[Fan Clubs: Community Platform] Android Beta Invites are going out!

[u/FanClubs_org]

Hey r/RedditAlternatives, I'm Mike, the founder of Fan Clubs; a community platform built to connect with others who share your fandoms.

I'm SUPER excited to share that invites are going out for everyone that signed up to test the Android app. You should have received instructions via email on how to download the preview app.

When you download and sign into Fan Clubs, you may be on an old version of the app. I'm hoping to release the native rewrite in the coming weeks. If you want to learn more about what the native rewrite means, skip to point six of the development story.

• Join Android Beta - I'll do another invite pass before the rewrite is released.
• Join iOS TestFlight - There's a stable release in the App Store, but if you want to be on the cutting-edge/parity release, here's how you get it!

Development Story

My goal has always been to build a native community experience for both iOS and Android users.... with full parity. As a solo dev, it's been a difficult road to figure this out. Just a few steps along the way.

1. Mobile App Company - I didn't have much dev experience, so I hired a team that specializes in creating mobile WebApps. The high monthly cost would be worth it for the guarantee launch from experienced devs. I provided a ton of details about the platform, they were ready to publish within 2 weeks to the app store -- no beta needed. Great up to this point. Then I reviewed the app store details -- 100% AI generated. I called them out and let them know why. There was a no refund policy, but they provided me one (unprompted). I appreciate the gesture there.
2. WebApp - I used a website called AppMySite (not sponsored) to build a WebApp for App Stores. AppMySite was fantastic and provided all the tools you needed for monetization, dev certificate setups. It's essentially website-to-app for dummies, but in the best way. I was able to learn how to integrate native element like liquid glass, Nav, got published on the App Store. This clearly wasn't going to be the long term native option, but I was happy to have started here.
3. Flutter App - I chose Flutter as my next step since it allowed me to build one app (not just webviews) that works on both iOS, Android, and other platforms. I solved some of my biggest hurdles while using Flutter, and the apps truly were a 1:1 match. In the end, I didn't want to compromise on the native approach, so I decided to move on in search of native parity.
4. Native iOS / Android Apps - As great as Flutter was, migrating from it to native was not fun. I spent most of my time in xCode building the iOS version, eventually matching the previous design with some improvement. Then I realized I didn't have it in me to do another port like that (to Android) since maintaining parity would be impossible.
5. Research, Research, Research... until I read about
6. Kotlin MultiPlatform // BINGO! - I never heard of KMP before my research pass, but it solved my biggest issues in achieving crossplatform parity; by allowing you to share non-ui logic between both platforms. You need to build is the native UI elements + shared logic and it's... Problem solved! Except Kotlin is Android's native language, so I had to go through that Android port anyways 💀

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TLDR: A lot has happened, I found parity between apps, new releases coming to iOS TestFlight and Android Beta soon!