been out of the loop; OTA updates are no longer free? is there a way to use expo without paying for the updates? just have to build new binary each time? or will expo block users from app once it exceeds 1000 MAU?

Hello everyone!

I’m very new to developing and am trying to wrap my head around the value add of EAS at small startup levels.

For example the free plan includes 30 builds. As dumb as this question is, what constitutes a build? I get I can run a command in the CLI to have it create a build, but wouldn’t I generally only be doing this when I have something ready to push to the app stores? Is there a step I’m missing, like testing and such, where creating a build every day of a month is more relevant?

What about EAS update? What is a monthly updated user? Is it an end user who updates from the iOS or Android store? Is it an OTA update? Is it a tester who looks at a test build? All of them?

What about edge bandwidth? Is this just as simple as a rate limiter on the size of the app (so I couldn’t upload a 5tb app and download it 29 times for free)? Is there a different use case?

I’m building something relatively small, even at scale probably, and am trying to determine if EAS is a good idea for streamlining this whole process or if I’ll just get hamstrung once I start scaling up (if I manage to) because I hit one of these walls.

Thank you!

Hello, my teammates and I are students building an app in the context of an end of computer engineering bachelor degree. We are not yet deployed to the stores and are looking to do so soon. Since we hope to eventually surpass 1000 and 3000 users, we were wondering if relying solely on builds for app/play store releases is a viable approach.

We deliver new features and fix bugs quite frequently at the moment, so our staging environment (TestFlight and Play console) would need to be deployed frequently. Hence, we would like to use updates for staging (when fingerprint doesn’t change).

As for production, we would like to release approx. once or twice per month, so we would like to always create new builds for the stores.

Is that a viable approach and so you guys have any suggestions?

Thanks

Just tired and implemented the expo OTA. It's great and I really enjoyed. This one reason is enough for me to prefer it over Flutter. 😅

Ok I'm picking up react native again after being away from the ecosystem for 4 yrs. Naturally that means I come from a era where expo was just not good. Problem is everyone recommended back then and now everyone is still doing that. Only difference is expo actually looks like its improved... a lot.

Ease of use, deployments, ease of maintenance and actually being able to integrate native code all sounds wonderful. But i am not understanding this pricing scheme. I'm paying for updates I push to my applications after 1000 users?

Bonus question is this like a firebase solution thats going to trap me into an ecosystem? Firebase is all fine and dandy until you have to migrate services.