A Code Push Alternative - Ionic Appflow

[mlynch]

With Microsoft announcing the end of support for the Cordova Code Push library many teams and enterprises that use Cordova today are going to be looking for a path forward for remote app updates, native cloud builds, and also wondering about the future of hybrid app development in general.

As the CEO of Ionic, the main company commercializing hybrid app technology with Cordova and our modern Cordova alternative Capacitor, I was saddened to see Microsoft drop the hybrid app stack and community. From our perspective, the best days for web developers building mobile apps using their favorite web stacks like React and Angular and Vue are ahead not behind and we are thankful to count hundreds of major enterprise companies and millions of developers as part of our community. But it makes sense given Microsoft has stopped investment in new App Center features and is likely looking for a path forward to move developers to Azure instead of App Center.

For teams wondering how to replace Code Push in their Cordova apps, we hope you’ll take a look at Ionic Appflow. We’ve supported remote app updates (see docs) for Cordova and now Capacitor developers for years, and we power significant apps for major brands. I think our presence in this market can be blamed for the lower than expected Cordova usage on App Center since Ionic Appflow has been in this market for years and is enterprise ready with integration into Azure DevOps, GitLab, Bitbucket, GitHub, and more, so many teams choose to use Appflow over App Center. I wish Microsoft would have reached out to us before this news hit, but they did not.

Regardless, we remain incredibly dedicated to and bullish on hybrid (or what we call Web Native app development) as there is no alternative today besides Cordova and the modern Capacitor alternative that enable web developers to use their favorite web technologies like React/Angular/Vue and projects like Next.JS and Tailwind to build native mobile apps. We are ready to support enterprise and major app teams to bring their apps to market and have a level of agility through remote app updates through Ionic Appflow that would make the average native development team incredibly jealous. And we support it all with dedicated support that customers love.

Feel free to respond here or reach out to me @maxlynch if you’d like to learn more!

[rex-iotum]

Its horrible that Microsoft decided to drop support for creating new Cordova codepush apps without notice. 6 months notice to deprecate existing apps is fine, we have 6 months time to migrate away.

However zero notice for new codepush apps is unacceptable.

My company is in the middle of building more mobile apps for our white label partners, and now suddenly we're not able to add codepush to it. We're being forced to immediately find a resolution while in the middle of a contract to provide mobile apps.

If we were told beforehand we would have created 20+ placeholder apps within AppCenter so we can still use codepush for the remaining 6 months.

[mlynch]

@rex-iotum I know it's not a 1-1 alternative but we'd love to help your team migrate to Appflow and our Live Update service. We work with a lot of teams that are using it in white label apps.

I think the migration would be pretty straightforward and we just published a migration guide here: https://ionicframework.com/blog/moving-from-microsoft-app-center-to-ionic-appflow/ (direct link to migration docs: https://ionic.io/docs/appflow/cookbook/appcenter-migration)

[ludufre]

@mlynch There is free tier without subscription? I'm asking because I can't afford the enterprise pricing only to replace this functionality.

[rex-iotum]

@mlynch Unfortunately looking further at your pricing we cannot use Ionic Appflow. Our workflow involves automated CLI codepush deployments for >30 apps from one repo and counting, and going from a free product to $2499/month seems outrageous when we only need the Live Update portion.

Ionic Appflow also seems to be missing a mandatory feature we need, target binary versions. Sometimes we need to make sure only a certain binary version and higher gets the codepush due to breaking changes. So they do, but via GUI.

I'll continue to look for alternatives, and in the mean time use that very same binary version targeting to stretch out our existing apps for new clients. We'll be using the below workaround to get past not being able to create new Cordova codepush apps, but still needing to create new mobile apps with Codepush.

Using the same cordova codepush app, sharing the same codepush deployment key: white label A app will be binary version 1.0.0, and codepush deploy with -t '>=1.0.0 <2.0.0' white label B app will be binary version 2.0.0 and codepush deploy with -t '>=2.0.0 <3.0.0' and so forth.

That way we can still do codepush deploys with an existing app, but allow us to continue to create new mobile apps. Both google play and app store connect allows displaying a store version different than the binary version, so there is no difference to users.

[mlynch]

@rex-iotum we do support binary version targeting: https://ionic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003567694-How-to-restrict-Live-Update-by-native-version

As for the price, no, Appflow isn't free. I don't think Code Push pricing is sustainable and probably one reason for this shutdown in the first place. We'd be happy to discuss pricing with you to try to fit your needs. We also have discounted pricing for startups (see startup plan): https://go.ionic.io/community-plan-faq

[Himanshu-Mishr]

Self-hosted alternative : https://github.com/lisong/code-push-server.