Each tool has significant flaws and downsides. Let's cover what I would improve about Aura.
I spent a lot of time actually inside Aura, Navigating through all the settings (video below). I was specifically looking for ways it was both better and worse than NeuroPrice. So what follows are the disadvantages of Aura. (NeuroPrice also has some downsides too, and I'll get to those...)
#1: Confusing settings. I found many of Aura's settings to be poorly described, and confusing. Check out my video tour below to see me try to decipher it all in real time, but suffice to say I am put off by any repricer that doesn't explain in plain english what their settings do and how they work. Aura allows for a lot of ambiguity, which is not acceptable to me when it comes to something as sensitive as pricing.
#2: You have to connect your Amazon account to start. Most Amazon pricing tools require this. It's not a big deal and a minor complaint, but having to connect your Amazon account introduces a little friction to getting started. (NeuroPrice does not require this to get started - only if you choose their "Scheduled Repricing" option).
#3: It forces you to only price against the lowest price offer. This is caused by the "bundle blindspot" issue (described in a previous section). To be fair, all repricers except NeuroPrice have this limitation, but that doesn't make it less serious.
In simple terms, Aura doesn't let you compete with anything other than the lowest priced offer (by condition). In other words, if you wanted to tell Aura "skip the lowest priced offer and price 10 cents below the 2nd lowest," or "match the 3rd lowest competing offer" or anything outside pricing against the lowest offer - that would be impossible.
This forces prices down, and means that most of the time Aura is dropping your prices (not raising them). This is a big deal.
#4: The FBA blindspot. This is the other blindspot Aura has (see the "Blindspots" section above). If you missed it: The FBA blindspot simply means that software tools that depend on Amazon's API are unable to see certain
This is significant. The FBA blindspot was explained elsewhere in this article, but to recap: It's a restriction Amazon makes on all software that limits what FBA prices it shares. This can cause all sorts of mayhem, such as prices set too low - or not at all (because certain FBA offers are invisible to software.
NeuroPrice is able to access all FBA prices, and isn't afflicted with this blindspot. Major advantage.
#5: No option to price based on Sales Rank. Aura forces you to price all inventory the same, regardless of its demand. For example if a book has a Sales Rank of 1,000, you can't price that book differently than a book with a rank of 10 million.
Its hard to understand why so few repricers offer this as an option, since I consider it literally insane to price without this. But Aura is among the tools that simply doesn't allow it.
#6: No option to price based on product category. Yet another important repricing criteria that is missing from Aura. If you want to have separate rules for (say) DVDs and Books, that is not an option.
#7: No "AI" transparency. Aura is another repricing tool that pushes the benefits of it's "AI technology" without explaining how that AI works. Blindly surrendering trust to an AI formula our algorithm - without being informed how that formula works - should be out of the question for any seller. And I was unable to get any clarity from Aura on exactly how their AI functions.
#8: No help getting started. When I signed up for Aura, I was dumped into the tool without any onboarding or tour of any kind. They did send a "welcome" email, but generally I would prefer to have the steps to get started clearly spelled out, along with a short video explaining how to start. I didn't get that with Aura.
#9: Aura costs more. Aura's pricing starts out at $97/month. NeuroPrice starts out at $17/month. A significant difference.
That's my full list of every reason I think Aura is inferior to NeuroPrice. But what's wrong with NeuroPrice? There's a few things...