Apple Acquires Testflight: What This Means for Your Android Deployment

 

Building dozens of apps with major companies/brands over the past few years, TestFlight has been an integral cross platform deployment testing tool for our team used to test app deliveries with our clients and our internal QA.

 

However, with Apple recently acquiring TestFlight, the company is not surprisingly dropping support for Android as of March 21, 2014. As a result, our team has been looking more deeply at other app deployment tools that can support Android, as well as iOS, HTML5 and other platforms. The focus has been on the following three major factors:

 

• Platforms supported – Does it support all major app platforms?
• Distribution – What is the service’s ability to deploy the app with distribution permissions?
• Reporting – How extensive are the bug and crash reports? And integration capabilities with other tools?

 

After looking through many alternatives, the three tools below seem to have the strongest prospects in either replacing or complementing TestFlight. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

 

 

1. App47

App47 comes out on top for a several reasons.  The most important being its support for multiple platforms including iOS, Android, Windows, BlackBerry and HTML5.  Another positive is level of distribution control. Distribution privileges can be set for individuals or larger groups. It also comes with a robust analytic systems and support for crash reporting. Other key highlights of the service include:

 

• Admins can monitor app usage.
• Testers can only see version that are compatible to their device and platform.

• Detailed crash reports including which line of code failed.
• Performance comparisons across all platform and devices.

• Track specific app event and specific user interactions in real-time.

 

Platforms

iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry, pure HTML or Hybrids

 

2. HockeyApp

One of its strongest features of HockeyApp is the ability to connect the service to many bug tracking systems. This will allows easy integration into existing development processes. HockeyApp also has a simple and intuitive dashboard. Hockeyapp also comes with an analytics service – though it is currently not available for live apps. Other key highlights of the service include:

• Testers will be automatically notified when updates are released and offered in-app updating.

• Admins have full control over when releases are made available and which users are notified.
• Automatically groups similar crashes for simpler reports.

• Connects to external bug tracking systems (ie, JIRA, Github, Lighthouse, Bugshelf, etc).
• Testers can create bug tickets, post an idea, or discuss a problem within the app.
• Intensive collection of data including what device is being used, how long the app is being used and more.
• Analytics for pre-launch apps with support for post-launch coming later 2014.

Platforms  

iOS, Android and Windows

 

3. AppBlade

Supporting iOS and Android, AppBlade provide crash reports with feedback directly in systems like GitHub and JIRA. However it does lack analytics.Other key highlights of the service include:

• Distribute apps to specific people or teams

• Ability to monitor app status and provide crash notifications. .
• Export crash reports and feedback to GitHub and JIRA.

Platforms

iOS, Android and Blackberry

 

Overall, all three services offer something unique depending on the development needs. The strongest app deployment tool in our opinion is App47 as it support the largest set of platforms with very strong admin capabilities. For teams just looking for deployment and don’t need all the “bells and whistles” AppBlade is a great choice. For teams focusing only on Android and iOS, HockeyApp does offer a simple setup process as well as a clean and fluid dashboard.
The development team at Clearbridge is always investigating new tools. If you have any questions about these platforms or any others, feel free to contact us.