How many iOS Ad Hoc distibution certificates can be created? Limit for certificates?

I called Apple for a separate account question I had so I asked about this at the same time. I asked Brian (Senior Advisor from Apple Developer Program Support) to email it to me so it's official. There are no public facing documents for this and because of that Brian actually submitted this information to Apple as feedback so in the future it is something we would be able to reference online.

Officially from Apple Developer Program

Conversation and official email

A maximum of 3 app store and Ad Hoc production certificates can be active at the same time for the Apple Developer program. For Enterprise it’s 2 certificates.

If you want to verify the limits for certificates the best option would be to visit the Certificates, Identifies and Profiles Portal and create additional certificates. Once the option is grayed out, that will indicate that you have reached the limit of certificates that can be active at one time.

Two Enterprise Distribution certificates can be created at a time and a single Enterprise Distribution certificate can apply to several apps.

Each Enterprise license is completely distinct with independent distribution certificates. If a company registers in five Enterprise programs they will be able to create five independent distribution certificates.

However you can create or revoke them as frequently as you’d like.

Instead of having multiple certificates, you can export the same certificate and use on multiple workstations . You can find more information regarding this process in the following link.

AppDistributionGuide / MaintainingCertificates

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/MaintainingCertificates/MaintainingCertificates.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40012582-CH31-SW15

Official Email

Raw text:

From: [email protected]

To:

Re: Apple Developer Program Support

Hi

Per your request, I'm following up with information regarding the certificate limitations on both the Apple Developer Program and Apple Developer Enterprise Program.

Each of the programs are able to create distribution certificates however the Apple Developer Enterprise Program can have two active certificates, while the Apple Developer Program is able to have three active certificates. When viewing the Certificates, Identifiers, and Profiles Portal, if the option to create a certificate is grayed out, you have reached the active limit and an existing certificate will need to be revoked to in order to proceed.

Both of the programs are able to revoke and re-create certificates as much as they wish as the limitation is only regarding active certificates.

Due to the certificate limitation, it's often better to export and share the certificate if it's necessary to have available on multiple systems. The following URL explains how to export the certificate using Xcode.

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/MaintainingCertificates/MaintainingCertificates.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40012582-CH31-SW7

If you have any further questions, please let me know.

Best regards,

Brian Apple Inc.

Certificate limit is 12 certificates for development and 3 certificates for production for $99 developer account.

Similarly I can create any number of development certificate for $299 enterprise account. I have 24 developer certificates and I can still create more. However, I can create only 3 production certificates in my enterprise account.

In case you still want to create a certificate if you exceeded the limit, you have 2 options.

1. Revoke one useless certificate and re-create 1.

2. Export cer from keychain of 1 mac and generate .p12 file and copy it to another mac machine and add it in your another mac's keychain. That way you need not revoke a certificate and you can re-use .p12 certificate file.