CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosdistributionenterprise
Carl D'Halluin
Carl D'Halluin

Reputation: 1072

How to distribute ios app to my European enterprise customers NOT through appstore

We have created a messaging app and regularly post updates to the appstore. This way, appstore contains always the latest & greatest, with a small risk of bugs.

We want to build a stable version for our business customers (who do in-house messaging), which updates very seldom or never. Our customers want to control the rate of updates themselves.

Telling their employees not to upgrade does not work, since new installs always get the latest version from the appstore.

Question:

  1. Can I use the enterprise distribution certificate of my own company and deliver the app binaries to my customers (e.g. a different binary per customer)?

  2. Or should I create a different version in the appstore for each customer?

  3. Or should I force my customers to request their own enterprise distribution certificate, which is a hassle I would like to avoid?

I guess that the answer to my first question is NO, as indicated in Can the iOS enterprise app development program be used to distribute apps to other companies but not via the app store?

2 is annoying, since everybody in the world can see & install the app

3 is annoying, since it requires time of my customer plus a legal contract such that I can request a certificate for my customer, use their private key, ...

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1107

Answers (2)

sch
sch

Reputation: 27506

The iOS developer program allows you to distribute Custom B2B Apps directly to your customers if they have Volume Purchase Program account.

Custom B2B Apps

You can also offer custom B2B apps directly to your business customers who have a Volume Purchase Program account. A custom B2B app provides a unique, tailored solution to address a specific business need or requirement.

If you have customers who are not located in the US, I recommend the third option: making our customers have their own iOS Enterprise Developer account.

Upvotes: 2

Jonas Schnelli
Jonas Schnelli

Reputation: 10005

By your contract you are not allowed to do that.

But Everybody does it. And i had phone contact with a apple employe which told me that they won't go behind that case.

And imaging: should apple check all installations of all enterprise deployment programs? Impossible,... even for Apple.

I would just try to get not more installations than 1000.

Upvotes: 3

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