Business Apple Account or a common one

[mitevdev]

Do I need to have Business Apple Account to deploy my own applications on "unlimited" amount of end devices or I can do this with me common Developer Apple Account?

Thank you.

[PeterJames]

Hi @mitevdev,

How you deploy your app is important here... If you are putting the app on the Apple App store the end-user would create an Apple Volume Purchase Programme (VPP) account (this is now merged with an Apple Business Account) and get them to generate (random number) 2000 VPP licenses for that app.

The customer would then import this VPP token in to their Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution for use.

An Apple developer account is for creation. Apple VPP is for mass-distribution and Apple MDM (with or without DEP, or referred to supervised and non-supervised) is for management. DEP is used for asset protection, allows silent upgrade of iOS/apps and gives you a whole host of lock-down features for that corporate environment.

 - An Apple developer account has a yearly charge.
 - An Apple Business Manager (ABM) account is free to create; This links DEP and VPP.

 - An Apple push certificate for the MDM platform, which requires yearly renewal is also free but not apart of ABM.

 - The MDM Solution provider normally has a per device cost per year.

Thank you,
Peter James

[mitevdev]

Hi @PeterJames,

The App is not published on AppStore. I have uploaded it as Enterprise Application (it is developed in house). The App is signed with our developer Apple account which certificates is not expired yet. 

 - An Apple developer account is for creation.

What do you mean? All my Apps have been developed and published on AppStore having only this account. Some of those Apps I have registered in Cisco Meraki MDM Portal and distributed on end devices (~30) without any problems, until it stopped working. Now I can only push / distribute AppStore Apps but not those developer by us.

It is annoying.

Thank you.

Simon