Publish privately

An internally published app is live at its usual address, but only the people you choose can open it. Everyone else is asked to sign in, and turned away if they are not on your list.

Who can open it

You and your collaborators

Anyone with edit access to the project can open the app.

Invited users

People you add by email. They can use the app but cannot open the project. Each one signs in with a Floot account on the address you invited, creating one if they do not have it yet.

It suits internal tools such as dashboards and admin panels, client previews before launch, and beta tests with a small group. Search engines are told not to index the app.

Publish internally

1. 1

   Open the Internal publish tab

   Open your project on floot.com, click Publish, and choose the Internal publish tab next to Web.

2. 2

   Add the people you want

   Under Invited users, add their email addresses. You can include a personal note and choose whether to email them now. Floot writes the rest of the invite: a link to the app and how to sign in with the invited address.

3. 3

   Click Publish internally

   If the app is public right now, Floot asks you to confirm before making it private. Anyone still waiting for an invite gets it when the publish finishes.

Private mobile apps

Internal publish covers the iOS and Android app too. On the Internal publish tab, turn on Publish mobile app before you click Publish internally, and Floot builds the app along with the private website. Only the same people can use it.

• It opens on a Sign in with Floot screen. On iPhone it uses Safari's sign-in: anyone already signed in to Floot in Safari taps Continue and is in. On Android it uses the phone's browser the same way.
• People stay signed in. They sign in again only after 30 days without opening the app, and at the latest 90 days after they first signed in.
• Removing someone signs them out of the app too, within about an hour. So does Sign out everywhere on their Floot account page.
• Share it through TestFlight and Google Play internal testing. A public App Store or Google Play listing does not fit an app only invited people can use.

Private mobile builds count toward your monthly app builds like any other build, and need the same store connections — see Creating mobile apps.

Keep it private for good

To make sure the app is never published publicly by mistake, open Project Settings, expand Advanced Settings, and turn on Private only. You confirm by typing a short phrase, and the same goes for turning it off. The Web tab on the Publish screen is then unavailable, every publish (yours or your assistant's) stays private, and the project's preview links open only for people signed in to Floot who have access to the project. That is what lets an app use the Floot sign-in as its only login. Only the project owner can turn it on or off, and an app that is live in public has to be published internally first. Copies of the project stay private only.

Webhooks and other services

Services that call your app from their own servers, such as a Telegram bot's webhook, a calendar feed or a script with an API key, cannot sign in to Floot. Ask your assistant to make those endpoints reachable without the Floot sign-in. It marks each one in its code, and each one must check who is calling, for example with the webhook's secret or an API key. Everything else stays private.

For the same reason, other services cannot open your app's stored files by their usual address. To send a file to one, such as an image for a Telegram message or an AI model, your assistant gives it a temporary signed link instead.

Limits

• Free accounts can invite 5 people in total, across all their apps. Someone already invited to another of your apps does not count twice, and collaborators never count.
• Paid plans have no account-wide limit; each project takes up to 500 invited people, added 50 at a time.
• Removing someone cuts off their access to the app's backend and data within about an hour.

Making it public again

Open Publish, stay on the Web tab, and click Publish update. Floot asks you to confirm, then republishes the app with your latest changes for anyone with the link. Switching between public and private, in either direction, leaves the site unreachable for a short while. Custom domains work the same on a private app as on a public one.

Private publishing covers the published app. The preview link your assistant hands you works the way it always does — see Sharing your projects.