App Center retired in 2025. Capawesome brings native builds, OTA live updates, and store publishing back in one modern platform.
More than 1,000 teams build with Capawesome
Why teams left behind by App Center move to Capawesome.
App Center retired in 2025. Capawesome ships new features every month, with a public roadmap and a support team that answers.
CodePush died with App Center. Capawesome Live Updates deliver RSA-signed bundles with rollouts, rollbacks, and deltas.
Configure builds from a single form — no YAML pipelines, no build agent to maintain. Attach a signing identity and ship.
iOS and Android both run on Apple Silicon M4 Pro. Typical builds finish in 1–3 minutes — 3–5× faster than legacy cloud CI.
Fixed monthly plans bundling builds, live updates, and publishing. No pay-as-you-go minutes, no MAU guesswork, no surprise overages.
Full CLI, REST API, official AI Agent skills, and an MCP server (coming soon). Plug Claude Code or Cursor straight into your pipeline.
See where Capawesome picks up what App Center left behind.
| Feature | Capawesome | Visual Studio App Center |
|---|---|---|
| Platform Status | ||
| Service status | Active | Retired (March 31, 2025) |
| New customer sign-ups | ||
| Future development | Active | None |
| Remaining services | All | Analytics & Diagnostics only, until March 31, 2027 |
| Pricing | ||
| Pricing model | Fixed monthly plans | Free + pay-as-you-go build minutes (pre-retirement) |
| Live Updates / OTA | ||
| Over-the-air updates | No — CodePush retired | |
| Gradual rollouts | Limited | |
| Automatic rollbacks | ||
| RSA-signed bundles | ||
| Delta updates | Yes (pre-retirement) | |
| Self-hosted bundles | ||
| Native Builds | ||
| iOS build hardware | Apple Silicon M4 Pro | Intel / older Apple Silicon (pre-retirement) |
| Android build hardware | Apple Silicon M4 Pro | Linux / Intel |
| Managed code signing | Yes (pre-retirement) | |
| Monorepo support | Limited | |
| Custom build scripts | Hooks at every stage | Limited |
| Latest Xcode availability | Days after release | Weeks–months (pre-retirement) |
| Developer Experience & AI | ||
| CLI | Yes (pre-retirement) | |
| Public REST API | Yes, with JSON output for automation | Yes (pre-retirement) |
| MCP server | Coming soon | |
| Official AI Agent skills | ||
| Distribution & Publishing | ||
| Internal OTA distribution | Yes (pre-retirement) | |
| TestFlight submission | ||
| Apple App Store submission | ||
| Google Play submission | ||
| Firebase App Distribution | ||
| Multiple destinations per app | ||
| Platform Support | ||
| Capacitor | ||
| Ionic | ||
| Cordova | Yes (pre-retirement) | |
| Native iOS / Android | Yes (pre-retirement) | |
| React Native / Xamarin / Unity | Yes (pre-retirement) | |
| Enterprise SDKs | ||
| Enterprise SDKs | ||
| Support & Focus | ||
| Migration support | Full, free, dedicated engineer | None (retired) |
| Community & docs | Active | Archived |
| EU hosting option | ||
All information has been researched to the best of our knowledge. While we strive for accuracy, this comparison might not be exhaustive or fully up-to-date. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at support@capawesome.io so we can update it. 💜
Our customers love Capawesome Cloud - find out why
Capawesome felt like it was designed with software engineers in mind. The documentation is excellent, the native library is robust, and the integration was minimally invasive and easy to keep well-factored and self-contained. We compared it directly with competitors, and Capawesome came out ahead on every point.
We mainly use over-the-air (OTA) updates to deliver critical bug fixes and updates when waiting on the App Store review process is not an option. After dealing with too much down-time and latency from Capgo, we made the decision to switch to Capawesome Cloud and we couldn't be happier. Capawesome is more stable and the package delivery speeds are significantly faster, which makes a big difference at scale. Capawesome's team is extremely responsive and professional - thanks for supplying such a great product guys.
Capawesome Cloud has helped us reduce our live update costs by more than 90% while offering more features than our previous provider. The integration took us less than a day and the support is top-notch. We now deliver daily live updates to more than 200,000 devices without any issues.
We had to use an Android and iOS SDK in our Capacitor app, for which no plugin existed. Capawesome was able to create a fully functional Capacitor plugin for us within a few days. The communication was excellent and the plugin works perfectly.
We switched from Capgo to Capawesome Cloud a few months ago and so far we haven't looked back. With Capawesome Cloud, we have significantly less downtime, updates are delivered faster, and support is literally the best we have ever experienced. The integration was straightforward, and the documentation is clear and concise. Big thanks to the Capawesome team for creating such an awesome platform!
We've been using Capawesome Cloud for CI/CD across our Capacitor apps and couldn't be happier. Migrating from Appflow was a breeze — we were up and running in no time, with way less friction than anticipated. The setup was straightforward and the workflow has been rock solid ever since. But what really sets Capawesome apart is the support. The team is incredibly responsive and genuinely helpful. It's great to get that level of personal attention from a SaaS tool. Highly recommend it to any Capacitor team looking to simplify their deployment pipeline.
Our Capacitor app had several unique requirements for running operations in the background. The Capawesome team was able to quickly understand our needs and crafted a customized Capacitor plugin that exceeded our expectations.
We tested and verified several solutions on the market to help us deliver OTA updates for our Apps quickly, securely and, most importantly, that were capable of scaling as we grew and demanded. Capawesome Cloud was our choice! The integration is super simple, we have automatic rollback and code signing to ensure the security of updates. The costs are transparent and honest, we are very happy with the platform and looking forward to integrating our future Apps!
Capawesome Cloud has been a game-changer for our team. We can now deploy updates to our Capacitor app without pushing to the app stores. This has saved us countless hours and allowed us to iterate faster. It's a must-have for any modern app development team.
Capawesome's live updates have been a game changer for our mobile recipe app at King Arthur Baking. We can quickly deliver improvements without app store delays, saving time and resources while keeping the experience fresh for our baking community.
A comprehensive guide to migrating your Capacitor app from Microsoft App Center to Capawesome Cloud, replacing CodePush with modern live update capabilities.
Compare Appflow, App Center, Bitrise, Codemagic, GitHub Actions, and Capawesome Cloud for Capacitor in 2026 — features, status, and the right fit.
Most CI/CD platforms are dropping Apache Cordova support. Capawesome Cloud keeps Cordova first-class with native builds, OTA updates, and store deploys.
Microsoft retired most of App Center — including Build, Distribute, Test, Push, and CodePush — on March 31, 2025. Analytics and Diagnostics continue until March 31, 2027, after which Microsoft recommends migrating to Azure Monitor.
CodePush was retired together with App Center on March 31, 2025. Capawesome Live Updates are a direct, production-ready replacement — with code-signed bundles, gradual rollouts, and per-device automatic rollback that protects users when an update misbehaves on their device.
App Center Distribute was retired on March 31, 2025, together with the rest of the platform. Capawesome Cloud Native Builds replace it with automatic build sharing: every successful iOS or Android build gets a public share link and QR code, so testers install directly — no store account and no tester invites. Read our guide on sharing mobile app builds with testers for the full workflow.
Most teams complete the migration in under a day — see our step-by-step migration guide. Drop in the Live Update SDK, upload your signing identities, and reconnect your git provider. We also ship agent skills that let Claude Code or Cursor port your config automatically, plus a free migration call with a Capawesome engineer.
Yes — AI-native from day one. Every Capawesome capability is available through a CLI, a JSON-output REST API, and official AI Agent skills for Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot. An MCP server is on the way. App Center was designed years before this workflow existed and was retired before it could catch up.
No. Capawesome is focused on Capacitor, Ionic, Cordova, and native iOS and Android apps. If you're on React Native, Xamarin, or Unity, App Center is not the framework fit we optimize for.
No. Capawesome focuses on build, OTA update delivery, and store publishing. Microsoft recommends Azure Monitor for teams still using App Center Analytics and Diagnostics until March 31, 2027.
Capawesome uses fixed monthly plans that bundle build minutes and Live Updates together — no build-minute overage fees, no per-MAU surprises, no pay-as-you-go billing. See our pricing page for current plans. App Center's free tier is no longer available since retirement.
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