I need that my beta testers have the beta app to let them test it but at the same time they must to have the production app to work in production. The problem is that seems if they become a beta tester only can get the beta app from the Google Play.
There is a way to have both version in the same device without to have to change the app name?
Thanks a lot.
At the moment this is not possible by design. Beta testers are ideally users who get a slightly earlier version of your app, and use it day to day so you discover issues. The thinking behind this decision was that if you allowed both, then if issues were discovered beta users wouldn't report them, they would just switch to the prod app. Also, as an app developer the beta version should be "production ready" according to your internal QA.
This has value for other reasons. Beta users can't leave public reviews - instead they send private feedback. If you allowed both, then you wouldn't be able to have this feature.
A few well known apps (like Chrome) want users to be able to have both apps. For these apps, they have a separate package name for the Beta version and maintain a separate store listing: Chrome Beta, Chrome.
If you did this it would allow both to be installed. But you would have to maintain two store listings, two sets of reviews etc.