Hi all, I’ve been working on a music recommendation service that pairs with navidrome (think of it as a personal pandora).

I’ve also built an iOS app for it that I am trying to beta test. Even to use TestFlight, you still need to go through Apple’s approval process.

The reviewers are requiring access to a working server to test it, demo videos aren’t being accepted.

I really don’t want to have to set up an external host, as 1) authentication is a bit limited 2) you need a large music collection and I’m not comfortable opening that up on the internet.

Has anyone dealt with something similar?

  • BombOmOmEnglish
    4•17 days ago

    For the money angle, something like a Digital Ocean droplet would be appropriate here. They are $4/mo and you don’t even need to run the thing all the time, just when you need an app version approved.

    • Elvith Ma'forEnglish
      4•16 days ago

      Oracle Cloud offers 4 ARM cores, 24GB RAM and 200GB storage in their free tier (IIRC you can even divide that into 4 separate VMs). Very useful for cheap testing, if your code/server supports ARM.

      Even then, a small underpowered x64 VM for testing purposes is often free on all hyperscalers. Not the fastest server, but depending on the use case?