CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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Bryan Schmiedeler
Bryan Schmiedeler

Reputation: 3127

Apple Developer Account and Enterprise Account and Test Flight

My company has an Apple Enterprise Account, which we have used to deploy apps to employees using an MDM. Works fine.

We are developing an app with an outside developer. This app probably will be put in the App Store.

I generally understand the difference between Enterprise and Developer Accounts.

What I don't understand is the need to have 2 separate accounts? I cannot link my Ent to a Dev account? I have to maintain two separate accounts?

Our outside developer wants to use Test Flight for testing, which is fine by me, but we are just starting internal employee testing, so I want them just to send me the archive and I will distribute it internally using our MDM, until I can figure out if we can just "extend" our Enterprise account, and or we want to use Test Flight.

What is best practice regarding this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1051

Answers (1)

picciano
picciano

Reputation: 22701

The best practice is to decide as early as possible how the distribution of the app will work. If it is truly an internal app not intended for the App Store, then use your Enterprise account. If it is likely to be put into the App Store at some point, then use the normal non-enterprise account and TestFlight for pre-release builds.

It can be an involved process to later transfer the app from one account to the other and may involve intervention by Apple, or changing of the bundle ID. It's best to figure this out ahead of time and put the project into the proper account.

If using your MDM is an absolute requirement, you may be able to create an additional target within the project to use the enterprise account, while the main target uses the non-enterprise account.

Another advantage to using a non-enterprise account and external TestFlight builds is that your app will go though quick, periodic reviews by Apple which can catch many errors before submitting the App Store release candidate.

Upvotes: 3

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