Best practives when developing iPhone Apps for different companies

Question

When I am developing an iPhone app for a company, I will choose an app name and app id during the development process and will use the developer identity and certificates connected with my developer account. When the app is finished and ready to be submitted to the app store, I am running into a couple of problems:

• It is not possible (or at least very hard) to change the ownership of an app that has already been submitted to the app store. So I can not submit the app using my credentials and change the ownership later.
• When I get login credentials for iTunes connect from the company, I can create a new app id and certificates to build the app for submission. But I can not use the same app id I am using for development because the app id has to be unique. Also, the company can not simply add me as an admin user because then I do not have the necessary privileges to create an app id or certificates.

I am wondering what is the best way to handle this situation when developing apps as a freelance for different companies? How do you handle that?

Answer 1

See this SO question about how to submit an application for a client.

I do the following:

When I start a project for a client, I do so using my own developer credentials. What is important to note is that I use a wildcard profile which I can use to develop any kind of app (except apps that might use Push Notification or In-App Purchase).

When it comes time to submit the app for the client, I simply build with the client's Distribution profile (see the link above). But I also have to change the bundle id to match the client profile, e.g. com.client.fooapp.

The whole thing isn't that complicated or difficult, but it is not exactly seamless either.

Answer 2

The company should create the app id in iTunes and then add you as a member of their team. You then download the profiles etc that you need.

Easy.