I need to make a provisioning profile to test builds on my iOS device, to do this I need to make an Apple developer account and pay their fee.
Eventually I plan to release apps under a specific name, and I think this name may be tied to the Apple developer account name. The dilemma is that I am compelled to use a personal email for testing, and a professional email related to a business entity for releasing, and I'm not sure what to do sign up with now as I don't want to subject myself to two annual fees.
Being an individual developer, are there best practices for this sort of thing?
Expired memberships If your Apple Developer Program membership expires, your apps will no longer be available for download and you won't be able to submit new apps or updates. You'll lose access to prerelease software, Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, and TSIs.
Apple says it can take up to 24-48 hours to confirm and setup a new Apple developer account. However, some people have had the process take minutes. One SURE way to make it take longer is to use a different credit card to pay for the Apple Developer account enrollment than is already associated with that Apple ID.
You can install apps on a device for free with Xcode. You'll only need to enroll if you'd like to distribute apps, access beta software, and integrate with capabilities such as Siri, Apple Pay, and iCloud.
You can have multiple Apple IDs and multiple developer accounts if you work for multiple organizations. Or you can use one Apple ID for everything, or one for your personal apps and one for your professional apps.
I'm sorry to say that if you create both accounts and want to use one for testing and one for releasing you will be subject to 2 annual fees and there is very little room to work around this. Now as far as your options go, you could go one of a few ways.
Additionally, if you are worried about there being any kind of problem deploying an app you made on your individual account on your business account, there won't be. You will have to make new developer certificates, app IDs, and provisioning profiles but that is it. Thankfully that process has become a lot more streamlined than it used to be.
Side note, If you feel it to be relevant. The name that appears as the seller of the app is defined later in the process. You can sign up using your professional email, and choose your legal entity name later on when filling out your taxation paperwork in iTunes Connect.
You aren't compelled to use a personal e-mail for testing, you're choosing to by delaying preparing your professional e-mail address.
If you really want to delay registering your professional e-mail, then one option is to just use the Simulator, which is remarkably good - though not perfect.
If your app is successful, the additional developer subscription fee will seem like small potatoes.
Overall, this is a minor limitation, and you just need to decide what is more important to you: developing on a real device, saving the extra developer subscription, or choosing your professional e-mail address earlier than you'd planned.
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