how to do beta test iOS app without using TestFlight

Question

In iOS8, apple introduced a tool TestFlight for beta testing. I want to know before TestFlight tool how was beta testing was done ?

Thanks

Answer 1

TestFlight was originally a service developed by a company which Apple later bought. So TestFlight has been available for a long time, albeit as an external service, not included in iTunes Connect. Through the years there have been several other services offering beta testing capabilities, such as Fabric/Crashlytics or HockeyApp.

Answer 2

HockeyApp is a very good option..

and for my enterprise apps I was using diawi

Answer 3

You had to (and, I think, still can) register a device as beta testing device. This can be done in the developer portal and you need the device's UUID for this. From xcode you can export the app as .ipa file and specify it's for an Ad Hoc Installation . Then you can use iTunes to put the app on the testing device.

Much more cumbersome than using Testflight.