54,000 at a typical $4.5k/mo
Onboarding, keyword research, report
Monitoring, minor tweaks, report
Managed monthly, in the package
You cancel, and the monitoring stops
Option B — Gabriel, direct Live
Fixed scope, fixed fee, an end date
Gabriel, on every deliverable
$9,500, one engagement
The teardown of your listing and five competitors
Nothing. The engagement ended. You own it.
Set up, handed over, your team runs it
Your team runs ASO without me
03 — Where a monthly ASO package actually goes
Typical agency economics · illustrative, not their booksThe part of the package that exists so the package can recur. Tool exports, dashboards, the monthly call.
Directory listings, review sites, and the team converting them into package sign-ups.
Your point of contact, and the person who turns the tool output into the report.
Offices, software seats, and the owners’ return.
The metadata and creative work that actually moves installs, concentrated in the first few months.
04 — What the package tier says vs what month five delivers
Three things to translate before you signThe rewrite happens once. The test ships once. ‘Ongoing’ is the word that lets the invoice continue after both. Ask what changed last month, specifically, and what it did.
Ongoing means recurringKeyword churn every month is not strategy. It is activity, and it prevents the stores from settling long enough to tell you whether the last change worked.
Churn is billable noisePaid gives the monthly report something that moves. Organic rides along. The package feels productive because the paid campaign was adjusted, not because your listing improved.
Paid hides the quiet05 — Red flags in a package proposal
If you see three, send it to me06 — Should you avoid The ASO Project?
Honest answer: depends who you are07 — Fair play — what The ASO Project genuinely does well
Credit where it is due07 — Before you sign
I will mark which months contain work and which contain reports, and quote the work as a fixed fee. If a managed monthly package genuinely suits you, I will say that.
08 — Objections
Predictable spend is worth something. Predictable spend on months where nothing ships is worth nothing. A fixed-fee engagement is also predictable, and it ends.
It needs decisive changes and then patience. Monthly attention exists because monthly is how agencies bill. Weekly keyword churn is a charge for noise.
I will set it up and teach your team to run it. Managing spend on a retainer is a media business, and if you want that permanently outsourced, a package agency is an honest option.
Yes. I compete for ASO work. That is why the argument here is about the package model, not the people, and why I have said who it actually suits.