Distribute IOS App without developer account

2
votes

An association of which i am a member, asked me to develop a simple app for android and ios. I decided to use cordova to make the app.

Now that the app is ready, i should start releasing the .APK file for Android (simple) and .IPA for IOS (not simple).

How can I do this to release the IPA file?

My situation: i'm not a registered developer program of Apple, and i'm not going to pay the $99 fee to become it.

I'm not interested in releasing the app on the Apple Store and i'm not interested if users will notice that that application is developed by third parties. App shoud be used by a little association only by members, not sell, not outside association.

Are there any solutions? Or does the tax necessarily be paid?

2
iosiphonecordova
One word answer is NO. But then, If the number of users are limited then you can make use of TestFlight to temporarily release the build to these people.You can add these users as external testers and distribute the app to them. They will be able to use it for limited time (my guess 30 or 60 days thats all) After that the current build will expire and you will have to make another release to testFilght. – Sandeep Bhandari
@SandeepBhandari: Can a build be uploaded to TestFlight without joining apple developer program? – Puneet Sharma
I suggest that you can share online link for .ipa file download and they can use it for Couple of days only.e.g diawi.com – Bhumesh Purohit
You can use ad-hoc app signing, but it requires you to get all the phones UDIDs and register them under your account, much like development signing. The resulting IPAs are only valid for a certain amount of time, though, much like test flight. – allenh
@AllenHumphreysYou need dev. account anyways. – badhanganesh

2 Answers

1
votes

You will need to become a developer in order to distribute iOS apps (without jailbreaking devices). If you only need it on one device, you could deploy it as a testing app, but I assume the scope is beyond this. If you are trying to avoid using the App Store for whatever reason, you can use TestFlight (https://developer.apple.com/testflight/) which lets people test the app.

However, if this is an app being used publicly (even internally), you should go through the review process to have the app available on the App Store, which also requires ensuring that it complies with the App Store Review Guide (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/).

0
votes

You must need to be the part of developer program, apple has given the one more possibility to distribute it in-house by joining its enterprise program Have a look https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/DistributingEnterpriseProgramApps/DistributingEnterpriseProgramApps.html You can ask any developer/freelancer who has enterprise account to prepare your app for in-house distribution, you just not need to buy the account, just deal(pay for) with this developer/ freelancer for distribution your app only. you can post this job on any freelancing website ..