Some approaches to distribute an iPhone application to run in a specific location

Question

My boss wants to distribute the application for a specific client, whose number of employees is around 500. The application uses webservices and the UDID of the device to restrict the other users from accessing the software. We are not a big company that can register for the enterprise program, and especially my boss does not want other users to download the software because it may lead to overload to the server, even though we use the udid to restrict the user but the first webservice request is still needed to verify if the iPhone/iPod is granted to use the system.

Putting the software into the appstore with free price leads to many unwanted things: writing comments to blame the software that he can not use it (in fact, other users do not suppose to use it, only the client of the company is the one that has the right to use the software) or even we can think of the software be confidential and should not be exposed to other users.

Putting the software into the appstore with the maximum price is not a good approach because then our client has to pay money to download the program. It's not necessary.

Distributing the software in the ad-hoc mode requires us to reinstall the software every time the provisioning profile is expired, even worse, the installation limit is only 100 devices.

So, what are the approaches to distribute this kind of software? Any thoughts on this topic?

Answer 1

Suck it up and pay for the enterprise developer program. Its only $299/year. Or look into jailbreaking every employee's device and installing your app through alternate means.

Answer 2

This is our solution and it works on the appstore:
- Distribute your app as usual on the appstore
- In your app, limit it to a certain devices by letting it query a service on your own managed server.
- Authentication is necessary if you want to differentiate between users.