Has anyone distributed private customs apps to businesses? If so, do you know of a good resource to set up an Adhoc account with iPhone (Step by step guide) and how does one go about distributing the private app for Android users?

To distribute an app privately to Android users, all you need to do is create and sign your apk as normal, but then either email it to people, or stage it somewhere they can download it from. There are no other requirements, and it doesn't have to go through Google. For Apple Ad hoc distribution, you need to sign it using the ad hoc distribution certificate. I think you can then just email the ipa file to people, they can drag it into iTunes, and then install it. But keep in mind that you can only have 100 ad hoc installations. I've never done it, so hopefully somebody can chime in with more details. Mark

testflightapp.com makes sending iphone apps for private distribution pretty easy. The challenge with ad hoc distribution is you need to capture people's iPhone or iPad IDs and add them to your ad hoc profile BEFORE you send them the app. Easiest way is to have them register at testflightapp.com (you send them a registration link). Then the info you need is automatically captured and you can upload it to your developer account. As Mark said, there is a 100 device limit, so you need to be careful if you're doing this for multiple clients/entities you can run into that limit pretty quickly.

Thank you, Mark. I wonder if it's 100 ad hoc installs per app? If so this would work fine for now. Perhaps an "enterprise" account with iTunes would suffice, later. As for the Android process, I don't understand what you mean. Do I just not "publish" the app in Google and I can get a URL to email to people in the Google Play Development platform? In other words, act as though I'm going to publish the App but hold short and grab a URL within Google Play Development Dashboard? RWPLLC

Totally forgot about testflightapp.com, @MGoBlue! Excellent suggestion. For Android, you don't need to "publish" the app at all. That doesn't do anything with respect to whether the app works or not. As long as it's an APK file signed with your release keystore, you can literally email the app, or post it on a webpage, entirely bypassing Google Play. There is no requirement to use Google Play, or put it in your developer dashboard, in order to distribute it. Make a bit more sense? Mark

It's 100 per developer account. Even if you delete the user from your dev account, it still counts against you until the end of the year. Consider making the company buy its own developer account for this.

With the Apple Enterprise $299 account, you can distribute "In-House" iOS apps without hitting that limit of 100 devices. If you want your own web server for distribution on a Company's private network, use self-hosted HockeyKit or the HockeyApp.net service. http://hockeykit.net/ and http://hockeyapp.net/ Similar discussion was earlier at http://www.buzztouch.com/forum/thread.php?tid=F421AFEF68AFA1907623E54&currentPage=42 --Niraj