Apple has announced today that they have revised the old guidelines of the App Store and have amended the policy of not being able to post template created apps. Earlier this year the company changed their guidelines to not allowing template created apps on the App store, soon after Apple realized that their effort of trying to prevent low-quality apps and spam affected more people than intended.
Apple's policy change of not allowing template based apps on the App Store meant that custom apps would have to be made to fit the companies guidelines. Small businesses, restaurants, nonprofits, organizations and clubs suffered from this new rule as most people don't have the funds to create custom apps or don't have any prior knowledge in app development.
Apple has revised the previous guidelines and reversed the standard to allow for templates to be used it but it has come with a catch. Instead of having middleman app developers publishing small businesses Apple requires "Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app's content."
Taken from the store guidelines, the policy reads:
"4.2.6 Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app's content. These services should not submit apps on behalf of their clients and should offer tools that let their clients create customized, innovative apps that provide unique customer experiences."
"Another acceptable option for template providers is to create a single binary to host all client content in an aggregated or "picker" model, for example as a restaurant finder app with separate customized entries or pages for each client restaurant, or as an event app with separate entries for each client event."