I've been curious about how other developers stay on top of what happens in App Store Connect after pushing a build. So I asked around.
The short answer: most people don't have a great setup for this.
What I heard over and over:
- Almost nobody uses App Store Connect for crash reports. Everyone uses Firebase Crashlytics, Sentry, or Datadog instead.
- Same for subscriptions. RevenueCat, Apphud, or custom dashboards built on top of App Store Server Notifications V2.
- For build processing, review status, and TestFlight feedback, the most common answer was "I check ASC manually" or "the ASC app on my phone."
- A few people mentioned Apple's webhooks but said it felt like too much plumbing to set up for a solo dev or small team.
- One person built their own revenue dashboard using Claude and Firestore. Another was building a native iOS companion app using the ASC API. Both still check ASC manually for review status.
The gap that keeps coming up:
Third party tools have solved crashes and subscriptions. But build review status, TestFlight external review, and beta tester feedback are still stuck in "log into ASC and refresh" mode. The ASC app sends push notifications for some of this, but opinions on its reliability vary.
Apple added webhooks to App Store Connect relatively recently, which could solve this. But the setup involves creating endpoints, validating payloads, handling retries, and most solo devs and small teams haven't bothered.
Curious to hear from others:
- Is this your experience too or does your team have something better set up?
- Has anyone actually wired up the ASC webhooks? Was it worth it?
- Is there a tool I'm missing that handles this well?
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