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Two products, one team — which is for you?

Capawesome Cloud is the all-in-one platform: live updates, native builds, app store publishing. HotCodePush, the over-the-air (OTA) update service for React Native, Expo, Capacitor and Cordova, is OTA-only, and deeper.

Get started How the two combine

Which one

Which product fits which team

We built both. Capawesome Cloud is the all-in-one platform; HotCodePush is the advanced OTA-only platform for teams who build natively themselves.

Feature HotCodePush Capawesome Cloud
Native builds NoYes
App store publishing NoYes
OTA updates for React Native, Expo, Capacitor, Cordova Capacitor and Cordova
Leaving Ionic Appflow OTA updates only The drop-in replacement; Capawesome says Ionic recommends it
Readiness gate On by default: first render within 10 seconds Opt-in: readyTimeout defaults to 0
Compatibility The fingerprint, read from your lockfile, by default Versioned channels, one per native release
Rollouts A percentage with auto-pause and progression A percentage, raised or lowered by hand
Targeting Channels, plus device attributes with an audience preview Channels
Delivery analytics Adoption per release, typed skip and failure reasons MAU and data transfer

Last verified 2026-10-21.

Both products are run by the company behind Capawesome and HotCodePush; based on Capawesome Cloud's public pricing and documentation pages.

Architecture

Same team, a deeper update path

Both are built by the team behind Capawesome. HotCodePush turns what Capawesome Cloud leaves to a setting into the default.

Capawesome Cloud recommends a versioned channel per native version, its readiness check is off until you set a timeout, a miss reverts to the built-in bundle, and a rollout percentage is raised or lowered by hand. HotCodePush, from the same team, reads the fingerprint from your lockfile instead of a channel per native version, runs the readiness gate on every release without a setting, reverts a miss to the last good bundle, and pauses a failing rollout itself.

Roll back a release

Diagram: Capawesome Cloud's opt-in readiness check that reverts to the built-in bundle beside the HotCodePush readiness gate, on by default, that reverts to the last good bundle.

Switch in four steps

  • 1 · Install the SDK

    Add the HotCodePush SDK for your framework, React Native, Expo, Capacitor or Cordova, and remove the previous update client. The SDK is MIT-licensed and replaces the update layer alone; your native code, your plugins and your store listing stay as they are.

  • 2 · Create your channels

    Create one channel per audience you ship to today, production first, then staging or beta. A preview channel lets you test the new path on your own devices before anyone else; whoever holds its link follows it, and nobody else reaches it.

  • 3 · Ship one store release

    Ship one store release with the new SDK inside. The binaries before it keep taking their old updates until their users move, so nothing breaks in the field, and devices on the new binary use HotCodePush from their first start.

  • 4 · Run the release step

    In your pipeline, replace the old release command with hotcodepush release create. It packages the bundle, signs it, works out what changed and releases to the channel you name, so every merge to main reaches devices without a store review.

Full migration guide

Choosing between the two

Capawesome Cloud when you want native builds and app store publishing in the same console, or you are leaving Ionic Appflow and want its shape back. HotCodePush when your binaries already build in your own pipeline and your reason to move is the update path itself. Capawesome Cloud
Yes. Capawesome Cloud builds and publishes; HotCodePush updates. The Capawesome Cloud recipe shows the pipeline, with the HotCodePush CLI releasing from the web build. There is no product integration beyond that. The Capawesome Cloud recipe
The team and the company, Cloudflare under both, data stored in the EU, and SOC 2 and ISO 27001, audited every year and covering both. The audit reports are on the company's trust center. The team behind both
Device-side attribute targeting with an audience preview, which nothing else in the field shows, and a readiness gate that is on without a setting; Capawesome Cloud's stays off until you set a timeout. Attribute targeting
Yes. The switch ships inside a store release; binaries before it keep taking their old updates until their users move. A preview channel lets you test the new path on your own devices first. Preview channels
Nothing native. HotCodePush updates the JavaScript, markup, styles and assets your app already ships; the native layer, the plugins and the store listing stay as they are, and the fingerprint keeps an update off a binary it was not built for. Compatibility
Yes. Every framework gets deltas, built by our delta service when you release, so a device downloads only the files it lacks. React Native and Expo also get a small patch of the main JavaScript bundle inside the pack. How an update reaches a device
Your data is yours. The API lists everything, so a full export is a script, and the usage and audit log pages download CSV. The SDKs are MIT-licensed and the update format stays backward compatible, so an app on an old SDK keeps updating. API reference

A package swap, not a rewrite.

Swap the package in your next store release.

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