What's your take on publishing your apps to the Microsoft Store targeting Win 10/11 users?
I've been doing indie hacking for years now, but recently I started to take it more seriously. There's a long journey ahead of me, but here's my quick story.
A few months ago I stumbled upon an idea and I've also started to implement an app for it. My first attempt was a Chrome extension, however I chose the wrong platform for my app so I decided to go with the good old desktop application approach (my target audience are using desktops anyway, that's something I know for sure, they are accountants).
It's been a while when I published something to the Windows ecosystem (back in the Win XP / 7 days), and man things have changed!
My first attempt was to build a POC app using Electron, just to see how the installer mumbo jumbo works these days and as I can see so far you either have your installer signed and you're in business or you don't and it's practically impossible to run your code/installers on modern OSes like Win 10/11.
I was doing some research and as I can see there are four options here:
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not signing the code and pretty much nobody is going to install your tool
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sign it with an OV certificate which is kind of cheap but still not trusted for a long time so end users will receive warnings from Windows Defender
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sign it with a rather expensive EV cert and this is kind of the price to do business on the Windows desktop
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publish the app to the Microsoft Store and after a review they will sign it for you.
Honestly, I've been experimenting with the last one, just built a super small and kind of dumb app (a counter, not much really) just to test the waters and see what Microsoft is thinking about it. Well, I got rejected, no biggie, I kind of expected it. My app doesn't have lasting value and was low quality. Meh, whatevs, at least now I know the publishing process.
The question goes to those who have successfully published their apps on the Windows Store: how difficult was it to publish your indie app, what are the gotchas?
Do you see any significant drop/increase in installs? I am thikning about publishing my app there to save a fortune on the certs and I'm also planning to build a landing page where the "Download" CTA button will take the user straight to the Store listing or better yet, there's an option to open the Store right away - of course this will only work on Windows.
Looking forward to hear you input guys.
Do they use the Windows store? Would they be comfortable buying from it? That's how I'd make the decision pro/con the Windows store. Talk to your users.
As for certificates / code signing, I'd recommend to start without it and purchase a certificate after you have some traction.
I had a desktop app with 100+ users and nobody ever complained about the "Windows protected your PC" popup. I just put up a notice on the download page that they might get the warning "because it is a new app and therefore Windows might not trust it yet".
Yup, I believe this is what it used to be back in the day, that you were presented with a popup that said the publisher is unknown. But what I've seen so far Windows Defender is just blocking the app install entirely on Win 10.
If I can navigate my Windows users straight to the Store that should do it I believe, but I am 100% sure most of my target audience never heard about it, because they know that installing software on Windows takes a setup.exe and not "some store".
There are two things I like about publishing to the Store though, one is the free code signing (the dev account did cost a bit but that's just peanuts) and the other one is the possibility of easy updates. Will see.
Anyway, if someone else has an opinion keep em coming! :)