As much as Apple celebrated when their millionth app became available on the app store, they are now realizing a large percentage of their store is full of duplicate and spam apps, along with many apps that haven’t been downloaded in years. Due to this, Apple is updating their policy on uniqueness to cut down on such apps and clean up their app store. Although their motivation for doing such a change is good, it does affect the event app industry. Within this new policy, Apple does not consider brands, event names, or content as unique if it has the same background code. This means that event apps published under their event name are not considered unique by Apple. Instead, Apple is requiring every app submitted to their store to have unique code. If you are interested in finding out more, you can read our more detailed take on Apple’s policy here.
Although we understand and acknowledge why Apple is doing this, that does not mean we necessarily like it. CrowdCompass by Cvent has spoken to Apple several times to fully understand this new policy and to help both sides understand the impact of this change for our industry. Due to the large presence of CrowdCompass event apps on the app store, we were one of the first companies to be approached by Apple, giving us time to understand this change and react in what we believe is the best possible way.
Going forward, there will be several options available for publishing your event app.
If we’re being 100% honest, we initially were not very happy – we believed this meant event tech companies could no longer offer all our customers the experience we wanted to give them. That said, we think our go forward solution under the new app rules is actually more robust than before. Why, you ask? Because going forward, there will be several options available for publishing your event app.
Option 1: The majority of events will be in one easy-to-find location – our recently released container app, the AttendeeHub. With the AttendeeHub, nothing has changed regarding the build and customization process, your app will just live in a new place where it can be hidden from others and protected with a password. The AttendeeHub still offers the same content and engagement features you would expect while creating a single app experience for all the events users attend. Even when an attendee leaves and later returns to the app, they come back into the same event without having to search for it again. Interested in scoping out the new AttendeeHub? It is available and ready for download, check it out for yourself!
Options 2&3: There are two other publishing options aside from the AttendeeHub that will allow you to still have a stand-alone app. These options will require a bit more effort on your end, which is why we are here to help you every step of the way. If you're still interested in having a stand-alone app and would like to find out more about either of these two options, please contact us and we can go into more depth and answer all your questions.
As an event organizer, we know what matters to you most - ease of use from attendee’s standpoint, an ample mix of accessible content and engagement features, security, scalability, innovation, and mobile expertise. CrowdCompass by Cvent respects your values and wants to provide you with an app publishing experience a step above the rest. We recognize that there has been a lot of talk within the event app industry about this policy change and that the interpretations of this change vary greatly depending on who you talk to. We want you to know we are in constant communication with Apple about this new policy and are embracing the change in order to deliver the best experience possible to both organizers and attendees.
Written by David Quattrone
David Quattrone has been with Cvent since the company's founding, bringing a wealth of expertise in designing and developing large-scale Internet applications. David designed and supervised the development of Cvent's original beta product as well as all of Cvent's subsequent product releases, upgrades and redesigns.
