🚀 Launching A New Service: Statused.com!
Statused notifies your team of app and build status updates directly on Slack. No more checking the App Store Connect website or waiting for emails.
How it all started
Circa 2020, I was leading an iOS project involving multiple teams, such as design, marketing, and a dedicated QA team. As a startup, the work was fast-paced, and we shipped often. However, on every app release, the following would happen:
I was asked whether the app was already live or not, by the project manager;
The QA team wasn't sure when the app was ready to be tested on TestFlight;
The marketing team didn't know precisely when a specific version of the app was released to the App Store so they could track the impact and effectiveness of onboarding and SEO changes in the app;
When the app got rejected for a silly reason, we would often only realize hours later. The weight was on the iOS team to identify the rejection and inform the rest of the team so we could fix it and resubmit the app.
These issues were not only frustrating but also time-consuming. I was spending a lot of time on Slack, answering questions and providing status updates.
If the entire team had visibility into the app's status, these issues would be solved. I started looking for a tool that would provide this visibility. Still, at that time, Apple was migrating their APIs from iTunes Connect to App Store Connect, so most of the tools I found were outdated or didn't provide the information I needed. So I decided to build my own tool during my free time.
The first version of this tool was released in August 2020, and it was a simple script that would poll the app's status from App Store Connect and post a message on Slack when the app or build status changed. It was a simple solution, but it solved our issues, and the team loved it. At that time, I ran the tool locally on my machine, so I kept it running 24/7 (yeah, tell me about it!).
I open-sourced the tool, which got some traction on GitHub. I was happy that other teams were also using and contributing to it, and this led me to invest more time on it.
One of the pain points was setting it up and, of course, running it locally on a machine 24/7 wasn't ideal. Hosting it on the cloud has costs, so I wanted to create a SaaS version of the tool. But I never really pursued it because it would require knowledge in areas I wasn't familiar with, such as web dev and cloud infrastructure…
Until recently!
How it's going
I took the leap and invested time and money to build a SaaS version of the tool. I'm still learning a lot, but I'm enjoying the process. I must admit that web dev is not my favorite thing, but I'm learning a lot and happy to see the tool come to life.
The tool supports registering multiple App Store Connect accounts, apps, and Slack channels.
You can check it out here: https://statused.com
What's next
If this tool is helping you and your team, consider subscribing to the SaaS version. This will help me cover the costs of hosting and development, and it will also help me prioritize new features and improvements.
If this service starts to get traction, I'll be able to invest more time in it, and I'll be able to add more features such as:
Support for more platforms such as Google Play;
Support for more notification channels such as Discord, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, and email;
Provide metrics and insights about your app releases.
But I also would love to hear your ideas! If you read this story and thought about something cool that would help you and your team, feel free to reach out to me at roger@statused.com 🤗
I hope this tool helps your team as much as it helped mine!
Oh, and we’re on Product Hunt too! Check out our launch there and consider upvoting and providing feedback if you’re keen!