iOS App Distribution

If you’re not ready for the App Store, luckily Apple has a few internal, or private, distribution methods you can use when you’re not ready to deploy to the App Store.

Personal Team Distribution. When you go the “Develop with Apple ID” route, avoiding the $99/yr fee, you still get the ability to deploy your apps to devices. The Personal Team distribution method allows you to deploy to a limited set of devices. The apps deployed this way have fairly short durations, and expire after a few days.

Ad Hoc Distribution. Ad Hoc distribution allows you to select a set of user devices you can distribute your app to, and deploy it over-the-air, or OTA.

Similar to the personal team distribution, this method is not scalable or long-term. You can distribute to 100 devices per product family, and the builds expire yearly.

Unlisted apps, while technically not internal, they are not public. They still get sent to the App Store, but are not available to the general public. Instead, they are unlisted, and only available to those that have the URL for the entry in the store.

TestFlight is Apple’s internal mechanism for performing large scale testing before the version you are testing goes to the App Store for release. While this scales better - giving you access to 10,000 external testers - the builds expire after 90 days.

In-house Distribution. This distribution method is only available via the Apple Developer Enterprise Program, which businesses can use to deploy in-house apps to their employees.

Custom App Distribution. Similar to In-house distribution, Custom App Distribution allows large-scale internal deployments but uses tools such as App Store Connect and TestFlight.

In the rest of this part of the course, we’ll dive a bit deeper into 3 distribution methods: Ad Hoc Distribution, Unlisted Public Apps, and TestFlight. Let’s get started with Ad Hoc distribution which you’ll learn about in the next episode.