Blynk is awesome, it is very fast to create any project but sharing options are kinda limited, 199 USD/mo is pretty expensive if you do not plan to make money with the app. I imagine if there was an “ad widget” from Blynk maybe app publishing could be cheaper/free?
Unfortunately no. The main reason for “high” price 199 USD/mo is that app publishing involves some manual work that should be done. Current Apple/Google APIs doesn’t allow to automate publishing process so that’s why pricing is high. Ad widget doesn’t bring any money, we tested that already.
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It’s not even close to be high. If you check app development pricing + design + infrastructure + qa + making it work wigh hardware, then prices in US for an app like that are close to $100k. Don’t forget all the support after that.
With Blynk you can launch a product in 1 month without spending a fortune on it.
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I understand these points completely. I can see how $199/mo it is very cheap in a lot of scenarios.
My suggestion was just for some other scenarios. Imagine you do some silly thing for the office or your family, how cool would be to pay like 5000 energy points to generate the APK and publish it yourself, maybe even requiring a local blynk server. I know the “share” functionality is there, but you do not get the icon or multiple apps per device.
@eried yes, idea is clear and we were thinking a lot about that. Our conclusion - this is not possible at the moment with pricing users will be ready to pay. So for now - only solution is to adopt Blynk app for your needs. Or you can use something like app iventor, but this will be cost you at least 25$ for google account (and apple acc is much more expensive).
Oh wow! thanks for the tip about App Inventor. So easy! Thunkable even publishes to iOS 
For that you’ll need to pay $9 a month 
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I know (it is actually $8.25). When you have several toy apps under the same account, it becomes nothing (compared to 199/mo per “toy app”).
I was not suggesting blynk to pay that part, just generate the publishable package automatically, even embedding some ads or having an “ads widget” that gave energy back. Anyway, thanks for the tips. I didn’t wanted to start messing with Xamarin or some giant sdk.
You are lucky, you already have an account you pay for. But for other users it will be a least 9$ a month for a “toy”/“my own logo”. And reality is - only few people is ready to pay for that .
Our research showed that people (for non business) ready to pay ~$50 as one-time payment for app publishing. While publishing itself, even with ready accounts is more than 1 hour of manual work… So that makes it non-profitable. So we have what we have.
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What about providing the .apk for android… without publishing the app in the store?
Just like a Blynk project pre-created and no-editable.
Thank you.
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@Luciano This is good idea actually. However, such app still requires some assets, like icon, so this involves some interaction with user.
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But the Icon can be one of these predefined ones inside blynk, the same ones used for the 199 usd/mo model
I’m ready to pay $50 for having an apk to distribute my project just like it is right now, even with the Blynk icon 
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I was thinking of a one-time pay.
Like paying $X to “compile” or freeze the project just like it is at that moment in an apk file that can be distribuited.
For making any changes or to create another project, another pay of $X
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Apparently there’re a lot of manual work behind the scenes to generate de apk.
Also, and I believe this would be the biggest impediment, your apk would use a specific Blynk Library and Server version, as you will be relying on the Cloud Server Version, if the latest one has been updated is more than likely you will also need your apk updated.
Unless… The apk would be for local server only, and on this case everything would be frozen.
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