@burgalon@tonyyo11 agreed. I wonder if you could also charge per X number of beta users that sign up & then do a revenue split with a beta tester so they essentially get paid to try out apps
Report
@tonyyo11 good one! I could use that myself. For now, you can hop on my startup's (IRememba) private beta list .. rolling out in Nov. :)
@steipete Hosted on Heroku. Since I understand giving your iTunes credentials is problematic, you may want to consider creating a user specifically for BoardingBot like this https://boardingbot.boorgle.com/...
@burgalon Is the iTC account encrypted in any way, or is the password plain text in the database? You could add a service that checks for user capabilities and reject users with too many permissions, as a precaution. Many people will get that wrong.
I'm trying to get my head around the use case for a chat bot on this. Usually people ping you on support, you solve a problem and then offer beta access. Or, they are interested in your app and then usually are on mobile and click on a website link. What's the flow where a chat bot is the entry point?
@steipete I think the real interest in chat bot is because people do not like filling their name and email in an unknown form, however if the same is served in a chat-bot, they have a sense this is a conversation with a real person, and gain more trust.
Ideally apps can publish a post on a Facebook group like "If you'd like to become a beta tester for our app, Like our page and message us with your email to receive an invite" - This way you can seed your beta community better and creating an viral circle which will grow once launched
@burgalon Is there a way the bot escalates requests to a human? What if a user asks a question that the bot can't parse? Is there basic failure detection like "you are already in the database" "there are no beta spots left" "there currently is no build available but you'll get an email as soon as there is one" We use pretty much the same in http://boarding-ios.pspdfkit.com/ and these questions/issues were quite common (the whole TestFlight experience is quite bad compared to Google Play)
@steipete The way Facebook chat bot works is that both admins and bots receive the message and can answer. The user has no way of telling who wrote the message. BoardingBot allows for "trigger words" which will filter its responses or sending invites.
Indeed there is a failure detection for existing users.
Regarding an error for "no current beta version" - I should probably add this.
What's your business model? This kind of interaction is flaky - the scraper needs to be kept up to date, Apple will block the iTunes Connect user (happened to us with https://pdfviewer.io/ quite a few times!) , there's support - this is not a build-once run-forever service but needs constant care.
@steipete Currently I'm still trying to figure out the premium features, such as letting beta testers opt-in to testing other apps, or featuring an app in a beta test directory, emailing beta testers and more....
I hope iTunes will open an oAuth API sometime :) and hopeful they will not block us.
Hey guys, I'm the maker of @boardingbot. Would love to hear your thoughts for features you might want to see added. Right now BoardingBot also allows sending emails to testers which I thought was missing from TestFlight.
@burgalon@boardingbot The whole process is terrible in my opinion and makes it way harder than it needs to share a project with others and let them test it. You need to download test flight, open a link, download the other app. I feel you are on the right way on solving a crucial problem but it is a tough one for sure! Good luck!
BoardingBot
Birch 2.0
Pikazo
PDF Viewer
BoardingBot
PDF Viewer
BoardingBot
PDF Viewer
BoardingBot
PDF Viewer
BoardingBot
PDF Viewer
BoardingBot
PDF Viewer
BoardingBot
BoardingBot
PlanItUp
Zengo wallet