Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

1. Create two developer accounts and pay $200 a year.
2. Consider using one account for both testing and releasing. I don’t know what you concerns with doing this are, but it is perfectly acceptable to do this.
3. You test your app now using your personal account, let’s say you even use this account to release your app. At any point down the road Apple has a legal entity change process (that I’ve been through and actually isn’t that bad) to migrate your account from and individual account to a company account.

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.