Helium 10 might not be the best tool for Amazon sellers because of bloat. Its paid plans include many features and tools that drive up the price, but many users might not even need or want them.
Most Amazon sellers only want Helium 10 for its impressive product and keyword research tools, but they must pay for other features as well.
Even so, Helium 10 has much to offer Amazon sellers. However, whether subscribing to a paid plan is worth it depends on your needs and budget.
Explore the world of Helium 10, then decide if it’s the best tool for you.
Key Takeaways:
- Helium 10 is an all-in-one software suite designed specifically to help Amazon sellers succeed
- Core product and keyword research tools of Helium 10 are comprehensive, but they’re just some of the 26 tools available for users
- The paid plans for Helium 10 include tools that many Amazon sellers might not want, driving the price up, so it compares unfavorably to similar software suites
- Helium 10 isn’t the best tool for Amazon sellers looking for a simpler, more affordable way to do product and keyword research
What Is Helium 10?
Helium 10 is a comprehensive software suite designed to help Amazon sellers start and grow their businesses. As of 2020, Helium 10 has more than one million users, a pretty impressive feat considering the number of Amazon seller tools available out there.
The software suite was born out of a desire of AM/PM Podcast host Manny Coats to help his listeners succeed in their Amazon business. Coats and Helium 10 co-founder Guillermo Puyol had set out to sell on Amazon in 2015 but instead started offering a listing optimization tool for free to his podcast subscribers.
Coats created another tool and then a third and, as the community of users grew, they decided to develop a suite of tools: Helium 10.
The original Helium 10 suite included 10 tools. Today, it has 26 tools, not including useful free tools, such as Helium 10 Gems, a promotional URL generator. It also has inventory management, analytics, finance, and marketing tools.
What Are the Core Tools of Helium 10?
- Black Box
- Trendster
- Chrome Extension
- Cerebro
- Magnet
- Misspellinator
- Frankenstein
- Scribbles
- Index Checker
The real value of Helium 10 for Amazon sellers lie in its core tools for product research, keyword research, and listing optimization. The following are some of the highlights of these tools.
Black Box
With a database of more than 450 million products on Amazon, this product research tool can help sellers find the best products with low competition to sell on Amazon based on a specific niche or preference.
Sellers can search by category, price, review rating, number of sellers, weight, and more.
Trendster
Trendster provides a visual display of product price and sales trends so sellers can decide if and when to sell a product and how to optimize their inventory.
Chrome Extension
Helium 10’s Chrome extension is a suite of five tools, the most popular being X-ray. These tools provide access to the sales data of Amazon Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs) to identify the next best product to sell.
The extension also provides insights into reviews, profitability, marketplace demand, and a way to find suppliers for the products you want through Alibaba.
Cerebro
Cerebro is a reverse ASIN and Product ID lookup tool that helps sellers identify the keywords with high search volumes and ranking for specific products.
It also provides insights into competitor keyword research.
Magnet
Magnet is Helium 10’s primary keyword research tool and has the largest database of actionable search terms and long-tail keywords on Amazon.
You can customize your search through advanced fillers and organize the list search number of competing products, search volume, word count, and so on.
Misspellinator
Helium 10 leverages the tendency of many people to misspell words when searching for a product with this tool.
The Misspellinator identifies the most common misspellings for keywords so sellers can include them in their listing, typically in the back end.
Misspelled words are often low competition, so it’s an excellent opportunity to edge out the spelling-conscious competition.
Frankenstein
Someone in Helium 10 has a sense of humor. This tool cleans up keyword lists to identify duplicates, extraneous words and characters, and sort keywords according to popularity.
Cherry-picking keywords from a list of thousands can help sellers optimize the keywords they use for their listings.
Scribbles
This tool ensures you don’t miss an important keyword in your listing or use it more than once by categorizing them as “used” or “unused” in the master keyword list.
Index Checker
The Index Checker identifies keywords that Amazon indexes automatically, so you don’t have to do it manually. It also identifies keywords that might impact your product listing negatively.
You can also use this tool to discover profitable keywords from competitor ASINs.
How Can Your Business Benefit From Using Helium 10?
The pandemic highlighted the need for small businesses to use software, technology, and services to find success on e-commerce platforms.
Helium 10 Is a Great Tool for Freelance Marketers
While marketing agencies may seem unaffordable for many small companies, a freelance marketer with the right skills can prove a valuable resource for e-commerce sellers with limited funds.
Online Retailers Will Find Helium 10 Helps Their Product Research
Meanwhile, an online retailer can also get a lot of exposure by selling on Amazon, and many have had the same idea in 2021.
It’s no secret that Amazon had the lion’s share of the e-retailer market in 2021 and that half of United States online shoppers first turn to Amazon for product searches.
But no seller can survive the highly competitive arena of Amazon without doing copious amounts of research, and that takes a lot of time.
But all is not lost. There are many tools available for keyword research. Ahrefs, for example, has a surprisingly comprehensive free Amazon Keyword Tool.
But product research is another matter, and Helium 10 admirably fits the bill.
What Are the Other Features of Helium 10?
Aside from product and keyword research tools, Helium 10 offers other features to sellers for the following purposes:
- Optimizing listings
- Managing inventory
- Managing finances
- Handling refunds
- Calculating Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) costs
- Streamlining marketing campaigns
You can even sign for Alerts to monitor your ASINs 24/7 to know instantly if there’s a hijacking or other suspicious activities afoot. Ironically, Alerts is an add-on and included only in the Elite Plan ($399 a month). You need to pay for that separately.
Does Helium 10 Have Free Tools?
Helium 10 has quite a few useful tools it offers to anyone for free. Amazon sellers can benefit from the PPC Audit, which evaluates ongoing campaigns. Gems generate promotional URLs to lead customers directly to your Amazon listing.
The Anomaly Tracker alerts sellers when a glitch in the Amazon Marketplace affects their listings.
How Does Helium 10 Compare to Similar Software?
Helium 10 is a comprehensive tool for Amazon sellers. But it comes at a hefty price, especially when compared to similar software, such as Jungle Scout and AMZScout.
For example, the most popular plan for Helium 10 is the Platinum at $99 a month ($83.25 when billed annually). It includes all the core tools mentioned with limited access to additional tools.
The equivalent of Platinum on Jungle Scout is Suite, which costs $69 a month ($49 when billed annually). Plus, Jungle Scout provides access to its Supplier Database, including sellers beyond Alibaba.
Jungle Scout is among the most popular product research tools for sellers on and off Amazon.
AMZScout’s Amazon Seller’s Bundle is even more affordable at $49.99 a month ($29 when billed annually), although it doesn’t have all of the offerings of Helium 10 or Jungle Scout. But it has comprehensive product and keyword search tools essential to Amazon sellers. AMZScout also has the advantage of a simple pricing plan for all its tools, so that takes away the guesswork.
Overall, Helium 10 offers several extra features that e-commerce business owners may not even need or use, which adds to the cost. Also, the pricing tiers don’t allow sellers to choose the tools to include, which can be a turnoff.
But Amazon sellers able to use all the tools offered in the available plans will love the functionality of Helium 10.
How Do You Get Started Using Helium 10?
Unfortunately, Helium 10 doesn’t offer a free trial. Given the costs of signing up for a plan, you might want to explore the tools more thoroughly before committing. If you’ve decided to give Helium 10 a try, follow the steps below for creating an account:
- Sign up for a Helium 10 account by clicking on the blue “SIGN UP FOR FREE” button. Fill in the details in the upper right corner. You won’t need a credit card at this point. Check your email to verify your account.
- Log in to the Helium Dashboard and explore the seller tools on the left sidebar.
- Download the Chrome extension here and install it. You can use the extension when browsing Amazon product pages to get relevant data and calculate the profitability using the ASIN.
- Watch the Pro Training videos here or look for them on the Dashboard. Make sure you pay attention to those that deal with product and keyword research. You might pick up a few things along the way.
Now that you have a pretty good idea of how Helium 10 tools work, you can make an informed choice about the plan that best suits your needs. Proceed to Buy Now and choose a monthly or yearly plan per your needs.
We suggest choosing a monthly plan first to see how you like it. You can upgrade to an annual subscription at any time.
What To Do Next?
Go ahead and try the Free plan of Helium 10. Since it offers limited functionality, it won’t sustain any Amazon seller for long. But it does give you a chance to try each tool available on the platform.
You can then judge for yourself if a paid plan that includes these tools costs are worth it. If you were an Amazon FBA seller making six figures, for example, you might find that Helium 10 is an ideal tool to run your business with efficiency.
While Helium 10 might not be the best tool to use for some Amazon sellers, it might be the one for you. Here are more Amazon Seller tools from our comprehensive list you can consider.