How Expo streamlined Hipcamp’s native and over-the-air update processes

Hipcamp replaced Microsoft App Center with Expo after App Center's sunset announcement. The switch delivered 6x faster native builds (60 minutes down to 10), reliable OTA updates replacing the unreliable CodePush, and a web-like daily release cadence instead of monthly app store submissions. The team built a custom yarn command to trigger builds, automated Slack notifications with TestFlight links and Sentry monitoring, and used expo-fingerprint to automatically detect OTA-eligible changes. The result: fewer app store submissions, faster incident response, and reduced on-call stress.