I'm developing an application that looks like a dialogue with another person. Some dialog branches are paid and are available only when the subscription is activated. When user click on this thread, we ask that him purchase it. When a person activates a subscription, he also has access to some paid video, audio, and a restriction on viewing the news section. We would like to use the Autorenewable subscription with a plan for a month. But will our application go through the review? maybe there are still some approaches to enable the user to activate auto-subscriptions to our application.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation
Yes, this should be an ok use of IAP, however reviewers can act randomly so you may get a different result.
I would make sure that when a user encounters a path that is premium, you don't just initiate an in-app-purchase but you present the user with a "paywall", a screen that says the content is for purchase and show them the price and allow them to purchase. If you are too aggressive, Apple may reject your application.
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I am working an app that has In app purchase function.
And i need some unique user information when they make some purchases in order to store it on my Database for some reason.
So how can i get some info like email,username or userId from the purchased user?
Thanks!
You cannot obtain this information from the Apple purchase flow, so the answer depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
If you are selling a non-consumable item, such as a game unlock, Deepak's solution will work for you -- by providing a "restore" button in you application the user will be able to connect to their iTunes account from any of their devices and re-obtain the item.
If you are selling a consumable item, such as in-game currency, you should have the users register with your backend service and be authenticated when they make their purchase. Once you have verified the purchase you can write it to your database and you will be responsible for restoring their state regardless of the device they log in on.
Note that if you combine these approaches it would be possible, though unlikely, that a user could share a non-consumable purchase by using the same iTunes account but different accounts on your system by performing a Apple restore action. If you are managing your own inventory on a server, I recommend using consumables.
So the short answer is, if you want that information, you have to ask for it from the user.
[Answer is valid if you have users registered with your system]The transactions can be restored based on user who has logged into your system ,please refer to link here then you can map the information from your system to the product you are selling via in-app purchase.
My app got rejected because of restore button on non-renewing in app purchase. Do i have to remove restore button ? If i have to do so then how user will restore his purchases.Please help.
Non-renewing subscriptions are consumable. Therefore they cannot be restored. A restore button therefore makes no sense. You also need some kind of authentication/login system for the user. (See below for detailed explanations.)
Sources:
consumable vs. non-consumable in app purchases
non-renewing subscriptions
Update from WWDC2017: In Session #303 App Store Engineer Pete Hare explains at 3:00 that a non-renewing-subscription can be seen as "a consumable product with an expiry date on it"
There has been some debates in the comments wether non-renewing subscriptions are consumable or not, so I want to say something about it. "Consumable" means that you can consume them multiple times. Like "30 minutes of talking" in a voice-over-IP telephony application. On the other hand, there are non-consumables that you can buy only once. Like when you unlock all levels in a game app. You buy it once, and when you reset the device and redownload the app, you should be able to restore the purchase, so that you don't have to pay twice to unlock all levels. Furthermore, if you don't tap the restore-button in this case but just buy the "unlock all levels" package again, it works, but you will not be charged by apple a second time. That's why it is called non-consumable. It's some kind of metapher. An apple is "consumable". Once it is consumed, it is gone. A chair is non-consumable. You have it as long as you don't destroy it or give it away.
So, it makes sense to regard a non-renewing subscription as non-consumable. If you buy it a second time, you shouldn't pay twice, you should just use the old subscription you already have. If you reset the device, you should be able to restore the subscription once you re-download the app. The restoration is just not done by Apple but by the app itself.
I still regard non-renewing subscriptions as consumable though. I use a simple definition of consumable vs. non-consumable: An in-app-purchase is consumable, when, from the point of view of the StoreKit API, it can be purchased multiple times in the same week by the same user. All consumable IAP-items cannot be restored through the StoreKit. All non-consumable IAP-items can be restored through the StoreKit.
So, the developer is himself responsible for restoring the in-app-purchase of a non-renewing subscription, right? No, sorry. How would the app restore the in-app-purchase of a non-renewing subscription? Suppose I have an iPod and I subscribe to 1 month of listening to the Foo-radio. Now I want to also listen to the Foo-Radio on my iPad. Soo, I install the Foo-App on my iPad and tap the "restore" button. Well... what is the "restore" button supposed to do? How can it know if I already have purchased a "Foo"-subscription or not, and how long it will still be valid? Answer: it can not. This approach does not work.
In order for a non-renewing subscription to work, you have to login the user first, to tie the subscription to some online account. Username/Password, Open-ID, Login via Gmail, Facebook, etc. all would work. Then, when the user purchases an n-r subscription you have to store the fact that he subscribed on some server and link it to his account on the server. You also have to prevent the user from buying the n-r subscription when he is not already logged in. Let's continue with my iPod/iPad-example above. I download the app on my iPad, I login with Facebook, and voila, I can use the "Foo"-subscription now. There is no need for a "restore" button, because the app should check at login-time which subscriptions the user has.
There will be some additional problems to deal with. (1) For example, nothing prevents the user from logging in into 200 devices. Here the problem is not a user with 200 devices, but a university with 1000 students where 180 students share the same account. (2) If the server crashes, some people will probably lose their subscriptions. Problem (1) can potentially lead to decreased income. Problem (2) can lead to angry and unhappy customers.
From Apple: "Non-renewable subscriptions. Subscriptions that don’t involve delivering episodic content. Examples include access to a database of historic photos or a collection of flight maps. It’s your app’s responsibility to make the subscription available on all of the user’s devices and to let users restore the purchase. This product type is often used when your users already have an account on your server that you can use to identify them when restoring content. Expiration and the duration of the subscription are also left to your app (or your server) to implement and enforce." [Italics and bold added] https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/StoreKitGuide/Chapters/Products.html
Apple Reviewer's current-similar response about Non-Renewing Subscriptions "Your app offers Non-Renewing Subscriptions and this purchasability type must have its own restoring function - if you have removed it please re-implement it. Furthermore, your app must also offer a function, such as account creation, such that purchases can be tracked across all of a user's devices. Please implement a login feature as well as a restore mechanism prior to resubmitting your revised binary for review."
When a user of an iOS app purchases a non-consumable item, then installs that app on a new device, it is possible for them to again go through the standard purchasing logic for that item. The app store will ask them if they wish to spend $0.99 on the item, but if they click "Yes", it will inform that they already own that item, and ask if they wish to download it for free.
I would like to track new purchases in my analytics, and not have them conflated with re-purchased items that a user receives for free. Unfortunately, it seems that this behavior is indistinguishable from a genuinely new purchase, (to the client app). Apple seems to say as much: "Note: If the user attempts to purchase a product that’s already been purchased, rather than using your app’s restoration interface, the App Store creates a regular transaction instead of a restore transaction. The user isn’t charged again for the product. Treat these transactions the exact same way you treated the original transactions."
In discussing this issue, most posts (and Apple's documentation) say that I should offer a 'Restore Transactions' button to the users. I do offer this button, but it is always possible for users to circumvent this logic, and go through the traditional purchasing route. This is where my tracking will become inaccurate.
Do I have any options? Thanks!
I am pretty sure you don't have any options for tracking a new purchase versus downloading a previous purchase for free when a user does an in app purchase. I have looked into this for the same reason of analytics and I could not find a way to do it. IAP is set up to make sure that you honor purchases made by the same iTunes account on other devices.
If your users are required to have an account specific to your app to make a purchase you could use that to know if they already have made the purchase or not. But requiring an account for purchase can lower your conversion rate.
I am stuck with one of the in-app purchase rejection issue in my app and need some help on this.
What this in-app for?
In our app we have options for user to become premium user. A user can become premium user to enjoy some benefits and it is tied to time. There are two in-app products which defines them
One month premium service.
One year premium service.
Since these are time based service, user expects these service should be made available for that user once he/she purchase the product for the specified time, from all his/her other devices. In order to track whether the user is premium service user or not, once the purchase is done, the app writes a entry in server about premium service. So when user uses other device and logs in, he/she can enjoy the premium service without any issues. For this reason I created the above mentioned products as "consumable", thinking that it is controlled by our server there will be no issues. But apple came back with rejection and asked me to change the products to "non-renewing subscription".
Here is what apple says about this
We found that the Purchasability Type for one or more of your In App Purchase products was inappropriately set, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.
"Premium account service for 1 month and 1 year" IAPs are set to Consumable.
However, based on product functionality, it would be more appropriate to use the Non-Renewable Subscription In App Purchase type because the service offered by your application requires the user to make an advance payment to access the content or receive the service.
The Purchasability type cannot be changed once an In App Purchase product has been created. Therefore, you will need to create a new In App Purchase product with the correct Purchasability Type. To create a new In App Purchase in iTunes Connect, go to Manage Your In App Purchases, select your app, and click "Create New". The current product will show in iTunes Connect as "Rejected".
Non-Renewable Subscription content must be made available to all iOS devices owned by a single user, as indicated in Guideline 11.6 of the App Store Review Guidelines:
11.6 Content subscriptions using IAP must last a minimum of 7 days and be available to the user from all of their iOS devices
If you choose to use user registration to meet this requirement, please keep in mind that it is not appropriate to require user registration. Such user registration must be made optional. It would be appropriate to make it clear to the user that only by registering will they be able to access the content from all of their iOS devices; and to provide them a way to register later, if they wish to access the content on their other iOS devices at a future time.
For more information about Purchasability Type, please to refer to the iTunes Connect Developer Guide.
Now I have created new in-app products which are non-renewing. But this works the same way as I mentioned earlier, i.e. the server keeps track of whether user is premium user or not, expiry date. When user goes to other device and does login, the app comes to know whether user is premium or not and based on that app works.
But I have couple of questions on this,
Should I need to provide the "Restore" button in the app? If so what is the purpose and how it works?
Since the user can access this service only after doing login to the app (it is different from app store account). Will these two logins make any issue?
Please share your valuable inputs.
It is highly unlikely that the user will end up in a situation where they won't be able to use your app unless they restore their purchases, however it is still possible. Imagine your server goes down for a day and during that day some user purchases a subscription, gets a new iPhone, installs your app on the new device and then wipes their old iPhone. I can think of a couple of other, equally unlikely, but still possible situations (Apple receipt validation server going down, etc) in which the purchase receipt will get lost in transit. It's best to provide the button, and if Apple thinks that you need it in your app, you will have a hard time convincing them otherwise.
If by "two logins" you mean user having to log in to your system and then log in to the App Store to purchase the subscription, that should not be a problem.
I recommend you make the changes Apple requested to the Purchasability Type and then re-submit. If you need to clarify a lack of a restore button put it in the notes for the reviewer
I have a magazine app, and I want to provide users a one year auto-renewable subscription, and for non-subscribed users, they can use non-consumable IAPs to pay for each issue and then download it. What is the best way to implement it?
For auto-renewable subscription I don't think it's a problem. I can follow the tutorial at http://www.viggiosoft.com/blog/blog/2011/10/29/at-newsstand-and-subscriptions/ to finish this part. But for the non-consumable IAP part, I'm not sure. Do I need to add all the non-consumable IAPs for future issues before I submit the app? If I do this, how could Apple review my IAPs, because the future issues are not prepared at the reviewing time. Or, can I add non-consumable IAPs after my app is published to the App store? For example, every time when a new issue is ready in our server, we add a new non-soncumable IAP in iTC, and also set the product id to the issue in the server. When the non-subscribed user click that issue, the purchase for the specified product id will start. Is it possible?
After some research I found that the best way to implement it is to set up a new non-consumable IAP at each time when you want to publish a new issue.
The only problem is that, each IAP needs to be submitted for review, and before it is approved, the users who try to buy the issue will get an error message: "Cannot connect to the iTunes store". I haven't figured out how to know that the IAP is in review, so I can popup a nicer message like "Issue is review, please wait" other than a confusing error message.
I have a magazine app, and I want to provide users a one year
auto-renewable subscription, and for non-subscribed users, they can
use non-consumable IAPs to pay for each issue and then download it.
What is the best way to implement it?
You should accept your solution, but here is another case, maybe it helps you or others:
The subscribers can have they magazines, which are not in at iTunes Server, but at your hosting. Those magazines not need to bypass the apple review.
It depends whether you want a user to be able to permanently have a record stored in their app receipt of the issues they have bought. You might want this, if you want a user to be able to delete the app, with all associated content, then later re-install the app, and be able to download the specific back issues they purchased previously—all without having any user account on your own server. The use of a non-consumable in-app purchase also enables you to give them access to these issues across multiple devices that are signed in to that Apple ID, again without having to run your own user account-server combination to track purchased issues.
If these features don't matter to you, then there is a solution you could consider that is much simpler where you don't have to keep creating new in-app purchase products. Have a consumable in-app purchase product that is called something like Purchase One Issue. When a person buys this product, they get one credit and they can use this to select the issue they wish to be given access to. Your app then gives them access to that issue. You could also of course reverse this process in the UX: they pick the issue, click buy, you send them into the purchase process for the Purchase One Issue product, and you automatically give them access to the selected issue since they already selected it.
Note: consumable in-app purchases are not stored in the app receipt, so a user couldn't use this approach to 'restore previous purchases'. In scenarios where this is acceptable however, this is a much less labour intensive approach once set up.