ZonGuru Niche Finder vs. Jungle Scout Opportunity Finder

An honest, head-to-head comparison of two Amazon product research tools. Which tool cuts through research overwhelm and delivers killer results every time?

Not sure which product research platform delivers the goods? Join me, an experienced Amazon FBA seller, as I take a no holds barred look at two product research heavyweights: ZonGuru’s Niche Finder and Jungle Scout’s Opportunity Finder.

Firstly, a bit about me...I’m an experienced private label seller who recently joined the ZonGuru Customer Success Team. I’m familiar with both toolsets and jumped at the opportunity to give an honest assessment of their capabilities. Who knows, I might even find my next product opportunity in the process! 

Now, I know what you’re thinking...I’m biased. However, I decided upfront what my search parameters were going to be and what features were important. My goal is to honestly show which tool provides the most valuable product opportunities given the below criteria: 

Important Note: Although I reflect only the US marketplace in this review, ZonGuru's Niche Finder is compatible with all three marketplaces—US, Europe, and Australia.

My niche search criteria:

• USA market
• Average unit price > $25
• Average reviews < 500
• Search volume > 6,000
• Ability to differentiate
• Product categories - Pet Supplies / Kitchen & Dining / Home & Kitchen
  

What am I looking for? 

• Ease of use
• Number of quality results
• Access to key metrics
• Access to help & support

Opportunity Finder: Jungle Scout’s Amazon Product Research Tool

First out of the gate, Jungle Scout’s Opportunity Finder, marketed as a keyword driven discovery tool used to find promising product niches. Opportunity Finder allows users to input filter options, save filter preferences or use preset search conditions which are great for anyone unsure of where to start. The first thing I noticed is that the filters are set using bar sliders which makes it difficult to set exact parameters. The lack of precision when navigating the filters here caused some frustration.

Also I was unable to filter by average reviews, I needed to use ‘competition score’ instead. ‘Competition score’ does not provide detailed information around how it is calculated and I resigned myself to trusting in the Jungle Scout process.

One Jungle Scout feature I found useful was the ‘Exclude top brands’ button. Super cool, as I obviously don’t want to go head to head with a big name brand. One huge shortfall which became very obvious was that I had no idea what a lot of products were. 'Proofing basket', anyone? To find out what a product was, I needed to open another window to view the product on Amazon. I immediately felt completely overwhelmed with more than 20 tabs open within five minutes of searching. In case you’re wondering, a ‘proofing basket’ is a type of basket used to provide structure for shaped loaves.

Opportunity Finder does provide historical data trends including seasonality, price and search volume over time. I liked this feature, however I did receive a few errors and noticed information gaps for some products. Using my set search conditions, I was given 139 results. Not a massive list, considering how big of a net I was throwing out. I was also surprised that I wasn’t able to save search results or send them to other tools… Again, multiple tabs needed to be opened to further validate my results. I did reach out to support and was surprised to receive a message saying it would be 2-3 days before I could expect a response. My question was eventually answered two days later.

Niche Finder: Our Amazon Product Research Offering

The first thing I noticed when moving over to ZonGuru was the uncluttered platform layout and effortless navigation with clear menu options for each phase in the seller journey. Niche Finder has an easy and advanced mode, with descriptive preset search filters within the easy mode and the ability to save personal filter preferences. What became apparent was the abundance of filtering options, including keyword revenue, PPC cost and even launch budget. Niche Finder makes zoning in on a metric very simple. I was easily able to plug in my requirements. I really liked the ability to filter by launch budget. I can see how this would be a huge timesaver as users don’t want to waste time researching a niche outside of their budget.

While we focused on the US marketplace in this blog, as we noted above, Niche Finder is the only FBA seller tool that is compatible with all three markets: US, Europe, and Australia. Importantly, ZonGuru manages to provide so much more data without overwhelming the user. Key metrics include average star rating, launch budget, % FBA, PPC bid, keyword data and pictures! Pictures really do say a thousand words. I was easily able to skip past products that weren’t to my liking without opening another tab. I found this to be a massive time saver as I could see the top 24 listings for the keyword and check if there was room to differentiate. Well done ZonGuru!

The ease of use was impressive, with the ability to save results to favourites and quickly send results to other ZonGuru tools. A downside is that session limits do apply and historical data isn’t available within Niche Finder. However, it is of course available in other ZonGuru tools. More importantly I received 500+ search results for the same search conditions! Yes you read that right. The same search conditions returned over double the results! This blew me away. So much opportunity and less risk of multiple platform users chasing the same niche! I also reached out to support and was notified the standard response time is approximately 1 hour. True to form my ticket was answered well within that time period!

Putting These Private Label Tools To The Test

It’s crunch time! Let’s put the toolsets to the test! Using the preset filters mentioned above, I wanted to see which toolset returned the best product opportunities. To keep things on a level playing field, I decided to take the top 10 results given from each tool.

Top 10 results from Jungle Scout are... Hmm. Three results for Bongs, three for air-conditioners (one includes ‘Blaux’, which is a big name brand if I’m not mistaken), and I’m definitely not in the business of gold trading or shipping perishable food items like ice cream bars. From this list I can only see two possible products: the Retro Mini Fridge and Saucer Chair. However I’m sceptical what “medium competition” means, as I don’t know how this is calculated. When I dig a bit deeper on Retro Mini Fridge (in another window of course) I can see it is a pretty tightly held category with average reviews above 800 and outside my original search requirements. Disappointing. That leaves one potential product: the Saucer Chair.

The top 10 results from ZonGuru returned some pretty promising results. At least four potential products including the saucer chair, melamine dinnerware sets, air conditioning support bracket, and baguette (this refers to baguette bread pans, which I could easily see from the pictures). Each one meets my search criteria and offers potential.

Which FBA Research Tool Is Right For You?

Whilst Jungle Scout’s Opportunity Finder has some cool little hacks, it simply does not provide as many high quality results. It also creates instant overwhelm, as users need to continuously open multiple tabs. Finding the perfect Amazon product takes skill and precision, and I felt a lot of reliance is placed on Jungle Scout’s Competition and Niche Score filters, which take control away from the user to refine results. I appreciated the fact that there are no session limits. However, I found I was very overwhelmed by the end of the session and was happy to call it quits.  

Apart from the fact that ZonGuru's tools allow you to search for products in your choice of the US, European, and Australian marketplaces, the added filters allow you to break your search down further to create unique search results. The biggest difference I found with ZonGuru is that it has been created with the end user in mind, it is super efficient, and doesn’t muck around. ZonGuru delivers a higher number of quality search results, key information and visuals right there in the one spot, eliminating overwhelm. 

The final verdict...ZonGuru Niche Finder for the win! You can try it for FREE! Pair it with our Finding the Perfect Product Niche eBook to supercharge your product research! Find out how to make it yours, along with other goodies, here.