# Microsoft Visual Studio App Center Reviews **Vendor:** Microsoft **Category:** [Mobile Development Platforms](https://www.g2.com/categories/mobile-development-platforms) **Average Rating:** 4.1/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 61 ## About Microsoft Visual Studio App Center Visual Studio App Center ships iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS apps faster and with greater confidence by automating their lifecycles. It also connects your repository and, within minutes, builds in the cloud, tests on thousands of real devices, distributes to beta testers and app stores, and monitors real-world usage with crash and analytics data. ## Microsoft Visual Studio App Center Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users enjoy the **ease of use** in Microsoft Visual Studio App Center, facilitating seamless updates and project management. (2 reviews) - Users find that Microsoft Visual Studio App Center simplifies the **app development process** , making updates easy and efficient. (1 reviews) - Users value the **configuration ease** of Microsoft Visual Studio App Center, making app updates straightforward and efficient. (1 reviews) - Users value the **fast delivery speed** of Microsoft Visual Studio App Center, facilitating swift bug fixes without app store delays. (1 reviews) - Users value the **simplicity of updates** with Microsoft Visual Studio App Center, making app management effortless. (1 reviews) - Solution Efficiency (1 reviews) - Time Management (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users experience **network connectivity issues** during updates, which hinder their overall experience with the platform. (1 reviews) - Users feel the pricing is **expensive** for Microsoft Visual Studio App Center, possibly limiting its appeal and accessibility. (1 reviews) - Users find the **poor documentation** of governance and policies frustrating and unhelpful for effective use. (1 reviews) - Users note **pricing issues** with Microsoft Visual Studio App Center, suggesting lower costs could increase user interest. (1 reviews) - Users report **network connectivity issues** during updates, hindering the overall user experience of the App Center. (1 reviews) ## Microsoft Visual Studio App Center Reviews ### 1. Software development in one place. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shabir B. | Software engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2024 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Azure DevOps' ability to automate repetitive processes such as continuous integration and continuous delivery really catches my attention because it helps me save time and improve the efficiency of software development. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Its scalability should be more efficient because it could limit efficient resource management and productivity in large-scale development environments. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Superior security Strong security and compliance, such as data encryption, role-based access control, and compliance with industry standards, protect sensitive data. ### 2. Dynamic App Updater **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** VASANTH K. | Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 15, 2023 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** It helped me update a mobile app I created during my project in my final year. I have made many updates which have able to done easily **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** There are some network connectivity issues during the updates ,if the cost was a bit low it may attract more users **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps me to deploy my app updates and increased the workflow ### 3. Streamlining bug fixes to React Native apps. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 03, 2023 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The benefits. Allowing bug fixes to be decoupled from app store deployments. delivery to customers doesn't require to have auto updates defined. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Governance and policies are not well documented. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Delivering small updates and bug fixes requires a traditional app store delivery pipeline. Critical production bugs and security patches delivery can take more than two days. CodePush diminishes this. ### 4. One of the best IDE to use on the Windows platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kamrul H. | Senior Programmer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 09, 2022 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The visual studio now supports multiple languages like nodejs or python. It is easy to use & coding with practical utilities and great testing tools for easy deployments. It has a strong community. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** I think Visual Studio is not for beginners, and the application might be slow on the maximum workstation and could be frozen or crash. It is a heavy IDE compared to the others, and it will definitely consume more hard disk space. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Visual Studio is great for C, C# learning and development. We benefited from using this app among our development team. ### 5. Visual studio app center review by Hemal **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hemal J. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 31, 2021 ### 6. Appcenter for test automation **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Krishnan S. | Programmer Analyst, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2021 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The most likable thing about the appcenter for test automation is their to device sets for both iOS and Android. They were very quick in updating the latest devices along with the latest operating systems for both iOS and Android. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** 1. No video recording option for test cases that are executed in test cloud. 2. No support for webview for Appium. 3. Appium upgrades takes lot of time. Hence was forced to work in an older version for a long time. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1. Executing automated tests across various devices and hence was able to deliver a quality app to the customers. 2. Doing Mobilr app builds for our mobile apps which are basically using ionic or phone gap cordova plugins ### 7. App center review. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alfaiz K. | W, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 26, 2022 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** App center has its own crash analytics which can give you full logs of your application errors and crashes and it is easiest to integrate with your application. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Have to share link of applications or add user manually one by one. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Uploading our enterprise application on visual studio app center. ### 8. Control center and insights are best, Just try it **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Parth T. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 05, 2021 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** helps to view insights like how many users are using apps quickly run builds and distribute to testers **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** buggy on the latest windows 11 update also the price to purchase this is very high **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** building apps ### 9. Code push is a great for version controlled applications **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 21, 2019 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** One advantage of using react native in the application is that you have the ability to code push. Our company would often roll out bug fixes, and if it is a critical bug, we'll code push it out to older application versions to make sure the critical bug gets fixed in the older version. Having this last resort option is great and would strongly recommend companies install CodePush. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Code push has a poor system in upgrading the react native bundle in our application. For example, while loading the application, the user will face a white screen and have to wait to download before the application runs. If they have slow internet, then they would have a bad user experience. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Solving critical bug fixes in released applications, so this is a very great solution to mobile devices. Being able to push fixes to already released older applications is crucial for a successful business. ### 10. Platform to Analyse App insights **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 03, 2019 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** It is best platform for anaytics of your application. With the help of azure mobile engagement you can analyse number of user who are using your app with specific country & number of crashes which user getting that helps to fix in next release. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** There is no downside with this platform but the only thing is you will not get everything free there. There is some charges to use all the services. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** You can use this for analytics purpose to know no of user that are using your application and many more things. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps me to fix bug which user are facing & trying to reproduce and fix them for next release. ### 11. Gives us insight into our apps in the wild **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James "Brooks" L. | Xamarin Developer, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 01, 2019 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The two main features that make HockeyApp great is the distribution of apps and crash reporting. It makes uploading new builds quick and easy and managing users and testers simple. The crash reporting is excellent. We have tons of data on any crashes that happen both in test and production environments. We are able to quickly isolate problems and provide fixes before customers are able to report them. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Sometimes it feels like I have to click 10 times to drill down into the page I'm looking for. In its defense, there is a lot of information being provided. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** I'm looking forward to seeing the product evolve, especially since It's transitioning to App Center in the near future. I haven't had a lot of experience with other similar products but HockeyApp has always been great to work with. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** HockeyApp enables us to provide builds to our testers easily and quickly. We are also much more responsive to any problems our users are experiencing in the real world. ### 12. Control Center for React Native Apps **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel T. | Software Developement Manager, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 15, 2019 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** I like that I can quickly run builds and distribute them to beta testers and then send them to the app stores all from the same dashboard. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** On a project I'm working on now, I can to manually downgrade Cocoapods on my iOS build to match App Center's older version. It's a minor pain. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy on-device testing, and painless app signing and store distribution. ### 13. Codepush is one of the reasons you should be using React Native **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 14, 2019 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Codepush is a great tool that allows developers to make changes to JavaScript code on the fly. One of the headaches of being a mobile developer is dealing with the App Store/Play Store and this allows you to make updates without the entire submission process. I like the ease of use and installation. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The worst part about Codepush is that it's documentation is robust but also very long. There aren't many practical examples, but you after spending some time reading you'll be able to use it to it's fullest potential. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Follow the walk through and don't forget to set up a Staging and Production environment **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** CodePush, as mentioned, allows users to skip the extremely long App Store submission process. Small UI updates and even larger, JavaScript only, features can utilize CodePush's functionality. ### 14. is codepush awesome? yes or yeS? **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** christian m. | Mr. Morales, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 21, 2019 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** I like the integration with visual studio code since its the leading code editor. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** it was a bit buggy in the earlier stages, but has been improving with time. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** I develop react apps and this helps me to seamlessly update my apps without a long drawn out process all in the same code editor I was already using. ### 15. Bug reporting and analytics **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Miguel Ángel B. | Programador android & xamarin, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 23, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** It is multiplatform , easy to use , free of charge for the most part and offers many useful features for the developer **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** ush notifications are very limited, so are tests, and that is a key part of an application's success. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** It should offer more free features. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have solved several problems. With app center we have managed to debug the application failures until they disappear. We can also obtain analysis on the use of the application by users. ### 16. Visual Studio App expeirence **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Semiconductors | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 07, 2019 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** It is easy to access from launching visual studio **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** that you do have to launch it from visual studio **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Maybe accesible from desktop instead through visual studio **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Just adding plugins and libraries ### 17. A lot of room for improvement **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 10, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** I love being able to write a single set of tests for multiple platforms and locales **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** App Center platform is buggy, especially for new OS version releases **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Give it a try, but expect issues, especially with new OS versions. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** We wanted a single app test platform that allowed us to write tests once (In Xamarin.UITest) and run the tests against multiple platforms and devices. ### 18. Hockeryapp **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David G. | Analista programador Android para BBVA, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 31, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The best way to have the versions of the applications located, you always have access to all the versions and are informed of the latest updates via email to those you choose, the truth is that it is very convenient and you don't have to be sending emails with the APKs and then managing and storing them, this does everything automatically. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Everything is very well studied, there is no problem. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** YES, of course, everything is organized **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Improved version control ### 19. Good Code Editor **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Good Code editor. Easy to push code and centralizing the code. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Nothing to dislike about. The UI is easy and nothing to mention any cons. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Able to pull and push code. Able to edit with others. Easy to centralizing of code. ### 20. Notifications and crashes is better with Visual Studio App for Xamarin **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Carlos B. | Desarrollador Android, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 24, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Easy implementation with your xamarin app. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Limit for notifications. If i have an applciation with a lot of users, this is very bad **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** If you have a xamarin app, use this, and not firebase! **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Notifications for Xamarin applications and crashes ### 21. Best Way to Distribute Application for testing **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Marlon S. | Mobile Test Engineer, Telecommunications, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 02, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Ease of use, notifications of new builds, very easy to give builds to specific teams. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** If there was a way to perhaps leave comments from different teams on the actual builds, that would be helpful. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** N/a **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Hockeyapp to distribute builds that are still being tested or builds with fixes that we plan to release. Hockeyapp allows for consistent and gradual fixes to bugs and and other issues by allowing QA to review builds as developers finish them. ### 22. Code push **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 19, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** it completely amazing tool for pushing and pulling of code **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** nothing as such dislike it , some time its dependency to support only specific version of Ios and Android is concern **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** deployment and centralizing the code ### 23. Review of Visual Studio App Center **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Neel S. | MS Associate System Analyts, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 07, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** * Easy to use SDK and easy to integrate. * Build apps more faster and frequently. * Easy to integrate. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The Price is to high and some time getting issue in connectivity. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Is a good source for be develop in Xamarin **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** building the apps for the startup company. it helps a lot. ### 24. Best Code Editor **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 29, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** the ability to make edits and push them live to users devices, eg getting an ios or android update and having them choose when they want to update, immediate, on next restart, or next resume. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** there isn't anything to dislike here, this is simple straight forward coding and editing. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** easy to use and learn, keep going and dont give up. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** faster software and apps update, multiple users and coders can edit and make real time changes before pushing out updates. ### 25. Full of tools **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John C. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** It has all the tools possible needed, and is very easy to use. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** It is unforgiving, and depending on what packages you download, it can be very large and memory intensive. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are working on creating private programs for our company, and debugging. ### 26. We are building website for the company.Its a startup company we are working using the .net **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shruti A. | Intern , Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** ease of use and cross-platform.Very flexible and easy to understand **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** quite confusing. It becomes the bit complicated at times when we work on several things. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** building the website for the startup company. it helps a lot. ### 27. I use HockeyApp to distribute iPhone apps **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian F. | iOS developer (Swift / Objective-C) • VR (Unity / C#), Marketing and Advertising, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 26, 2017 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** I like that it is easier to use and faster to deliver builds than Apple's TestFlight. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** I wish it was easier to set up the first build of an app via the Mac App versus uploading an IPA via the browser. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** The problem Hockey app solves is sending test builds to clients ### 28. The best mobile development platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jorge G. | It Manager, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 04, 2018 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** You can easy create a full windows, Mac and mobile apps with the Visual Studio and Xamarin **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Some source are not mature but is enough stable **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Is a good source for be develop in Xamarin **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** We develop Mobile Apps for out customer like RicaSula, SmartCommunity, ElBuenPastor ### 29. Easy to use app distribution for QA **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2017 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** HockeyApp allows us to test our apps quickly across multiple mobile devices and also allows us to keep track of the different build versions throughout the development process. Mostly painless to use and fits all our needs. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The account system is a bit hit or miss and can be a big hassle to get all our developers on. Its interface for mobile uses a web browser which can be difficult to use. Also the mobile and desktop interfaces are not the same leading to some confusion when switching. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** If you are developing for iOS and Android with a need to deploy and test to multiple devices then HockeyApp is the easiest way to distribute your app to multiple devices for ease of use for QA and for engineers. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** HockeyApp allows us to distribute to iOS and Android for testing unlike TestFlight for instance. Having a central location for all of our official builds allows us to track down problems faster with more consistency. In addition, having a distribution system that QA can use allows engineering time to be freed up for other things. ### 30. Good for any size team **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 26, 2017 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Distribution is really simple (once it's initially set up) and it's nice that you can create different distribution teams to speed up the process later **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Building the different distribution teams can be a bit of a hassle but overall not a big deal **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Definitely recommend giving it a try if you are developing for Android and iOS. If just doing iOS, TestFlight could probably suffice **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps our company test releases and observe crash reports ### 31. The key to success is to give your users what they are looking for... **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Xamarin Insights is an essential part of the designs. Since I've been building apps for more than 10 years, I always knew if I had the right tools, tools that shows me what's inside the mind of my users, what are I'm missing in my UI/UX, I will have a strong (less buggy) and more friendly (easy to use) app. Vital. This NuGet package works well for most of my releases, including simple Xamarin Forms apps. The code, in pure C#, is very simple to write. The SDK is light weight, though flexible. Of course, one of the most important aspects is the Dashboard, which shows useful information. Nevertheless, in real life, and from my experience, you'll have to code and use the API in order to get the most of this great "addon" to your Xamarin app. No matter the size (that's important to know). It's backed up by Microsoft, so it won't just go away, it's solid. You'll just need to be stay informed and updated about changes in both Xamarin and Android SDKs. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The speed could be a bit faster, it isn't essential for most apps, but it may certainly be for a game or a chat system. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Just stay updated, even if you're not told so. Many of the problems you'll find are simply a matter of SDK updates. Ask in forums and read related blogs. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** I know my users/clients much better now. ### 32. Beta Testing for All Mobile Platforms in One Place **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joseph T. | Front-End Developer, Financial Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** - Centralized repository for all alpha/beta version of your desktop and mobile platforms (Android, iOS, Mac OS, Windows Phone, Windows) - Ability to distribute and control app access by device, email, or app - Provide shareable links to specific apps - Customer support via email is relatively quick and responsive - Provide in-app support for your own apps or via email **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** - Difficult team administration when it comes to visiblity (It's easy to set up but very difficult to test) - User interface for app management is not as direct as it could be (too many clicks to get to a specific setting per app, for example) - Mobile app version of hockeyapp is not as full-fledged as full desktop site **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** - To distribute our apps across several platforms from a centralized repository, Hockeyapp provides the best and most cost-effective solution. - Hockeyapp serves as a nice format to archive older test apps and provide an easy to see history of previously distributed apps. ### 33. Essential for app development and testing **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Prachi G. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The assortment of testing methodologies. Fast and precise accident reporting and simple application mix. Everyone works distinctively so it's decent to discover individuals from everywhere throughout the world that discover diverse bugs and issues that we would regularly not search for. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Although there were unquestionably basic bugs that were revealed, a great deal of the bugs appeared to be unessential and it was dreary filtering through all of them. The application does not consequently gather UDID. That is not out of the ordinary, in any case, since it's essentially they are simply reflecting the showcase of the gadget over the web. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have enhanced the reaction time for criticism to our clients. We can give our remote clients access to a bigger range of gadgets than if they needed to utilize their own particular units. While we can test the application utilizing a recreated gadget on a PC, we should have been certain it worked effectively on the genuine equipment also. ### 34. Hockey is a great way to distribute iOS and Android apps **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Cameron B. | Project manager, designer and co-founder, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Easy way to manage and distribute test application builds for your iPhone, iPad, or Android apps. Just compile your builds, upload, and you're good to go. Their SDK is a simple integration as well, returning back valuable crash reports that are much better than Apple or Google's built in crash reports. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** I wish that the automatic notifications to users that "A new version/update is available" was not a default on sort of thing. It'd be awesome to have the option to instruct users to update, but for every build, it gets to be a pain. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** I really like HockeyApp, but recently are trying BuddyBuild, which is a new product with much promise. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's much easier to distribute our test builds out into the public. Manual adhoc builds, especially for iOS, were a bit pain before products like Hockey. ### 35. Simple and intuitive app analytics tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kasim T. | Senior UI Engineer, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 08, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Simple and straightforward interface; easy to use SDK. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Features no longer updated after acquired by HockeyApp. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** There are lot of analytics tool out there, but Xamarin Insights provides just enough of what you need. No embellish and no hassle. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easily to track issues happened on client side including users' environment info details. ### 36. Easy cross-platform App Distribution with HockeyApp **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Keven B. | Freelance Senior iOS Developer & Consultant, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The HockeyApp SDK is easy to implement for both the Android and the iOS platform. It helps to easily distribute the app to you clients once the setup is done. We liked and used the crash reporting of the framework and welcomed the analytics. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The setup for the client is still not optimised. The user first has to register for the platform and then register their device. After the app is installed he always has to got into the settings and accept to use the app. I know this is because of the apple eco system but it still has to be mentioned. On Android the setup is a little bit easier. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Definitely the best tool if you want to distribute your app over sever platforms. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Cross-Platform App Distribution ### 37. Some comparisons of Xamarin Insights **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 06, 2017 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Xamarin official, unified account system,and quick nuget install **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** There are too many problems, such as the registration, the transition between the current MSDN subscription and the old authorized account, localization,Application call speed **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Online collection of Alpha/Beta App Bug, online information, etc. ### 38. Easiest mobile app testing platform **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ajit P. | Software Developer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** HockeyApp is an excellent app testing platform and covers everything from live crash reports to distribution to analytics. Basically, an all-in-one tool for beta testing. Unlike other tools like Testflight, there is no need for a review (approval) process before deployment. One of the best features has to be how quickly you can upload new versions while maintaining access to old versions. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** There isn't much here to dislike, except for that fact that you are limited to 100 beta testers. Frankly, you won't exceed that limit anyways during regular development cycle. Also, a minor inconvenience is that you must register devices with HockeyApp first. The app does not automatically collect UDID. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** If you are not testing your apps across platforms, then you risk losing key insights into your app's behaviour. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** We perform many beta tests with a sizeable group of testers before any release. We use HockeyApp primarily for analytics. A big advantage is that its cross-platform, so we can test apps across Android, iOS and Mac and compare OS-dependent user behaviour. We use it to get an overview of the overall test coverage, performance of each build and get usage stats such as performance per type of device and measures of where, what and how long the tester spent time in different sections of the app. ### 39. Best tool for analytics i have ever used **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Emil N. | .NET Developer, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 14, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** This is the best tool for providing analytics and event tracking for the apps you are developing. It is the best product i have used so far. It is really easy to know what caused your app crash and what makes it slow... I like that it is not hard to use and provides tons of data about your app performance. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The price. I know I shouldn't expect good products to be free but i still believe it is kinda expensive. It was fine while I was using the beta and it was free. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Xamarin Insights is not easy. The UI needs improvement, also the registration took me a couple of days because there was some problem with my API key... But once you get used to it you will love it! **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am developing mobile applications. Xamarin Insights helps me know what i can improve on my apps and how to get better performance. ### 40. Easy to use crash reporting tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Arjun K. | Senior Software Engineer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 05, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** It's very easy to use, the get started process is very straight forward, you install the SDK and just integrate the features you want to. Crash reporting is very accurate and give your a detailed report of the crash with stack trace, device information, app version and details of the occurrence of the errors. With all the data it is very easy to debug the issues. Another great feature is the app feedback submission, that allows your app users to submit suggestions, feedback or report bugs and you can follow up to it. Collaboration with multiple users, support for webhooks and integrations with several 3rd party services is also a big plus! **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The feedback page has very poor UI, and its doesn't go well with a beautifully designed app. Lack of notification support is another issue. If we send a reply to the feedback a person has submitted, unless he opens the feedback page again inside the app, he will not see our reply. The web interface is very confusing at times, the public feedback page is very confusing and almost useless. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Except for the in-app or public feedback page, Hockey app is a great tool and gets the things done without a big footprint on our app. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** With HockeyApp my main goal is to track errors, debug and fix them as soon as possible and in the process I'm providing a good error free experience to my users. ### 41. An invaluable beta platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** We used HockeyApp extensively to distribute beta builds of our app on both iOS and Android. Installing beta apps on mobile has always seemed to be a bit of a dark art and Hockey has consistently been more reliable than any of the competing solutions we've used. HockeyApp has been one of those services that we simply couldn't imagine working without. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** HockeyApp is at an automatic disadvantage when compared to first-party solutions, as it takes some work to integrate it into your workflow. There's no getting around that. Without question, however, we've found it's absolutely worth the work to get everything up and running. The results have been worthwhile. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** I think it's worth investing some time to really kick the tires on HockeyApp. Mobile app testing platforms are complex and to really understand the value of something it's (unfortunately) going to require a time commitment. In the end we found that to be worthwhile. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** When we started using HockeyApp, the landscape for beta testing a mobile app was very different than it is now – there was nearly nothing out there. We'd tried a few of the competing solutions and hadn't had a ton of luck with them. Even though there's a lot of stuff out there (including first-party solutions now), our experience has been that nothing provides the reliability and ease of use that HockeyApp provides, and that's why we've stuck with it. ### 42. A nice first-touch with a Crash Reporting App **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Duarte A. | UI Developer Trainee, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** When using HockeyApp associated to a beta version of an app, I like the simplicity and ease of use of the user interface. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Sometimes, the menus to placement are not the best. The obligation of adding several certificates on my iPhone made me question if I should or shouldn't install the reporting app. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** I've used this app as a way to give feedback of a beta app for a company developing a mass-used app. The way of providing feedback was very good, and the developers really read feedback like mine. ### 43. Satisfied **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rohit Y. | CTO, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 09, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Like the ability to integrate with mobile and web. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** UI and dashboard could be better. Some analytics are hard to understand **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data analytics ### 44. One of the best testing platform **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 07, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** It's fast and flexible, you can upload the app and use it immediately. I like HockeyApp because it works on Mac, iOS and Android, I have access to the crashes and to the feedback list. The iOS SDK is easy to integrate. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Limited testers slot and you need to configure each beta tester manually. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** It's the right platform if you need to distribute your app immediately. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Beta test distribution and crash reporting. ### 45. Mobile app testing for IOS and Android **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Esteban R. | sSr Web Developer, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 28, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Easy of use, Easy off distribute, Error Logging. This is an all-in-one tool for distributing an app and analyze the crashes, notifications and exceptions on in, its ease of use is one of the key attributes. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** No too much to dislike, it does what it says. Though some of the UI is clunky some times, the user management could be optimized. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Its an amazing test tool, by far more superior to Test Flight, if you're an Test Flight user you should give it a try, you will not regret it. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Beta testing for a range of group of users before the final release. You can check errors and fix them before the final release, its multiplatform that way you can test apps for Android, IOS, Mac and windows, you can filter reports depending the OS and the use of the same. ### 46. Very nice but very expensive solution **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Newspapers | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** It has a very intuitive, consistent UI. It was still in Beta when I was using it, but it looked fantastic. Hardly the most important thing for an analytics platform but it made using it a pleasant experience. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** The price. It was still in Beta so we were using it for free on some of our newer apps, but some of the numbers that were talked about were huge. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Have a look into pricing before you spend too much time playing with integrations. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Analytics for Xamarin apps. Unsurprisingly the integration with Xamarin apps was great, and it gave great information about user journeys. ### 47. Hockeyapp **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joe C. | Network Engineer, Telecommunications, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 27, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** This is a really great tool to test apps. It's a great place to invent and create great apps for our customers **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Not much that I dislike at the moment. All positives **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** It's a great tool to test and create new apps to help better customer experience **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Help to create and improve apps to serve our customers ### 48. HockeyApp is good for company **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Антон . | Monster iOS Developer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 07, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Ad-Hoc distribution and auto-update feature **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** Price is too high for personal use, UI is really old **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Distributing builds to testers ### 49. hockeyApp from API side **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sebastian C. | Senior Software Engineer, Marketing and Advertising, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** the easy way to share versions from de ios/android developers to the quality assurance analysts. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** the way to firm the app is complicated when you are not the app developer itself. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** quickly development process ### 50. Great Beta Testing Platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Building Materials | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 28, 2016 **What do you like best about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** When using this app, the ability to download current versions of the app you are beta testing is simple, the ability to report bugs is seamless, and the app is overall quite easy to use. **What do you dislike about Microsoft Visual Studio App Center?** There isn't a lot to say bad about this app. The name is a bit confusing, I often forget that is the app I need to look for when attempting to download a new app for testing. But probably not much can be done about that name. **Recommendations to others considering Microsoft Visual Studio App Center:** Seems like a great platform in the short time we have been using it. It was picked by our management and it seems like the finally made the correct choice. Great choice for mobile app testing. **What problems is Microsoft Visual Studio App Center solving and how is that benefiting you?** Needed a good platform to do best testing, and this one seemed like the best option available. ## Microsoft Visual Studio App Center Discussions - [What is Visual App?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-visual-app) - [What is App Center used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-app-center-used-for) - [Is Visual Studio App Center Free?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-visual-studio-app-center-free) - [What is Visual Studio App Center?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-visual-studio-app-center) - [View Microsoft Visual Studio App Center pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-microsoft-visual-studio-app-center/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-13+12%3A36%3A10+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=ed856850-d46f-4257-9e6f-945a4f36ae6e&secure%5Btoken%5D=2e0fd1a60f69684231fc71f728cdae84124b56c936935f2e78501b1f3acb15a2&format=llm_user) ## Microsoft Visual Studio App Center Features **Agentic AI - Mobile Development Platforms** - Adaptive Learning - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance ## Top Microsoft Visual Studio App Center Alternatives - [Firebase](https://www.g2.com/products/firebase/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (288 reviews) - [Xcode](https://www.g2.com/products/xcode/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (993 reviews) - [ServiceNow App Engine](https://www.g2.com/products/servicenow-app-engine/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (917 reviews)