I would like to offer three subscription options in my app:
Monthly recurring
Yearly recurring
Lifetime
I can setup the monthly and yearly subscriptions as auto-renewable products, and put them in the same group so that upgrades and downgrades are handled nicely. However, the lifetime subscription has to be a regular non-consumable product since the maximum duration for a renewing product is one year.
What can I do to handle users moving from a monthly or yearly subscription to the lifetime subscription? I can't offer any partial refund/credit for remaining time, and most importantly I can't cancel their existing subscription on their behalf. Am I limited to some informational messaging ("Please make sure you cancel your existing subscription") with a link to the Manage Subscriptions settings? Or is there more I can do?
As far as I know you have no possibility to cancel his subscription for him. So before a user can buy the lifetime IAP you have to check if he has an active subscription and if so you need to prompt him to cancel it. Otherwise he would end up with lifetime and a subscription.
Related
I am working in an app which uses 3 in-app product
Monthly subscription (Auto-renewable)
Yearly subscription (Auto-renewable)
Lifetime subscription (Consumable)
The app has a feature that a logged in user can add other app user's accounts to his account and can switch to their account.
So, a logged in user can buy all 3 above types of in-app products but he can buy only lifetime subscription for others (if he switched to others account) with the same apple account. That is why Lifetime subscription is of Consumable type.
Monthly and Yearly Subscription belongs to same subscription group as they both are auto-renewable type.
My doubt here is,
If logged in user buys a Yearly/Monthly subscription first which is Auto-renewable type that means it renews or make payment automatically after it expires monthly or yearly.
Suppose after buying Yearly subscription and then he likes the app and now buys a lifetime subscription,
Will both Yearly subscription and lifetime subscription will
continue simultaneously? That means along with lifetime
subscription, yearly subscription will continue to charge every
year?
or will Yearly subscription cancel right after lifetime subscription
is made?
or will apple accept the lifetime request and after 1 year it will
cancel yearly subscription to renew itself automatically and
activates lifetime subscription.
What I want, is point 3. The lifetime subscription should not renew after 1 year and lifetime subscription should continue. If it is going to renew, is there any way to programmatically cancel the previous (Yearly/Monthly) subscription?
I want the customer should not be double paying for the app. Customer must have only one subscription activated at a time and he must be able to make lifetime subscription purchase for other app users with same apple account.
How best can I achieve this? Any help will be appreciated
Thanks in advance!
Please, help me to clarify purchases types.
I have an ionic project, where a user has a possibility to post to feed. But he/she has to pay for each news he/she posts.
I know that purchases are of three types: consumable, non-consumable and subscriptions.
I cant understand what is the type of such kind of purchases?
You would be a consumable type as you are paying every time you post.
Good description from a previous post https://stackoverflow.com/a/21251768/5270656
Ref: itunesconnect.apple.com
Everything is here:
Consumable (pay everytime)
A consumable In-App Purchase must be purchased every time
the user downloads it. One-time services, such as fish food in a
fishing app, are usually implemented as consumables.
Select Non-Consumable (one time payment)
Non-consumable In-App Purchases only need to be
purchased once by users. Services that do not expire or decrease with
use are usually implemented as non-consumables, such as new race
tracks for a game app.
Select Auto-Renewable Subscriptions (will deduct money from your credit card on a cycle complete)
Auto-renewable Subscriptions allow
the user to purchase updating and dynamic content for a set duration
of time. Subscriptions renew automatically unless the user opts out,
such as magazine subscriptions.
Select Free Subscription (no payment and is still visible even you did not submitted your account detail to itunes connect)
Free subscriptions are a way for developers
to put free subscription content in Newsstand. Once a user signs up
for a free subscription, it will be available on all devices
associated with the user’s Apple ID. Note that free subscriptions do
not expire and can only be offered in Newsstand-enabled apps.
Select Non-Renewing (need to renew manually)
Subscription Non-Renewing Subscriptions allow the
sale of services with a limited duration. Non-Renewing Subscriptions
must be used for In-App Purchases that offer time-based access to
static content. Examples include a one week subscription to voice
guidance feature within a navigation app or an annual subscription to
online catalog of archived video or audio.
I am researching in-app purchase viability in my app and have some queries.
Is it possible to have a multi -tiered subscription model with in-app purchase on iOS?
E.g. 4.99 for Basic, 9.99 for Advanced.
I would need the user to be able to change tier as and when they wanted, just as you would expect from any subscription service.
Is that possible? Does Apple support this?
Yes it's possible by opting out of the current subscription and then buying the Advanced Tier.
https://developer.apple.com/in-app-purchase/In-App-Purchase-Guidelines.pdf
Subscriptions and subscription renewals to content or services can be offered to customers for purchase.
!Renewal of an Auto-Renewing Subscription is handled automatically by the App Store. The user will be reminded shortly before their subscription is about to renew and all the billing is handled automatically by the App Store. Users can easily change their renewal frequency and can opt-out of the renewal by turning off the Auto-Renew switch at least 24 hours before the end of the current subscription period.
Apple, iOS, IAP.
The official doc says:
Product type - Users can buy - Appears in the receipt - Synced across devices - Restored
Consumable - Multiple times - Once - Not synced - Not restored
Non-renewing - Multiple times - Once - By your app - By your app
Of course consumable can be made same to non-renewing "by my app" if I want to, so what's the exact difference? Why Apple distinguish these two types identical on his side?
Ref: itunesconnect.apple.com
Everything is here:
Consumable (pay everytime)
A consumable In-App Purchase must be purchased every time
the user downloads it. One-time services, such as fish food in a
fishing app, are usually implemented as consumables.
Select Non-Consumable (one time payment)
Non-consumable In-App Purchases only need to be
purchased once by users. Services that do not expire or decrease with
use are usually implemented as non-consumables, such as new race
tracks for a game app.
Select Auto-Renewable Subscriptions (will deduct money from your credit card on a cycle complete)
Auto-renewable Subscriptions allow
the user to purchase updating and dynamic content for a set duration
of time. Subscriptions renew automatically unless the user opts out,
such as magazine subscriptions.
Select Free Subscription (no payment and is still visible even you did not submitted your account detail to itunes connect)
Free subscriptions are a way for developers
to put free subscription content in Newsstand. Once a user signs up
for a free subscription, it will be available on all devices
associated with the user’s Apple ID. Note that free subscriptions do
not expire and can only be offered in Newsstand-enabled apps.
Select Non-Renewing (need to renew manually)
Subscription Non-Renewing Subscriptions allow the
sale of services with a limited duration. Non-Renewing Subscriptions
must be used for In-App Purchases that offer time-based access to
static content. Examples include a one week subscription to voice
guidance feature within a navigation app or an annual subscription to
online catalog of archived video or audio.
Consumable items are individually purchased items. You need to buy one each time you want one. For example, in a game, if you ran out of lives and wanted to keep playing, you can buy an extra life (consumable). Once you use that life, if you need more than you need to buy another one.
Non-renewing is referring to subscriptions. It is the purchase of a subscription to something for a designated time frame, that will not automatically renew/re-charge after it expires. Example would be buying a one month subscription to a weekly magazine app that publishes new content every week. You purchase this one month, non-renewing, subscription and you get access to the app's content for a month. After the month is over, it does not automatically renew itself and will not bill you again.
I'm launching an app that I would like to offer for free each month up to a certain usage level. If the user exceeds the threshold, the app would charge them a monthly subscription. However, I don't want the subscription to automatically renew each month. Rather, I would like the usage level to reset the following month, and if the user does not exceed the threshold, the app is free for that month.
Any creative ideas about how to make this happen?
Yes, look at Apple Overview of In-App Purchase:
Non-renewing subscriptions are a mechanism for creating products with a limited duration. Non-renewing subscriptions differ from auto-renewable subscriptions in a few key ways:
The term of the subscription is not declared when you create the product in iTunes Connect; your application is responsible for providing this information to the user. In most cases, you would include the term of the subscription in the description of your product.
Non-renewing subscriptions may be purchased multiple times (like a consumable product) and are not automatically renewed by the App Store. You are responsible for implementing the renewal process inside your application. Specifically, your application must recognize when the subscription has expired and prompt the user to purchase the product again.
You are required to deliver non-renewing subscriptions to all devices owned by the user. Non-renewing subscriptions are not automatically synchronized to all devices by Store Kit; you must implement this infrastructure yourself. For example, most subscriptions are provided by an external server; your server would need to implement a mechanism to identify users and associate subscription purchases with the user who purchased them.
You can track the user usage and ask him to buy your Non-renewing subscriptions* if the usage exceeds the threshold. Then at the end of the subscription you can check it again and ask him to pay again for the next month.
I would consider using renewable subscriptions for users that know that their usage will
always exceed the threshold.