Runway is a new kind of tool that helps mobile teams automate, track, and collaborate on app releases and rollouts. It sits above your current toolchain, integrating with each piece — version control, project management, CI, stability monitoring, analytics & observability, the app stores — to give your entire mobile org a home. Runway replaces your tracking spreadsheets and checklists in Confluence docs, your endless back-and-forth in Slack, your go/no-go meetings, your 15 different browser tabs open all the time. Runway helps your team collaborate and communicate better, resulting in less wasted time, fewer headaches, higher quality product, and happier teammates.
1. Connect Runway to your existing tools using simple, out-of-the-box integrations.
2. Configure additional settings that tell Runway how your team does things — from branching strategy to release schedules to tagging and ticketing conventions to build workflows and much more.
3. Runway begins understanding the state of your releases — automatically drafting your next release based on data collected from your integrations, including the current state of your apps in the stores. You can pick things up from there, or manually kick off your next release as well.
4. Invite your team to start collaborating on the active release and monitoring progress together.
Exactly how Runway works is very much dependent on your team and how you choose to configure the platform, and there’s way too much to cover here. A good way to dig in further is to check out our sandbox and explore our docs.
Runway doesn’t touch the build process. In fact, Runway sits one level up and integrates with the CI/CD tool your team is already using — e.g. Bitrise, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, etc. (see the full list).
Although builds are an important piece of the overall mobile puzzle, a lot more needs to happen across the rest of your tools and team in order to ship a high quality release. The process starts well before you trigger your first Release Candidate build, and it ends after you have a passing RC ready to ship. Feature work needs to be signed off on, external stakeholders need to be looped in, rollouts need to be monitored. Runway creates a single source of truth that connects all of these dots, pulling in build data from your CI/CD alongside release diffs from version control, feature work from your project management tool, heath and stability metrics from your crash reporting and observability tools, and much more.
Runway can also take over some of the “CD” half of CI/CD. By offloading certain tasks to Runway — for example with automations that can distribute builds to default test groups or tracks, submit new builds for review, or surface artifacts in Slack for your team to easily grab – you can reduce scripting bloat and keep your CI/CD lighter-weight and easier to maintain.
Runway was designed from day zero to be plug-and-play: not just in terms of integrations, but also in terms of how you can configure the platform to adapt to your team’s particular way of doing things. Drawing on our team’s deep firsthand experience in mobile and all the exposure we now have to other mobile teams of all shapes and sizes, we’ve been able to create a cohesive framework that still allows for the infinite permutations of workflows and processes and team structures that exist in the mobile world.
The result: you connect your existing tools, configure other settings that help Runway understand your existing workflows and processes, and Runway then adapts to your team’s unique way of doing things. Minimal behavior change required!
We’ve put a lot of work into making setup as seamless as possible — as soon as you sign up, you’ll be guided through a step by step onboarding flow with plenty of tips and context along the way.
For the average smaller team, it shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes to get core integrations connected and releases flowing through Runway. For an average larger team, it might take a day or two to get everything squared away. The most common slowdown we observe comes when teams need to track down admins needed to generate certain keys or complete OAuth flows for some of the integrations.
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For tools that integrate at one of Runway’s existing “integration points” — e.g. version control, project management, stability monitoring, etc. — our architecture allows for new integrations to be added fairly easily. We prioritize new integrations based on demand, and we’re always happy to do our best to accommodate specific asks from new teams coming onboard — get in touch!
If the tool you have in mind doesn’t fit into an existing integration point in Runway, chances are it’s on our radar – we have a range of new domains for integrations on our roadmap. Let us know what you have in mind, we’d love to dig in together.
Runway does support integrations with on-prem, self-hosted tools. Setup typically involves a couple of extra steps, and if your tool is behind a firewall we’ll provide you with IP ranges to add to your allow list.
Runway is SOC 2 Type 2 certified, we undergo regular third-party penetration testing, and we maintain live controls around our extensive company policies. Reports and other evidence for all of these are available upon request. Within the platform, SAML is supported as are role-based access controls.
We understand data security and privacy are top of mind for Runway users and our platform and infrastructure were built with security in mind from day one. Read more here, and feel free to put your security team in touch with us directly!
Runway is used by mobile teams ranging in size from small startups all the way to Fortune 50 companies. Because Runway is able to adapt to and build upon your existing tools and processes, you can configure the platform to add value in ways that are most relevant to your stage and scale. For example, we often see smaller teams focus on time-saving automations in the beginning, while larger orgs layer on advanced functionality like custom sign-off flows and rollout health safeguards.
Yes, many Runway teams build cross-platform apps! Because Runway sits a few levels above code level, we’re totally agnostic when it comes to the particular languages and frameworks you’re using to build your apps.
In practice, you’ll run the first part of your release cycles from one app record within Runway, then when things diverge down Android and iOS paths for distribution and deployment, you’ll be able to manage each of those individually but under one roof in Runway, instead of bouncing back and forth between Play Console and App Store Connect. If you ship over-the-air (OTA) updates, you can also manage those in Runway alongside your binary releases.
Yes! You can add as many apps to Runway as needed. In practice, for the whitelabel use case, teams tend to run the first part of their release cycles from one app (a “core” app, so to speak), then when things diverge into however many flavors at build time, you can handle each of those separately where needed. Runway’s automations mean there will be much less bouncing around between apps in App Store Connect or Play Console.
We’re happy to work on custom pricing for teams that ship high volumes of apps. Get in touch and we’ll put together a plan that works for your team!
Yes, on both counts. Runway’s Free plan gives you access to all of the Runway fundamentals that make shipping apps less of an event — from a robust set of core automations and integrations, to full access to the rich Runway dashboard, unlimited notifications and alerting, and much more.
Note that when you sign up, you’ll also get a free trial of Runway’s top tier Business plan.
