Fastlane Alternative for Indies Who'd Rather Ship Than Configure

Fastlane has been the default mobile release tool for almost a decade. It's free, battle-tested, and runs everywhere. If you've already invested weeks tuning your Fastfile, this article isn't going to convince you to switch, and it shouldn't.

But if you're a solo developer or a 2-5 person team that's tired of maintaining a release pipeline as a side project, the calculus is different. Here's where MySigner replaces Fastlane and where Fastlane still wins.

TL;DR

Where Fastlane Is Still the Right Answer

We use Fastlane internally for some specific tasks. It's not obsolete. Stay on Fastlane if any of the following describe you:

• You have a heavily customized release pipeline. Branching lanes for different distribution flows, custom plugins, Slack and Jira hooks, plus weeks of accumulated tuning. Re-creating that on a new tool isn't worth it.
• You need self-hosted CI in your own VPC. Some compliance regimes (FedRAMP, parts of HIPAA, internal-distributed enterprise apps) require that every step of the release pipeline runs on infrastructure you control. Fastlane runs anywhere; MySigner's dashboard is hosted (in Hetzner US, but still hosted).
• You're shipping non-standard distribution flows. Enterprise in-house distribution, ad-hoc, custom MDM. Fastlane's flexibility wins.
• You already have a working Fastfile and a CI pipeline. Migration cost outweighs the gain.

If none of those apply, keep reading.

What MySigner Adds That Fastlane Doesn't

Fastlane is a release-pipeline framework. It handles build, sign, upload, submit. The release pipeline is one part of shipping a mobile app. The other parts that Fastlane doesn't touch are:

Screenshot Studio

A canvas-based editor with current iPhone, iPad, Pixel, and Android tablet device frames. 12 3D-perspective presets. 100+ stickers. Captions across 30+ locales with editable AI translations. Push directly to App Store Connect and Play Console with mysigner studio push. No zip dance, no manual upload.

Fastlane has snapshot, which runs UI tests to capture screenshots from inside the simulator. That works for some teams but requires writing and maintaining UI test code that exists only for screenshots. Most indies skip it and use Figma instead, then drag PNGs into ASC by hand for every locale.

Keywords and ASO

100 tracked keywords per app on Pro, 200 on Team. Edit your 100-character Apple keyword field per locale inside MySigner. Apple Search Ads popularity scores baked into the editor so you know which keywords have real volume. Daily ranking checks on Pro, priority queue on Team.

Fastlane has nothing here. The standard path is to pay Asodesk ($47-$239/mo depending on tier) or AppTweak (starts around $69/mo) for keyword tracking, and edit keywords manually in App Store Connect. Sensor Tower exists too, but operates on enterprise quotes that typically start above $500/mo.

Reviews in one inbox

App Store and Play reviews in a single inbox. Filter by stars, locale, build, app, or time range. Reply templates with keyboard shortcuts. Refresh every 6 hours on Pro, every 30 minutes on Team.

The Fastlane path is to open ASC and Play Console separately, read reviews, copy/paste into a spreadsheet if you want to track them, reply one at a time.

Custom Product Pages

Up to 35 variants per iOS app. Each variant has different screenshots, keywords, and promo text for a different audience. Wire each Custom Product Page to an Apple Search Ads campaign and track per-variant conversion.

There's no way to do this with Fastlane. You configure CPPs by hand in App Store Connect.

Store analytics

Daily-synced analytics from ASC and Play. Installs, retention (D1, D7, D14, D30), ARPU, conversion funnels, in plain language. 90 days retention on Pro, 365 on Team.

What Replacing Fastlane Actually Looks Like

You don't migrate. You stop running fastlane release and start running mysigner ship appstore. Your Fastfile can stay where it is until you decide to delete it. There's no merge conflict between the two.

# Install
gem install mysigner

# One-time setup (interactive, 5 minutes)
mysigner onboard

# Then, per release
mysigner ship appstore
mysigner ship production --platform android

MySigner reads your existing Apple cert and provisioning profile from your local Keychain. If they're on a teammate's machine, sync them through the dashboard once: they're uploaded to MySigner's vault and stored under AWS-KMS envelope encryption (a per-credential AES-256-GCM data key, bound to its credential by EncryptionContext/AAD). iOS builds always run on a developer's Mac (Apple's constraint); Android builds run on macOS, Linux, or Windows. When a build or store upload needs a synced credential, it is decrypted server-side inside the vault for that operation — never stored in plaintext at rest.

Pricing Compared

Fastlane is free and open source. Always will be. If price is your only deciding factor, stay on Fastlane.

For everyone else, here's what MySigner costs:

• Free: full CLI, 1 app, unlimited TestFlight shipping.
• Pro $12/mo: 10 apps, ASO + reviews + analytics + 100 AI translations per month. 14-day trial, no card required.
• Team $49/mo: multi-org (up to 10 orgs, 10 apps each), SAML SSO, 365-day hash-chained audit log, RBAC.

The buyer math that makes MySigner cheaper than Fastlane-plus-tools:

MySigner Pro at $12/mo covers all of those for a typical indie or small-team workflow.

FAQ

Is the MySigner CLI open source? The CLI is licensed under Apache 2.0. The dashboard backend isn't open source.

Can I use both Fastlane and MySigner? Yes. They don't conflict. Some teams keep Fastlane for one specific lane (custom enterprise distribution, for example) and use MySigner for everything else.

What about CI? MySigner runs in CI the same way it runs locally. Set MYSIGNER_API_TOKEN, MYSIGNER_ORG_ID, and MYSIGNER_API_URL as environment variables and run mysigner ship from your pipeline. Works on GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Bitrise, and any other Linux or macOS runner.

Does MySigner work on Linux and Windows? Android shipping works on macOS, Linux, and Windows. iOS shipping requires macOS because Xcode is macOS-only. That's an Apple constraint, not a MySigner one.

What if I cancel? Your account drops to the Free tier. We don't delete your data.

Try It

The free tier ships to TestFlight unlimited. One command, no card. If MySigner doesn't fit your workflow, drop back to Fastlane in 30 seconds.

Start free → mysigner.dev