We use auto-renewable subscriptions in our application and we set free trials as an introductory offer. But we haven't experienced what if the trial length changes yet.
If we change the free trial length of an existing subscription package, are the existing users notified via e-mail or notifications?
For example we are applying 7-days free trial for our subscription now, what if we change this period with 3-days? Will the subscribers in the trial period (let's say he is on the 5th day of free trial) be notified? In other words, will the existing subscribers in trial period continue with 7 days and new subscribers start with 3 days to trial period?
Is there anyone who has experienced this before?
Thanks for all replies in advance.
AppStore generate a receipt for every IAP separately so, subscription start date and end date are there. If someone registered for 7 days and 3 days has passed. when you changed trial period to 3 days it does not affect the previous trial period. They still use 7 day trial until the "their" trial period end.
Related
Summing up my R&D free trial via introductory price only meant to be free for specific time after customer bought subscription.
I want that feature to be initially free for a month and then user buy the subscription.
How can I achieve this ?Is it achievable via Introductory price?
Yes It is achievable by introductory price. You can choose free trial
duration for a month inside introductory price's.
With Free trial, New subscribers access content for free for a
specified duration(say month). Their subscription begins immediately but theywon’t be billed until the free trial period is over.
Check it out for more details : docs
If you are asking that, if user can get free month trial subscription without going for IAP subscription purchase. You need to set logic for that by your own, that after user has installed your app, he/she should be able to use services for a month and after a month all those services should get blocked. and it will be again enabled only after user purchase subscription.
I have a 1-month auto renewal product with 1-month free trial configured in my iTunes account. As per my understanding amount deduction should happen after the 1-month free trial end. But for users in production, money deduction happens right after subscription and even before free trial starts. Is this an expected scenario or can anyone please guide me?
Auto-renewable subscriptions give users access to content or services
from within your app on an ongoing basis. At the end of each
subscription duration, the subscription will automatically renew until
a user chooses to cancel it.
Auto-renewable subscriptions provide a simple way to offer free trials
to users. When users sign up for a subscription with a free trial,
their subscription begins immediately but they won’t be billed until
the free trial period is over. How long a free trial can be depends on
the duration of the subscription offering. For example, a one-month
subscription cannot offer a free trial of longer than one month. For
more details on free trial durations, see Subscription Properties.
I'm developer of iOS / OS X app.
I would like to make two auto-renewable subscriptions (in one "family" of subscriptions).
1) Monthly subscription + 1 month trial
2) Yearly subscription + 1 month trial (or, may be, 3 months trial)
My quastion:
If a user switches form a monthly subscription to an annual subscription plan will she or he get an additional trial period which it set up for an annual subscription plan?
Edit: The answer is "No". User may get trial period only one time. He wouldn't get additional trials after plan changing/resubscribtion etc.
I have an iOS app with different auto-renewal subscription possibilities, and I want to offer it's user the chance to earn a free month when they invite friends to the app.
I know how to handle the scenario where I'd give a free month to a user that's not already subscribed, but I'm wondering how to handle a user that's in the middle of a year-long paid subscription and should receive a free month..
EDIT
Make sure to read budiDino reply below, it seems this is now possible (Full disclosure, I haven't tried it myself but I did glance over the references linked).
OLD ANSWER
Ok, after some digging and asking around on Apple's forums I can confirm it's not possible.
The only way to achieve this is to give users a free month outside of Apple's subscription process...meaning users should turn off auto renewal to enjoy those free months.
Whether this is good or bad for your app depends, but it required that the user manually turns off auto-renewal while using the earner out of charge time, and then turn it on to get back into the normal auto-renewal flow handled by Apple.
You can maintain a value like additionalMonths on your server side.
So once his subscription period gets over, you can check for the value of additionalMonths and accordingly provide him subscription for those number of months.
1. Promotional Offers
This option allows you to add a free or discounted price for a period that you specify and it will be executed before the next payment cycle. You can use this feature starting with iOS 12.2.
Apple Documentation:
You can provide lapsed or current subscribers a limited-time offer of a discounted or free period of service for auto-renewable subscriptions on macOS, iOS, and tvOS.
Some useful links:
Implementing Promotional Offers in Your App
Set up promotional offers for auto-renewable subscriptions
Subscription Offers Best Practices video - WWDC 2019.
2. Offer Codes
Apple Documentation:
Offer codes can help you acquire, retain, and win back subscribers by providing a subscription at a discount or for free for a limited time.
Read more
3. "Extend a Subscription Renewal Date" endpoint:
Potentially simpler alternative that is not really suggested to use for this use-case. It has certain limitations though:
you can move the renewal date for a customer’s subscription up to 90 days into the future for each extension
you can extend the renewal date twice within a year (365 days) per customer
The following types of subscriptions aren’t eligible for renewal date extensions:
Subscriptions in a free offer period
Inactive subscriptions in a billing retry state
Subscriptions in a grace period state, with an expiration date in the past
Subscriptions that have already received two renewal date extensions within the last 365 days
Read more
Following iTunes Connect Developer Guide, when I create In-App purchase of type "Auto-renewable subscription" for my application, I can offer a free trial and set it duration: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/iTunesConnect_Guide/13_ManagingIn-AppPurchases/ManagingIn-AppPurchases.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40011225-CH4-SW9
Reading this post: https://stackoverflow.com/a/17088975/2555979 , I assume, that if we try to verify the receipt, which was send to the user after he subscribed first time (ever) and got a free trial subscription, we can differentiate, is this user at trial subscription, or has he purchased it already, only by checking difference between expires_date and purchase_date, if durations of purchased and trial subscriptions are different, or by checking the original_transaction_id or original_purchase_date (if current transaction is not first, the subscription was renewed -> it's not trial already). If I'm wrong, please, let me know, because that's how I see the process in theory, not the practice (can't test that at the moment).
Anyway, the main question:
At some day, user installs my app and subscribes. He automatically gets some time of free trial subscription. He enjoys my app, everything is great, and he decides to be subscribed in future and automatically pay me every time when subscription ends. He doesn't even need to care about that, OK. Thanks to auto-renewable subscription mechanism.
After some time, he decides to stop auto-renew process. When last subscription expires, he don't pay me -> he is not subscribed from that moment. Okay.
But if, after some time, he decides to subscribe to my app again --- how about trial again? Who decides that? Is it in my responsibility to check, had he trial subscription or not? If yes, even if I know, that he had trial subscription already, how do I force him to pay from the first day of subscription, not after another trial period?
If he's using the same Apple ID, and you are selling the same subscription product, he will not get any more trial. Trials on subscription can only happen once regardless if they've stopped and resumed their subscriptions.
I know Apple's documentation has been very sparse on Newsstand. I have also experienced the same pain. I don't have any Apple documentations to back my answer up, but from my experience this is what happens. Customers will only receive a one time trial for every unique renewable product.