The Best Visual Studio App Center Alternative for Mobile Teams

The End of Visual Studio App Center

In March 2024, Microsoft made a significant announcement that sent shockwaves through the mobile development community: Visual Studio App Center is officially retiring on March 31, 2025.

For years, App Center (formerly HockeyApp) has been the go-to platform for distributing iOS and Android test builds, crash reporting, and CI/CD pipelines. But with its impending shutdown, thousands of mobile teams are now scrambling to migrate their app distribution workflows to a reliable alternative before the deadline.

If you only used App Center to share APK and IPA files with QA teams, beta testers, and clients, moving to a bloated enterprise platform is overkill. You need a fast, developer-first tool focused purely on over-the-air (OTA) distribution.

Why Developers are Migrating to BuildShare

BuildShare is built specifically to solve the core problem mobile teams face: getting a build onto a tester's device as quickly and seamlessly as possible, without the friction of app stores or expiring links.

Here is why BuildShare is the perfect Visual Studio App Center alternative for app distribution.

1. Focused Purely on Distribution

App Center suffered from feature bloat. It tried to be a build server, a crash reporting tool, an analytics engine, and a distribution platform all at once. BuildShare does one thing and does it perfectly: OTA mobile app distribution.

You don't need to navigate complex Azure portals or set up heavy SDKs inside your app code. You just upload your .apk or .ipa file and get an install link.

2. CI/CD Integration That Actually Makes Sense

Many teams loved App Center's CLI. We built BuildShare with a CLI-first approach, making it incredibly simple to integrate into your existing GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Fastlane, or Bitrise pipelines.

While you might be moving your actual app builds to GitHub Actions or Bitrise, you can still automate the distribution step with a single command:

# Upload and distribute your build instantly
$ buildshare upload ./build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk

> Success! Share Link: https://buildshare.in/install/abc-123

3. No Expiry Dates

Platforms like TestFlight (90 days) and Diawi (7 days) aggressively expire your links. App Center had better persistence, and BuildShare matches that expectation. When you upload a build, the link stays live forever unless you manually delete or disable it.

4. No Tester Accounts Required

One of the biggest frustrations with App Center was managing tester accounts and getting clients to log in. BuildShare simplifies this entirely. You can generate a secure, unguessable install link (or a QR code) that clients can scan and install immediately—no sign-ups required for your end users.

5. Effortless iOS Distribution

Distributing iOS builds requires managing provisioning profiles and UDIDs. BuildShare reads your ad-hoc or enterprise IPA files perfectly, generating the necessary manifest files automatically so your testers can download the app directly from Safari without routing through TestFlight.

How to Migrate from App Center to BuildShare

Migrating is incredibly straightforward since BuildShare requires zero SDK integration.

1. Remove the App Center SDK from your mobile app if you were only using it for distribution.
2. Sign up for BuildShare and grab your API key.
3. Update your CI/CD scripts to replace the appcenter distribute release command with buildshare upload.

The shutdown of Visual Studio App Center doesn't have to break your team's velocity. With BuildShare, you can keep shipping mobile builds effortlessly.