Do you know which is a good CI/

CD cloud solution for your mobile

app(s)?
Before starting
• This is not about listing all available CI/CD tools on the market, or
about describing the PROs and CONs between them

• This assumes you know why you need a CI/CD environment/tool for
deploying your app(s). E.g: read this for more

• This proposes one solution which might be good or not for your
business depending on various constraints

Context
• You are in the process of building the next cool product which has also one
or more mobile apps as components.

• You want to distribute beta builds to internal stakeholders as soon as you

have some functionalities already working and you don’t want to wait until
the app can be submitted via regular deployment and distributions which
requires review from Apple (for AppStore) or Google (for Google Play).

• You know there are plenty solutions available on the market - just to solve
the Continuous Integration problem and you just want to know which one
ts best for your needs.

This article might help you as I have recently had to research the market and
to integrate a CI/CD tool for deploying early beta builds of iOS and Android
apps. Here are the conclusions:

A. CI/CD Solution for Backend only on AWS

• AWS Code Pipeline: https://aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/

• AWS Code Deploy: https://aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/

B. CI/CD Solution for Mobile only

• Codemagic: https://codemagic.io/pricing/

• Appcircle: https://appcircle.io/pricing/

• Bitrise: https://www.bitrise.io

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 C. CI/CD Solution for Backend and Mobile:

• TeamCity: https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/features/
cloud_integrations.html (used it before: hard to con gure and maintain
due to 2FA)

• Github Actions: https://github.com/features/actions (a bit hard to

con gure for mobile projects)

• CircleCI: https://codemagic.io/pricing/

• Incredibuild: https://www.incredibuild.com/pricing (no iOS support)

• Buddy: https://buddy.works/pricing (no iOS support)

Features analysed
- F1: options to full backend deployment and automated testing run
- F2: options to full deploy mobile apps on AppStore and Google Play
- F3: options to run unit tests and UI tests on real mobile devices with
con gurable OS version and model

Conclusions
•There is no option which o er all the features we need to suport for
backend and mobile
•Solutions from B are well suited for mobile apps only (for F2, F3). If you
need just a simple solution for mobile apps, the recommendation is
Codemagic.
•Solution from C can be used for mobile apps as well (F2 but not F3 support)

•It is worth to mention that I have used the past the following solutions:
Cruise Control, Jenkins, GitLab, TeamCity, Bitrise, Fastlane - so, I tried to
nd something di erent

And the winner is: Codemagic

Pros of Codemagic
• Flutter support

• Apple Developer Portal integration

• 500 free build minutes/month

• Fast builds

• Bitbucket integration

• GitLab integration

• Github integration

• Easy setup

• Automatic iOS code signing

• Newest Xcode version

• Always up to date with the latest developer tools

• Customisable work ows

• Great for teams

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 • CI/CD for Unity

• Fast and great support

Codemagic's Features
• Continuous integration

• Continuous Delivery

• Continuous Deployment

• Debugging

• Con guration Management

• Source Control

• Access Controls/Permissions

• Testing Management

• Automatic Code signing

• Automatic testing

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