&gt; It&#x27;s really expensive to setup your own server to distribute an application.<p>I haven&#x27;t found it expensive at all.  I&#x27;ve been selling apps outside App Stores for over a decade and never needed more than my $9&#x2F;mth shared web hosting.  Accepting credit cards is even easier &amp; cheaper through someone like Fastspring or Kagi, who only take 8 - 9% instead of Apple&#x27;s 30%.<p>&gt; It&#x27;s also really annoying to have to patch your apps without a store.<p>On the Mac, Sparkle is your friend for auto-updates, it&#x27;s been around since 2006 (long before the Mac App Store existed): <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sparkle-project.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sparkle-project.org</a><p>On Windows, there&#x27;s WinSparkle, though it isn&#x27;t quite as elegant: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;winsparkle.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;winsparkle.org</a>