The retirement of Visual Studio App Center has forced mobile development teams to rethink their pipelines. What was once a centralized hub for building, testing, and distributing mobile apps has disappeared—leaving organizations to rebuild critical parts of their mobile DevOps strategy from scratch.
But this disruption also presents an opportunity: to move beyond the constraints of legacy tooling and embrace a more modern, modular, and scalable approach.
That’s where Applivery and BrowserStack come in.
The challenge post-App Center
Many teams depended on App Center for:
- Basic CI/CD automation.
- Beta app distribution.
- Crash and analytics reporting.
- Manual and automated device testing.
Its sunset didn’t just break workflows—it revealed how fragile and centralized mobile pipelines had become. Organizations are now asking:
- How do we distribute internal apps securely?
- What’s the alternative to real device testing at scale?
- Can we rebuild our DevOps flow without sacrificing speed or control?
A modern answer: Applivery + BrowserStack
Rather than looking for a 1:1 App Center replacement, the better path is to adopt best-in-class tools that excel at what they do—and integrate them.
Applivery helps organizations:
- Securely distribute apps across internal and external teams.
- Manage devices, app versions, and user permissions.
- Maintain control and compliance at scale.
BrowserStack enables:
- Testing on 20,000+ real Android and iOS device/OS combinations.
- Interactive debugging and device logs.
- A cloud-first approach to QA without physical lab maintenance.
Combined, they restore—and enhance—the testing and distribution workflows lost with App Center’s sunset.
Not just a replacement—an upgrade
Here’s what makes this more than a workaround:
- Modular by design: swap or scale components without lock-in.
- Security-first: Applivery offers enterprise-grade identity, access, and audit control.
- Real device fidelity: BrowserStack eliminates simulator gaps, revealing edge-case bugs before users do.
- Direct integration: push builds from Applivery into BrowserStack’s App Live in seconds.
This isn’t a like-for-like replacement. It’s a future-proof architecture for mobile teams.
The strategic shift
The end of App Center is a turning point. It’s a reminder that single-vendor platforms can disappear—and take your workflows with them. The Applivery + BrowserStack integration signals a shift toward:
- Composable DevOps.
- Enterprise resilience.
- Developer autonomy.
Ready to Transition?
If your team is still patching together a post-App Center solution, we’d love to help you rethink it holistically.
📩 Reach out to us or check our documentation to explore how Applivery and BrowserStack can power your next-generation mobile delivery pipeline.
