I am developing he application which delivers audio clips as channel basis media over http streaming.
I am planing to use Auto-Renewable Subscriptions in the app and they are renewing on monhly basis as we are updating the contents(Audio clips) of the channel frequently.
I was going through the Apple policy for auto renwing subscription which is,
Definition
Auto-renewable subscriptions allow users to purchase dynamic content, such as magazine subscriptions, for a set duration of time. Subscriptions renew automatically unless the user opts out of the renewal. If the content you want offer doesn’t fit what’s outlined in the App Review Guidelines, consider offering the content through a non-renewing subscription.
Auto-renewable subscriptions can include an incentive to customers who share their contact information with you.
Review Guideline
11.15. Apps may only use auto-renewing subscriptions for periodicals (newspapers, magazines), business Apps (enterprise, productivity, professional creative, cloud storage), and media Apps (video, audio, voice), or the App will be rejected
Its very confusing which method to use in my app (Auto-Renewing or Non-Renewing)
hense there are different types of thoughts/information shared on the internet.
So, my question is which method is appropriate to my app?
Can my product will get approval or not if I stick to use Auto-Renewable Subscriptions?
Further, if theres any complete tutorial/sample app for auto-renewable subscriptions please share with me.
Thanks
You can use the Auto-Renewable Subscriptions if you are going to change the content on certain time period basis.
But if this thing is going to be stopped in future then this way will not work for you. Any time Apple reject your application if he get complaints from any user.
To avoid this I will suggest to go with the Non-Renewing Subscription in that you are the one who is going to manage everything by your own. Apple will only provide facility to do transaction only. Rest of the things like management of time period will be on your hands only. In this case your application will not be rejected by Apple anytime in future as well.
Refer this link for sample code which manages everything..
Related
My application currently allows the user to subscribe to our service using in-app purchase auto-renewable subscription. The app provides images, 12 images per month, and every month the user needs to renew his/her subscription to see the new content.
I haven't work on the auto-renewable model before, so I have built a model to validate the receipt and it works, but should I check if the user subscription expired or not, and, if so, how?
Also, does the app store only allow magazines and newspaper items to be auto-renewable?
I haven't worked on the auto-renewable model before, so any help on this matter would be highly appreciated.
When a user signs up for an auto-renewable subscription, they continue to be charged until they manually cancel it. This is obviously great from a developer’s point of view, because it takes a lot more effort to cancel something than to just let it continue.
You might already be familiar with a class of apps that use auto-renewable subscriptions already: Newsstand.
Newsstand was first introduced in iOS 5, and allows content providers to easily distribute their newspapers and magazines. With it, Apple introduced the auto-renewable subscription model, which allows you to set a subscription duration and manage renewals automatically through the StoreKit framework.
However, Apple has placed some very strict rules around auto-renewable subscriptions, meaning their usage is (usually) exclusive to Newsstand apps.
So sadly, if you want to provide content or features for a limited duration, outside of Newsstand, then your only option is to use non-renewing subscriptions.
found that here: http://www.raywenderlich.com/36270/in-app-purchases-non-renewing-subscription-tutorial
An auto-renewable subscription is an iOS In-App Purchase category that allows an app to provide and charge for content or features over a set amount of time.
Hear is a very useful link!. It provides almost every details about auto renewable subscription
Auto-Renewable In-App purchases continues charging the user (weekly/monthly/yearly etc.) until they cancel it.
You can check if the subscription has expired using the a validated receipt. It contains subscription expiration date and time.
If you want to lock content if subscription has not renewed, you may want to check receipt info against current date/time, on applicationDidBecomeActive delegate. There are open source libraries that lets you verify receipts locally as well.
And any kind of app can have Auto-Renewable In-App purchases, not just newsstand apps.
My application is a web-service client. Service has a paid one month subscription. I want to implement subscription payment with IAP. At first I think to implement it as Auto-Renewable Subscription but after reading several posts about it drawbacks (rejecting from the App Store because the content is not a digital content or something like this) I decided to make Non-renewable subscription - but it also has some drawbacks (hard to sync it, optional registration). In on SO post - developer wrote that his app was rejected from the App Store when he made iCloud synchronization.
So can someone with good production experience wrote all pros and cons of both Auto-Renewable Subscriptions and Non-renewable? What should I choose for the one-month subscription to the medical web-service? Thanks
I do not have experience with auto-renewable subscriptions, but I do have extensive experience with IAP and non-renewable subscriptions. I use non-renewable subscriptions for a service that isn't a digital download.
Renewable Subscription Cons
User has to manually renew each month.
You will probably want to consider longer subscription periods. My app has 2 month and 1 year.
Renewable Subscription Pros
Users only pay for what they use. You can turn this to your advantage.
My own app saw a good increase in conversation rates when I explained that subscriptions do not auto renew and so they did not need to worry about canceling the subscription.
You can change the price!
Much more flexibility about how you can use it.
It has the standard popups during purchase. You will have a better conversation rate from the user hitting the buy button to them following through with the purchase.
Auto-Renewable Cons
LOTS of regulations about what you can do with it.
It is very possible that you won't be able to use auto-renewable in your situation.
Only the user can cancel their subscription. You can't add an easy way to do this into your app and keep your users happy.
The purchase process has extra steps that ask the user if they want to share their information with the publisher.
There is no API to know when the subscription will end.
You will have more negative reviews.
Auto-Renewable Pros
Users don't have to manually renew.
You have a more guaranteed income per month.
You will need to sync the subscriptions between devices. I use Parse.com as my backend. Basically, before making an IAP transaction as complete I push the data to parse. Users can then pull that data down onto their device to sync the subscriptions. Parse lets you save the transaction for users with and without accounts. So it has the benefit of giving you real time sales information.
EDIT: Auto Renewable Subscriptions will Change This Fall
Auto renewable subscriptions are drastically changing this Fall (2016). Pretty much every reason not to use auto renewable is going away. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/whats-new/
I had exactly the same experience with a auto-renewable subscription (an app that gives access to a specific information while subscription is active). The app was rejected because "app is not suited for auto-renewable subscriptions, and their recommendation was to switch to non-renewable subscription, and that is what I did.
After that, the app was rejected because there was no way to transfer the subscription between user's devices or after device reset. What I did, was to set up an user/password authentication system and allow up to 5 devices to connect at the same time with one user/password combination and to allow to extend the subscription from any of that user's devices. This solution was approved (back when iOS 5 was the latest version) and is still working.
In my app, I would like users to buy a subscription for Backup, Sync, and more.
so I found out that Apple offer two kinds of subscription IAP:
Non Renewable Subscription
Auto Renewable Subscription
which should I use, given that I don't have a server, and I rely on iCloud for the sync?
Auto-renewable in-app purchase are allowed only if your app provide new content each time (or often) the user pays. (like provide new magazine, video...)
If your purpose is to do a premium subscription which give access to so premium functions (so no logic of periodical new content), Apple will reject your app.
You will find much more explanations on the subject here: The limited world of auto-renewable subscriptions
I don't know much about this, but I think it is quite difficult to get Apple to accept an auto-renewable subscription for anything but Newsstand apps. For other use cases, I think they prefer you to adopt the non-renewable subscription.
You could also consider a one time payment to 'unlock' the feature, rather than a subscription, since you aren't actually paying any ongoing costs (e.g. storing data).
I have a confusion regarding subscription in the app. I want to upload my app to the app store with some price tier. I want user to pay every month some subscription fee to use complete functionality of the app. I have seen apps that are available as free with subscription but my app will be paid with subscription.
Will Apple reject my app?
I have already asked this question on Apple developer forum. Here is the link:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5134928
Looking at the App Store Review Guidelines, the only rule I see that could affect you is:
11.15 Apps may only use auto renewing subscriptions for periodicals (newspapers, magazines), business Apps (enterprise, productivity,
professional creative, cloud storage) and media Apps (video, audio,
voice), or the App will be rejected.
I guess you have to determine if you app fits in one of these categories. I always say that Apple can do whatever they want, so the only 100% way to know if you'll be rejected is to submit it. The review process is much faster than it used to be, so it shouldn't set you back more than a week.
Other subscription-related rules
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
That's a straightforward rule.
11.12 Apps offering subscriptions must do so using IAP, Apple will share the same 70/30 revenue split with developers for these
purchases, as set forth in the Developer Program License Agreement.
If you want someone to subscribe within the app, you have to give Apple their cut by using IAP. Otherwise, you need your own website for sign-up, à la Netflix.
11.13 Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the App, such as a “buy” button that goes
to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected
When you set up your own website for sign-ups, you can't even link to it. People have to know about it before using your app.
Although I searched a lot on this site and used Google as well, I cannot find a good solution for my problem.
I'm creating an app that offers a paid web service as an option. I would like give away a initial period of this service and link this to the purchase date of the app.
The Daily app is doing something similar. After downloading the app, you can read The Daily for two weeks for free. After that time, you have to subscribe.
Your help would be highly appreciated!
From Apple's developer guidelines:
Apps using IAP to purchase physical goods or goods and services used outside of the application will be rejected
If your premium web service is at all useable outside the app itself, in-app-purchase won't be a solution, so you'll have to implement the logic on your server, based on user names, etc.
If, however, it's simply a web service that iOS accesses—think if Instagram offered a paid upgrade in the days before their Android app—then you could use IAP subscriptions to do the trick. Again, from Apple's documentation:
Auto-renewable subscriptions are delivered to all of a user’s devices in the same way as non-consumable products. However, auto-renewable subscriptions differ in other ways. When you create an auto-renewable subscription in iTunes Connect, you choose the duration of the subscription. The App Store automatically renews the subscription each time its term expires. If the user chooses to not allow the subscription to be renewed, the user’s access to the subscription is revoked after the subscription expires. Your application is responsible for validating whether a subscription is currently active and can also receive an updated receipt for the most recent transaction.
As a side note, it looks like Apple are about to implement free trials, but haven't quite done it yet (there are some interesting hints in some of the documentation, but there's not an option when creating an IAP subscription yet).
I suggest you put some UI in that invites users to subscribe to the free service, and save that YES/NO answer along with the [NSDate date] in a defaults variable synced to iCloud. This means that it will be tied to their Apple ID, and can't easily be deleted by removing the app—next time they install it, you can restore that preference key.
Then, once the trial period is up, bring up your custom UI (since all the IAP UI is custom!) that gives people the chance to subscribe to an ongoing service using the auto-renewable subscription.