Start on Android by Google

This is a pretty awesome program for those building an Android app (that includes us at Product Hunt 😉), a no brainer to apply for.

This was a very helpful program for us @Astro as we built & prepared to launch our Android app. Our company's first hire was an experienced Android developer (Xoogler) but it stil helped us a lot to have the resources and support of the Google team before we launched on the Play Store. The team has also been very responsive each time we've pinged them to ask questions or for guidance. I highly recommend this program.

We, Socratic (https://socratic.org), were a part of Start on Android's Early Access program in April 2017. Unrelated, our app won Google Play's App of the Year in 2017 :)

We got thousands of users to use early versions of our Android app, got hundreds of pieces of feedback from real users, and discovered dozens of bugs. This was invaluable, real, low-risk feedback, and I can't imagine an easier way to test, iterate, and launch an app.

While Early Access provides broad feedback from users, the UI/UX review provides deep expert feedback on Android best-practices - unique commentary and advice that's hard to get elsewhere.

Overall, SOA helped us launch a much higher quality product without the complexity, stress, or burden of building and managing our own beta program. Wish Apple did this too!

Loved this program, and highly recommend this to anyone launching an Android app.

Pros:

Early Access is an amazing way to get low-risk, high-value feedback on your app, and their UI/UX feedback is great deep early input.

Cons:

None

Woohoo! Can't wait to see more Android developers using the platform to help with their launches.

We, Veryfi (https://www.veryfi.com), a bookkeeper in your pocket, joined the program in 2017 whilst doing the Y Combinator program.

Back then Android and material design were new territory for us. But the program made it super easy to prepare and launch. It felt like a guiding hand through the pre-launch, access to early users, superb user feedback and even help from the Google team to make sure our app met all the guidelines and followed material design.

This is the best thing I've seen for Apps launching on a marketplace. Overall we launched a product that's much more refined, high quality, works well, and adds value to the self-employed & business owners wanting to automate the boring parts of their accounting.

Love love love this program! Cannot recommend it enough to anyone launching an Android app on Google Play.

Pros:

Low risk pre-prod launch without the negatives of early reviews, access to 1,000s early adopters + kickass feedback to improve our app.

Cons:

None

We were pretty new to Android after being iOS only for a few years — the guidance from the SOA team and being part of early access to get feedback from general users really helped us improve the app experience and prepare for the final release.

Pros:

Extremely helpful in starting out

Cons:

None, it's free

We, (https://craftlog.com) used start on android to release our cooking app. We want to build the ultimate experience for people to record cooking experiences in video format.

Launching a "recipes app" in 2017 was more challenging than one might think. The space is extremely over crowded and the competition has had time to built truly amazing and beautiful products in the course of 6 years.

Because of start on android we were able to streamline our app and iterate fast by listening to what real beta users had to say. We released almost every day, including Saturday and Sundays and found a user base that was happy about it and willing to give more feedback. It's worth saying that we chose to develop our product as "android first" because of the flexibility of the play store and start on android, specifically.

After the public launch we now have a 4.7 stars app and were also able to localize the content and product to over 40 different languages and cultures. It would have been an almost impossible task to keep such high rating if we were localizing without the beta program.

Karolis and the Google teams have been brilliant throughout the process. They have neatly guided us through the best practices and also provided great advice about how to launch the app for the crowded 2017 scenario. It was truly inspiring and humbling to see how their teams worked together to help products reach their full potential and skip common caveats that have killed many companies in the past.

The conclusion is that we couldn't be happier with the results and urge any new app to use start on android before launching.

Pros:

Free. Test your app without reviews. Gather user feedback. Localize the app and see how it goes in other countries before launch.

Cons:

None. I urge people to don't attempt launching any app without trying this.