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What is the difference between a company vs. individual account for the Windows Store?

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When you register to develop apps for the Windows Store, you have the option to register for a company or an individual account.  What are the major differences between them? 

  • Cost.  An individual account costs $49/year and a company account costs $99/year. 
  • Verification.  Company accounts require a little more verification, to ensure that you're authorized to create an account on the company's behalf.
  • Desktop applications.  Only company accounts can submit desktop applications to the Windows Store; individual accounts cannot. 
  • Different capabilities.  There are 3 capabilities that can be used only by applications submitted from a company account.  (For more information on capabilities, see App capability declarations).  They are:
    1. enterpriseAuthentication. Uses your Windows credentials for access to a corporate intranet.
    2. sharedUserCertificates. Allows the use of software and hardware certificates or a smart card to identify users in the app.
    3. documentsLibrary. Allows access to a user's documents library, including the capability to add, change, or delete files.
  • Processing for taxes.  Individuals will reflect earnings based on their Social Security number (in the US), and company accounts will use the VAT identification number or EIN.
  • Email address.  The developer email address must be a company domain, not generic (live, gmail, etc.) for registration as a company. 

For more information, see Registering for a Windows Store developer account.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 19, 2012
    Can you change an individual account to a company account later?

  • Anonymous
    September 19, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 20, 2012
    @Robb - no, there is not a way to change at this time.  

  • Anonymous
    September 27, 2012
    Noticed some blog posts mentioning for a Company signup there's a Developer and an Approver and that they must be different.  Is that still the case?   For a single member LLC company (ie. I'm the only employee of the company using an LLC for liability protection reasons), is there a way to allow the Developer and Approver to be the same?   Or is having a different email address good enough but same name in the Developer & Approver fields?   Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    September 28, 2012
    Can I transfer an app from an individual developer to a company developer?  Suppose I sell the app.  The buyer might not want to rename it so as not to confuse the user base.

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2012
    I got account in windows store. But how to identify whether it is student account or individual account ?? please tell me.

  • Anonymous
    February 28, 2013
    I am a developer in Fortune 500 company with 35,000 employees. Now if I create an INDIVIDUAL account I cannot publish app to Windows Store and its very difficult to get COMPANY account as only 1 developer can have COMPANY account in whole company and company also will not allow me to publish my personal development work on its name. So do I need to open a new company just to publish my Windows Store app to Store :)

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2013
    The only thing I think MS should change is all developers should be allowed to access the users documents library.  I have a SSD card with my document set to automatically save to my SSD.  But most application cannot take advantage of this, so they save all their files to the main storage. For some apps like book readers, RRS readers, etc., this means space is being take up on main driver when the documents should be stored in my Document library, which would be put on my SSD. Please remove this restriction from the "Individual" account.  Does not make sense that "Individuals" have access to the other three libraries, but not the document library.

  • Anonymous
    September 28, 2014
    My company created a Company account and wrote my company email as developer address. I have created a MS account with that mail but when i triy to login, it asks me to register as individual or company account. How to use my developer mail when I develop?

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2015
    I m looking if I can work for any small company or work with someone ! Contact me: Danyer56@live.com Phone: 786 308 1402