How do we publish our ios application for only our customers via our servers?

Question

We have an application which will be used only by customers nationwide and for this reason we do not want to put the application on appstore. Shortly we want to publish it on one of our servers like a zip file then the customers will connect to that server and download the application. Yesterday when I called to apple support, one of the customer represantatives said to me that this is not possible even if we choose the enterprise license. But today I found a link which it says it can be possible. http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/FA_Wireless_Enterprise_App_Distribution/Introduction/Introduction.html

Now, I want to know that is there anybody had same problem in here? What are the differences between enterprise license and company license? And the most important is that how can we do what we want to do if it is possible?

Answer 1

Mustafa

you can generate your OTA(Over-The-Air) file in which you set your appropriate profile(with client`s UDID) and send that link to your client and easily provide your update.with using little bit help of your web-developer.check here.

hope this is helpful to you mate...

Answer 2

It's not officially possible.

You could try Enterprise distribution as others have mention, though it's not designed for distribution outside your company. I'm not saying it will happen, but if Apple find you're doing it they might close your developer account. I've never heard of that happening; only you can decide whether it's an acceptible risk.

Apple would say that you should put the app in the App Store. Unless Apple would reject your app I don't see why this wouldn't work. You don't have to make it easy to find and you don't have to make it cheap.

You can limit it to your customers by requiring a log in. Many, many apps do this, from Salesforce to Skype to Twitter.

Answer 3

The Apple representitive was wrong.

With an enterprise account you can sign an application using an enterprise distribution certificate and provisioning profile, which lets the app run on any device with no restrictions.

You can also use Over-The-Air distribution which lets people install the app through a simple http link in Safari (for example).

We use this a lot at my workplace. We have hundreds of people around the world using our (private) apps, all installed via safari.

The standard Corporate license only lets you manage a maximum of 100 devices on your developer account, but if you take this route you can still use Over-The-Air distribution with an ad-hoc distribution certificate/profile. But you have to manage each device id yourself.

If the cost of the enterprise account is not too much for you, that is definitely the route to take.

Answer 4

It's like Apple said, not possible.

You can add device to the ad-hoc profile, this will allow your app to run on 100 device maximum.

You can use the Enterprise license but you will still need to register the device before the app can be installed and there is still a a maximum.

See the comment of Mike Weller.

Answer 5

Your options are:

1. Use solutions like TestFlight (free AFAIK) and HockeyApp (paid service / 1 month free trial) which use UDIDs for app distribution - they allow seamless ad-hoc distributions.
2. Use Apple's corporate license ($99/yr) + enterprise license ($299/yr) at the same time and use the latter to distribute your betas/products without managing UDIDs (i.e. anyone with a link to your server can install the app, but you can introduce serial numbers etc.).
3. NOTE: using enterprise license obliges user to not share the app outside the company, but most companies breach the license agreement (sharing the apps outside company is not traceable AFAIK).

If you plan to distribute your app outside App Store, option 2 with enterprise license is a way to go, but mind the license agreement on other hand.