@milo Only Strava can give an official answer to this, but here’s my guess based on my experience.
milo wrote:
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Does the website have to be 100% functional and live for the app to be approved?
For example, if the website is mostly complete but certain features (especially the ones relying on Strava’s API) are still under development, does that pose an issue during the approval process?
For initial approval my guess would be no. I think as long as you’ve got some API features working and Strava can see that you’re making API calls successfully you’ll probably be fine. However it may impact your API limits that initially get set since they will only see you using a small subset of the API. Most apps are frequently changing and updating which means that even established ones will potentially add/remove API calls or change how they call the API.
- What exactly does Strava look at during the review?
Do they just check compliance with their API guidelines, or is there a deeper review of the backend, endpoints, and user flows?
They don’t ask for any code access so there’s no deeper review that I am aware of. My guess would be checking that the site complies with their guidelines, and they probably look at your historical API usage to see if you’re making a reasonable number of requests, subscribed to webhooks, etc… Again I expect it’s slightly different for initial approval vs future limit increases, as there’s not really a lot to see when only a single user is using the app. Once you have more users they can get a better idea of how you’re using the API to decide what the new limits should be .