I have developed an iOS application that was a paid app and it was released on AppStore. Many users have purchased it and downloaded it from there.
Now we have changed it to be free with some paid features. The problem now is that the past users who have already purchased the app are asked to pay for these new paid features. It shouldn't happen since they already purchased the whole app before.
Moreover, if one of those old users removed the app before new release then installed the new free release, he will be asked to pay for these new features also.
Is there a way to know whether the current Apple account has purchased this app - using the App ID - before ?
If not, is there a way to check if this app was installed before on the device then removed ?
Related
I have prepared a new build for my client's app - brand new, redesigned app. Everything is cool except that users of the new version are reporting that they are unable to restore their old non-consumable products (purchased in the old app). To make things even more weird - they are able to restore the same products, but purchased in the new app.
I believe that there is no difference in restored transactions no matter if they have been purchased within this or previous version of app when bundle identifier stays the same. I have double checked in Testflight app (with live Apple Id for restore) that only one out of six purchased products is already being restored.
My question is have you ever had such a weird issue in your apps? Any hints on peculiarities related to restoring purchases from previous versions of the app? Is it a bug in SDK? Does it make sense at all?
Problem solved. Clients were using live Apple ID in TestFlight build, not in the live app. Even if you use live account on TestFlight build it still operates in sandbox, and products purchased in production environment wont appear in sandbox when you restore purchases.
We have in the AppStore a free app which has a PRO in-app purchase.
The in-app it's the usual appId of form com.our.appid.pro and purchasing it sets a boolean in userdefaults which enables or disables specific features in the app. It's all working fine.
However, I have the requirement to create a version which is PRO as soon as you download it from the AppStore. It would be equivalent to a free version with the in-app purchase already bought.
My question is, what is the most convenient way to do this ? Do I simply change the appid and force that boolean to YES for the purchased state and reupload it again as a different app ? I guess it cannot be done without having another app/appid ( that's why in-app purchases were implemented in the first place ... ).
Thanks
Yes, If you want to submit an app with fully featured app including the In App Purchase Functionality of your older version, then just change the bundle Id of your new app.
Make a new app on iTunes with a different app name and all features without In App Purchase for your those extra functionality of your older version.
Then you will be good to go.
Another option is that if you don't want to go for the PRO version of the app, then remove In App Purchase from your free version and increase the price tier of your free version and submit your app again without In App Purchase.
Hope this helps you.
I have an application that was made before in app purchase and we did two versions: free and paid. Now I want to move to one app with upgrade through app purchase.
I will implement the in-app purchase in the free version, so all next users that will upgrade, will use this feature.
What about old users that downloaded the paid version, how to get rid of the paid version without affecting existing users? Should I still update the paid version to have old users get the new features I added to my app?
i've searched around a similar question but i didn't found any, so:
I have an old iphone paid app on iStore (and a free/lite version with iAds banner), now i want to renew it, adding iPad version and other stuffs;
with this new version i'd like to set the app free, add in-app purchase to the paid app (and delete the lite version), adding iAd banner until user buy the in-app purchase item.
the problem is that an old user who paid for the old app and now download the new version will see the iAd banner (and of course i don't want this) and must pay again to avoid it.
Is there any way to check if a user of my new-version app is also an old user of the old-version app?
A partial solution i found out is to check a preference file that the old app saves in it's bundle documents folder, but that could work fine just in case the user has installed the old app on the device when he update my app, not in case he deleted from device (or installing to a new one)
Other solution could be to keep the lite version on iStore and add the inApp purchase only to that version, and let the full version with the current price, but doing so, the lite version after a user pay for inApp purchase item would become exactly equal to the piad app (and Apple may refuse this, and i don't like this solution too)
Any idea for this purpose, is there an easy way i have not seen?
thanks in advance
There is no way how to find out if the user paid for the app. The solution with the "bundle documents folder" is not good in my opinion, because once the user delete the app, he will not have available the premium version of the app again.
Similar questions:
Convert existing iOS paid app to freemium model with in-app purchase
Transition an existing paid for app to free version with In App Purchase
iPhone + upgrade existing paid application on app store to free application with In App purchase + what about the customers who have already purchased the paid application
I too had similar issues where I wanted to switch a paid app to free. There really isn't anyway to reliably check which user had already downloaded your app in the past. If you add iAds and they only disable through in-app purchase then it means it applies to everyone.
While writing this post I thought of one trick. Lets say you submit your app with iAd changes today to app store and it gets approved on 7/20/13. What you can do is upon app startup have a grace period code check i.e.
if (TodaysDate < 8/20/13)
{
//Make your NSUserdefaults to true. As if the user had purchased your in-app purchase. So don't show them any ads.
}
else
{
//Month has passed and hopefully most of your users who owned the app already had updated it by now
}
This way you have given your existing and any new users a month time (with no iAds). Any users who download the app after 8/20/13 will see your iAds and will have to pay in-app to disable them.
From my experience I have found that it's always advisable to keep your current users happy otherwise they will bomb your app rating with negative reviews. Which will show up under your latest app update.
Have you tried contacting developer support? https://developer.apple.com/support/
From what I know to be true you can't tell if they have previously bought the app without invading their privacy.
I have a free app with a paid upgrade option. If I upgrade my app, then reinstall it, then upgrade again, I get a notification that I have already bought this upgrade with this Apple ID, so I can just re-upgrade the app for free. This is of course a nice feature for restoring upgrades, BUT...
What prevents a user from logging in with his Apple ID on different devices and choosing the upgrade option, thus downloading the upgrade for free to all these devices? For example, one user could do this on several devices belonging to his friends.
Help?
Nothing stops them doing that. The same way a user can pay for apps from the app store, then login on friends iPhone and download it again.
As your In App Purchase should be available on that users other devices too, then this is normal behaviour.