Earlier this month, we reviewed a cool service called Buildstore, available online at builds.io. It’s a repository of apps that the App Store won’t allow, like emulators and torrent clients, yet it doesn’t require a jailbroken iPhone to use. We wanted to know more, so we talked to its creator Vladimir Ignatyev.
Hi Vladimir, thanks for agreeing to the interview. What’s your role at BuildStore?
Happy to meet you! I do everything as the most of members of our team do. I’m developer, dreamer, designer and pixel-art artist sometimes :)
How big is the BuildStore team?
We are 8 full-time members, who are involved in support, marketing, development and researching of new technologies related to our niche.
What’s the history of the service – what prompted you to begin it, and how has it evolved?
Many years ago…
MacBuildServer was our first attempt to bring Continuous Integration (like Travis CI) to iOS developers. Luckily, some people used MBS to bring The Light and Goodness to all people. I mean GBA4iOS emulator. We re-used our code and created a simple site allowing to install GBA4iOS for bucks. Then we spent months improving it and making it suitable for casual users.
How does the BuildStore work on a technical level?
We store .ipa files of apps. When you install an app from BuildStore, our servers resign this app specially for your device. Your device get new .ipa resigned with proper certificate and mobileprovision.
It takes some time to register your device in Apple Developer Portal first before you will be able to install apps.
We don’t use enterprise certificates, because enterprise certificate could be revoked easily. BuildStore never suffers from revocations, that’s why we are cool.
Once you have installed an app, it will live at least 351 days (and less than 365 days). You can easily continue the subscription and you will be able to update apps on your device without missing your data (save files for games etc.)
Vladimir
Has the business been successful? Is it a full-time job for anyone, or a side project? $10,000 a week (from your page’s report of 1,000 new customers per week) seems to be a good indicator that the service is popular.
It’s a full-time job for 8 persons, including founders. Don’t know if it’s a success, but we won’t stop at just BuildStore. New online services are coming soon.
Are you worried that Apple will attempt to block services like yours in the future?
The one and only thing why Apple could potentially block such services, that is because of changing its own infrastructure for developers. It may happen in the next 2-3 years, I think.
We was afraid of that, when TestFlight had been bought by Apple. Anyway, we are flexible enough to keep happiness of our customers and to react to changes.
Have you faced any legal issues, e.g. warnings from Nintendo, Sony, etc., or from developers of apps that you feature?
No, we haven’t had any legal issues.
Why is (what appears to be) a paid app (Marvel vs Capcom 2) on your service? Isn’t this a clear case of piracy?
IMHO, ‘piracy’ is when you eat from someone else’s plate.
Marvel vs Capcom is not available on the AppStore at all, so it’s not a ‘paid app’, it just doesn’t exist.
Nobody reported us an abuse or what about this app, but our users wanted this app very well and we decided to add it.
If it could be considered as a piracy, we will be the first who knows about it.
How do you decide on what apps to feature on your service?
We look for useful and fun apps, and we hear our users. Unfortunately, there are some technical limitations, that we can’t easily work around. Some apps are built only for jailbroken devices and/or for rare iOS versions and completely incompatible with modern iOS. The most of our users have iOS 9 and iOS 8, and the service works for early beta versions too.
Furthermore, some developers don’t want to distribute their apps with us. They think that they can’t benefit from it. On the other hand there are a plenty of success stories already made.
Do you plan on adding more apps in the future? If so, are there any you can name specifically?
Yes, we plan. We look for new apps every day.
Would it be possible to add f.lux to the site after Apple forced the developers to take it down?
Yes, we’re trying to reach developers of f.lux to do that. But I can’t tell for sure, when the app will appear in our store, because we still have no response from them. I think, they aren’t interested in BuildStore, because it’s too small in comparison to the App Store.
As I said before, developers don’t see opportunities in BuildStore. We plan to change this situation. Look at the story of GBA4iOS and his creator. Ask us via e-mail – hello@builds.io – if you want.
Thanks for your time, Vladimir.
This article has been revised slightly for grammar and clarity.