Separate apps in TestFlight for production and staging?

Question

Our app has two targets, with separate Bundle Ids for the production and staging app:

com.myCompany.production
com.myCompany.staging

We have used TestFlight to test our app internally, but only at the later stages - we were testing com.myCompany.production app, whose API calls were hitting the production server.

Now we want to test earlier in the process, we want our internal users to test the com.myCompany.staging app.

Is creating a new app on iTunes Connect the only way to do this? I'm just concerned that I will be creating a 'fake' app which will never be released. What is the recommeneded way to do this?

Answer 1

There are two alternatives, adhoc distribution with an enterprise certificate and use a 3rd party service like fabric.io for distribution. Or use TestFlight, which we do, and have had no issues. We make sure that in the TestFlight reviewers notes we make clear that this version is just for beta testing. The only downside of this approach that we have found is that when you up the version number (not the build number) you have to resubmit for Beta review which can take anything from a few hours to a couple of days.