

Crowd-testing iOS app without putting app on marketplace - RuchitGarg

I want to be able to send invite to bunch of my friends across the world to test out our iOS app, without actually going through marketplace. Is there a way?<p>Primary reason I want this app to be widely tested before it hit marketplace is to make sure that app is very well tested before we formally hit marketplace.<p>I am sure some guy have figured out a way...looking for suggestions.
======
RandallBrown
Pieceable is really neat, but it's just not gonna work for most apps that use
any of the phone's hardware and it doesn't perform super well.

TestFlight is almost perfect. Lots of times people can't figure out how to
register a device and then provisioning profiles get messed up and the app
doesn't work for them. It's as seamless a process as you can get and still
work within Apple's system. Once you get everything set up, it's quite
amazing.

One last way that's super easy for users (but probably not supported/allowed
by Apple) is to use the Enterprise distribution. This costs 300, instead of
the normal 100 and it lets you sign your own apps for use inside of your
"company." Once you get the Enterprise distribution building, you can put the
app on a website and have anyone download and use it. Unfortunately, if Apple
finds out about this they can ban you from the developer program. If you put
it behind a password so only people you want to find it can, you'd probably be
fine. I'm not sure what it takes for beta testers to count as part of your
organization.

~~~
allenbrunson
Apple doesn't allow just anybody into the "enterprise" program. Your company
has to have at least 500 employees and a Dun and Bradstreet number. I found
this out the hard way, when a company I was working with had their enterprise
application rejected by Apple.

~~~
sceneshopping
I'm not sure about the 500 employees requirement. My startup definitely did it
with 5 employees, though, I know we had to get a Dun and Bradstreet number.

~~~
allenbrunson
maybe they relaxed that part recently! I'm pretty sure they told us about the
500 employee part at the time, but that was a couple of years ago.

------
aculver
Check out Pieceable Viewer at <https://www.pieceable.com/> . It allows your
friends to try the app out in their browser, which avoids the complexity with
devices IDs and makes it manageable to get as many people as you want involved
in the testing. Even folks without iOS devices!

TestFlight has already been mentioned and is great, but I find it's a pain
when I've got a new test user that I have to re-generate provisioning profiles
on Apple's Developer site and then rebuild the binary and push the new build
back up to TestFlight. Every time. For every new tester that responds to your
invite. It's a pain. Using Pieceable Viewer avoids this entire hassle.

------
dwynings
<https://testflightapp.com/>

~~~
RuchitGarg
Have you used it? How would you rate it?

~~~
friendstock
I rate it 10 of 10. It's pretty awesome, and the Testflight SDK has some
additional functionality that's pretty useful (such as allowing testers to
write comments in app).

------
RuchitGarg
One way I was thinking is to put this app on marketplace using different
account/app name.

