We build and operate a management platform for fitness studios — bookings, memberships, payments, class schedules. We're planning the mobile side now and want to get the App Store model right before we build the release pipeline rather than after.
What we have
One codebase, which we write and maintain. It ships in two configurations from the same source:
- A marketplace app — every studio on the platform, searchable, with a picker. One binary, one listing, our brand.
- A per-studio configuration of that same app — identical functionality, with that studio's name, logo and colour palette, pointed at that studio's data.
Studios ask for the second because they want their own presence in the store. Each one is a real business: real class schedules, real bookings, real payments taken by that studio, real members using it weekly.
What I'm unsure about
4.2.6 Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app's content.
I can read that two ways and I'd rather ask than guess:
- (a) It targets app-builder products, where the customer assembles an app themselves from a toolkit and the vendor's product is app generation. We aren't that — customers never touch a build tool, and the app is our own software that we develop, update and support.
- (b) It applies to any per-client build regardless, in which case each studio needs its own Apple Developer account and submits with us added to their team.
Questions
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Which reading is right for a SaaS product where the vendor writes and operates the app, and the client supplies business data rather than an app?
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If per-studio builds can be published under our own developer account, is there anything specific you'd want to see in the submission or the App Review notes to make that clear?
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Separately from 4.2.6 — what makes per-client apps sufficiently distinct under 4.3? This is the part I'm least sure about, because it reads as a judgement about the pattern across many apps rather than about any one of them, and I'd rather design real differentiation in now than discover the line at app number fifty. Is "same functionality, different business, own branding, own data" enough, or is more expected?
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Does the aggregated / picker option in 4.2.6 change the answer if we ship it alongside? We're building the marketplace app regardless, so both would exist.
Happy to give more detail on the product. I'd rather build the right pipeline once than appeal a rejection later.
