Microsoft has recently announced the acquisition of HockeyApp, maker of a service providing crash reporting and app distribution on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
Microsoft announcement comes some months after Apple's acquisition of TestFlight, which is now fully integrated inside Apples' iTunesConnect platform.
Stackoverflow's user ocwang has recently summarized HockeyApp's and TestFlight's pros and cons. According to ocwang, HockeyApp:
- allows access to all uploaded builds, whereas TestFlight only allows one enabled build at a time.
- does not require any review process.
- is cross-platform and supports older iOS versions, while TestFlight is iOS8-only.
On the other hand, TestFlight:
- is easier to use since it does not require dealing with UDIDs or provisioning profiles, only email addresses.
- allows up to 1,000 testers versus 100 testers for HockeyApp.
When Apple acquired TestFlight, it also announced the discontinuation of TestFlight Android support. Contrary to that, Brian Harry, Microsoft technical fellow, in a post of his made clear that Microsoft is "committed to supporting all the major mobile platforms as first class citizens," so iOS and Android support in HockeyApp will not "become second class."
Microsoft's corporate vice president of the Developer Division, S. Somasegar, also announced that in the coming months, Microsoft will introduce new iOS and Android SDKs to integrate HockeyApp features into Application Insights, a service aimed to offer "a view of application usage, availability, and performance across both client and server/cloud application components."
Microsoft had been using HockeyApp's service since its early days in 2011, say HockeyApp's founder, who also reinforce their commitment to the advancement of the platform.
Currently, as it can be confirmed by signing up to the service, HockeyApp only offers a limited set of features for free plans, namely, the possibility to test apps and participate as a developer or member in other projects, while in order to create or upload apps a paid plan is required.