🇧🇷 Versão em português nos comentários (vou postar o link assim que sair).
The wall
Personal Google Play accounts created after Nov 13, 2023 cannot publish to production until they run a closed test with a minimum of 12 testers for 14 consecutive days.
Think about what that means if you're solo:
- You built an app. Alone.
- Now Google requires you to know 12 actual humans who will install it, keep it installed, and use it, for two weeks straight.
- Your mom counts as 1. Your secondary email doesn't count. Your dog doesn't have a Google account.
Every solo dev without a network stalls here. Paid services emerged charging $15–25 per app to supply the testers. Swap groups on Reddit/Telegram exist... and most die by day 3 because nobody tracks anything and everyone starts on a different day.
I'm building the alternative: Dozena — a free, open-source (AGPL-3.0) tool that runs synchronized rounds:
- ~13 devs enter the same round, in the same 14-day window
- 48h setup: join the round's Google Group and opt in to everyone's apps
- 14 days: open the other 12 apps on at least 2 distinct days, with check-ins
- 3 short written feedbacks per person; nobody tests their own app
- Public reliability ranking — disappear and you lose priority forever
Why synchronized? Because when your own production access depends on the same window as the 12 people testing your app, show-up is not altruism — it's self-interest. The incentive problem solves itself.
What I refuse to do
- No APK hosting (everything through official Play closed-test links)
- No "guaranteed approval" claims — Google doesn't offer one to anyone; paid services that say that are selling you a refund policy
- No selling testers. Ever. Peers test peers.
- No Gmail harvesting: each dev uses their own Google Group
The honest part: it starts as a public bet
Instead of "this will work!", I wrote a kill-switch into the repo's decisions log:
If the waitlist gets fewer than 15 real signups in 10 days, I pivot. Publicly.
Currently: 3 real signups in the first 7 hours, from a single Reddit post, with the funnel measured by my own cookie-less tracking (page_view → CTA click → signup):
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