Apple business account
I wanted to activate my corporate account for many years, but couldn't find the entrance, so I contacted Apple's technical support directly. Contacted through email, and then they called back and asked a lot about corporate accounts. They were quite concerned about this, mainly focusing on whether it was necessary and whether the company had the ability to prevent the app from spreading at will. We chatted for about half an hour. I didn’t apply in the end, haha. However, I still record some thoughts for reference only.
The following is Apple’s official application portal and some measures that are best prepared in advance for phone inquiries.
Enterprise account application portal
Required qualifications
The Apple Developer Enterprise Program is only suitable for special cases of internal use and distribution of proprietary apps, and the app must not be suitable for public release on the App Store, distribution through Apple Business Manager or Ad Hoc, and should not be beta tested with TestFlight App. Your exclusive app must be developed by you before it can be used on Apple platforms.
In addition, the following eligibility requirements apply. Your organization must:
- Have at least 100 employees.
- as a legal entity. We do not accept DBAs, fictitious businesses, trade names, or affiliates.
- Only use this program to create exclusive, internal apps for internal use only, and distribute them privately and securely to employees within your organization.
- Have systems in place to ensure only employees can download your internal-use apps and to protect membership credentials and assets.
- Participate in and pass Apple's verification and ongoing evaluation processes.
some thoughts
First of all, you need to clarify why you need to apply for a corporate account, why it cannot be distributed through a company account, and summarize the main functions and their necessity.
And we must consider the audience size of the app and how the audience's account system is managed. Are there any measures to prevent the proliferation of apps and how to prevent the proliferation of apps.
How to manage the audience's devices? If it is a company device, it may be best to install and uninstall it uniformly. Otherwise there will be distribution problems.
For distribution plans, it may be recommended to build a private distribution server within the enterprise and directly download it through a link or install it directly by sending an ipa via email. It is not recommended to use an external distribution platform as there is still a risk of leakage.
How to ensure the security of p12 files, and what remedial measures are available after leakage.
Does the company have some security measures in place to ensure the security of application services, information security, security testing cycles, etc.
After asking these questions in general, I still need to think more about it based on the principle of being able to pass.