Developer Accounts and Entity Types

Once an Apple ID has been created, your client will have to create an Apple Developer Account.  The reason for this is that apps have to be published to a developer account owned by the business.  

Enrolment with Apple is $99 or £79 and renews annually.

There are 3 types of developer account:

  • Organisation Apps are made available on the App Store under the organisation's legal entity name. Companies and educational institutions must provide a D-U-N-S Number (available for free) registered to their legal entity during the enrolment process.
  • Individuals or sole proprietors/single person businesses. Apps are made available on the App Store under the developer's personal name.
  • Non-profit organisations, accredited educational institutions, and government entities. Membership is now available at no cost for eligible organisations. 

The majority of developer account types that are publishing apps are Organisations and Individual Developer Accounts. This guide will therefore exclusively focus on these account types.  You can read more here about developer accounts here:

https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/

Publishing apps to Developer Accounts

To get apps approved in the App Store, Apple wants to know that they are dealing with the business directly. This does not stop you, the licensee, in creating and building the app for the business. Apple simply wants businesses to have reviewed the App Store documentation, agreements, and take a more active role in the app publishing process.

For this reason, it becomes a lot easier to publish apps to an Organisation account for 3 reasons:

  • Apple can verify a business’s legal identity via a Dunn and Bradstreet D-U-N-S Number. I will cover D-U-N-S Numbers in the next article. In summary, a D-U-N-S Number is used around the world to identify and access information on businesses.
  • Apple has emphasized that the App Name and Developer Name need to match in order for the application to be approved. This can only be achieved with an organisation account.
  • Eazi-Apps Publishing team can only be added as an admin to an Organisation Developer Account, therefore, bypassing Two Factor Authentication (2FA). 2FA is covered further on in this course.

If an app is published by an individual account, it becomes more difficult for Apple to validate the identity of the business owner. This, in turn, makes it more difficult to get apps approved. Although there are ways to overcome this, we strongly advise that the business sets up an Organisation Developer Account (if possible) to avoid issues further down the line.