I have an app in the iTunes store that has full functionality. I attempted to release a Free version which contains half of the functionality, and contains a link to the full version if the user tries to use the other functions.
Apple rejected the app on the basis that rather than having two apps, I ought to have the main app released for free and have the extra functions unlockable using in-app purchasing.
That's fine; I can do this. The only problem is that since I released the full version initially, some people have already paid for and downloaded the full version. When I update this app so that it is free, it will be restricted by default. Those users that have paid for the full version will have lost the functionality they've paid for.
I don't really want to release a second version of the app since I intend on continuing to update the app and managing two release streams would be unwieldy.
Is it possible to somehow offer for free the in-app purchase to those users that have already bought the full version of my app when I update the app to the new (free, in-app supported) version?
Edit: An (unpreferred) alternative would be a way of refunding the purchases to the original buyers, along with a note explaining why. Any ideas how?
What I'd do is add a already paid option within the application itself, and then allow users to enter a license code, or email address depending what you prefer, Which you can automatically issue from their contact details if you have them or ask them to contact you if you don't, which most will as they have paid.
Now as far as the licensing and the verification of these codes you could setup a cheap VPS which verify s the code and only activates with codes that you have entered on the server, meaning you won't fall victim of Keygeners.
Just my 2 cents.
If your app doesn't currently have a username/password registration, I would suggest releasing an update to the paid app that explains to your users on an initial popup view something like:
Thank you for supporting our app. Due to changes in Apple's policies, we will be converting this app into a free app with in-app upgrades. Since you already purchased the full app, you will be awarded all features! Please input an [email_address or username] so that we can provide a painless transition.
If your app has a user login mechanism already in place (username/password), then just store those details and have the user log in later in the "free" app to unlock all of the features.
Obviously, both of these suggestions require a backend for validation, but shouldn't be too difficult to create that.
This is tricky due to section 3.3.3 of the license agreement and Attachment 2. I'm not a lawyer so I'll save my interpretation but, read them.
Another option would be to make the free version a new, different app and leave the original one in the store but unavailable. Then you can still publish updates to it but new users won't see it. Apple would probably allow this considering you are still only presenting one app to new users. The downsides are (1) you have to maintain two versions and (2) you have to start over in terms of reviews etc.
Related
We have a paid iOS application in the AppStore currently. We are planning to convert it to a free application with in-app purchases. We would want to make the in-app purchases free to the users who have already paid for the application in the previous version. I think this can be done via App Receipt Validation. But will the receipt get updated once the application is converted from paid to free and will the purchase details get lost?
If you convert your app from paid to free, you are still able to inspect the receipt and see which version was originally downloaded and act accordingly.
When we did this in one of our titles, we implemented a three tier system:
We bumped the version of the save file. Any time we promoted from a save file with version <= X (where X is the last one that was on the premium version) we would award the appropriate IAPs (in our case we gave them a coin doubler, an ad disabler and a chunk of coins). You should use this simple mechanism for the majority of the users because receipt checking can require an internet connection, and your users might not be online the first time they boot after an update.
We had a 'restore IAP' button. You need this anyway on iOS if you have any non-consumable IAPs, but we additionally added a check of the App Store receipt which lets you discover whether or not the user originally paid for the game. Here's the tutorial we based our code on, we chose the easy way, but you might need to weigh that up against piracy concerns.
Our reimbursement system also checks a file that we host, which can give out extra coins/doubler unlocks/ad removers. If the receipt checking failed (we supported pre-iOS 7 so we couldn't rely on receipt checking APIs) then we could reimburse users that way if they contacted us. This is a good idea anyway, with luck you'll have a lot more users after you go free, which means more people who will discover some progress-losing bug in your app - it's good to be able to give them stuff in return.
Edit: I'd also recommend keeping track of the user's category in the save file. So, you might have 'free' users who have never paid anything, 'paid' users who downloaded for free but have bought some IAPs, 'premium' users who bought your app when it was paid, and 'premium+' users who bought your app when it was paid AND have since bought IAPs. Even if you don't need this info immediately, it's worth tracking for analytics and so that you can reward your old premium customers with free content in the future if you decide to do so.
I have Freemium apps in the AppStore. Originally it was Paid but I wanted to see if Freemium versions make any difference in Downloads and Sales. It did make difference - number of downloads increased by 10 times but number of purchases reduced by 2 times. So Freemium modal didn't work for me. I want to change back to Paid.
I do not want to create other versions of the Apps as I have really good reviews on all Apps which I don't want to miss. Can someone please help me if it is possible to convert my Apps to Paid and do not allow people to use full functionality who has already downloaded apps but haven't paid?
I will somehow need to detect they have been using old app and not paid. I can do it by releasing an update that store key in the Keychain but I don't understand hoe would those users be able to pay at all as Apple doesn't charge for the App as it is already downloaded in the past, and they won't be able to use full features as they downloaded freemium app....arghhhhh!!! Not sure if this is even possible but want to hear some of yours thought.
I believe paid upgrades are not possible, you will lose profit and you can't do anything about it unless you are willing to create a new app to replace the old one. The move from paid to fremium is a permanent one, you cannot force existing users to pay after the app is free.
It is possible to move back to Paid, without giving the previous Freemium users the full version.
To do this, you have to:
Know the last version of your app that was Paid
Check the user's purchase receipt (refresh receipt if necessary from Apple)
Know whether the user has made any in-app purchases during the Freemium period (e.g. every time the user upgraded, you added an 'Upgraded' item to their keychain)
Switch to Paid
If you have this information, you go ahead and switch your app back to Paid and:
Check whether they have made any in-app purchases (via e.g. their keychain 'Upgraded' flag). If they have, give them the functionality - easy. If they haven't then go to the next step.
Check the user receipt to see what version/date of the app they first downloaded. If it is during the Paid period, upgrade them to full version. If it is not, and the user has not made an in-app purchase, keep them at Freemium.
Disadvantages
There are 2 disadvantages I can see with this approach:
Any user that downloads the app after Freemium will need access to the Internet for you to confirm their receipt. This means the user might download the full version, then at a later time when they are not connected to the Internet, open the app only to find that they have to Upgrade. Of course once they connect to the Internet and their receipt is validated, they will be upgraded, but in the meantime you might get some bad reviews and angry customers.
Your app will now be a Paid app that has In-App purchases. This may confuse users thinking that if they buy your app, they will have to further upgrade via in-app purchases... and put them off.
Of course the advantage is that your Freemium users will stay freemium :)
I have done this myself, and had no problems with the process.
I created an app which is a paid app. Now I want to make it free so more user can download the app and use in app purchase to limit some features. But some user already paid to buy my app. How can I implement in app purchase for new user at the same time keep full feature access to old user?
If you connect to your server for registering user info, you can always create an API which executes on app launch to verify that user is full access user or not.
But I am afraid your case is not the above one.
In that case you would require to sync your data (some encrypted key in this context) with iCloud and when application is launched you can verify the type of user.
Using data in iCloud is more safer as compared to keychain as it covers device format scenario. But definitely not foolproof.
Other solution can be using Apple Purchase Receipt to verify the version of previous purchase. But this is only supported since iOS7.
Checkout some opensource libs to understand the parsing of receipts:
https://github.com/rmaddy/VerifyStoreReceiptiOS
So combining multiple strategies is the only answer for your question.
You can do this by reading the App Store receipt. The receipt contains the version number and date of the original purchase.
There are two main caveats: first, this only works on iOS 7 and above. Secondly, Apple don't include code for parsing the receipt (so it's not too easy for users to hack I understand). There are, however, onen source libraries, though using a common one will be less secure.
There are no perfect solutions to this scenario.
Suggestion 1:
Roll out one last paid update. In this update, use keychain to store those IAP flags. Then in the free version, check for these flags in keychain. This will work even if app was deleted and reinstalled with the free version later. But it will not work if the device is being reset completely whether due to some iOS version updates or user's unless a backup and restore also is involved.
Suggestion 2:
Not quite a suggestion. But I have seen similar apps on AppStore have just rollout free version. Then app incurred bad reviews from those previous users!
This is a simple example, but if you're working with a database on a server (not on the phone itself), can't you use a boolean for each feature you plan on selling, and just set that boolean to true for all users currently in the database. This is assuming true means they've bought the feature, and false means they haven't bought it.
You could run this query once after releasing your updated app, and then every user after that would have a default value of false for these features you're selling.
In iOS, is there a way to figure out the version of app the user originally bought from?
For example, what if i want to implement some special behavior only for user who purchased v1.0. one obvious "feature" is disable in-app purchase so they can enjoy the rest without paying? I thought up some ways to do it but unfortunately, it wont survive the test if the user deleted the app and also i didnt user icloud early enough to persist this metadata.
Unfortunately this can't be done. At least not in any perfect manner. There is no API to get any details about the user and their purchase. If your 1.0 version of the app doesn't already persist some meaningful clue, your only solutions would be partial at best.
Your issue is made worse if you already have newer versions of the app out (such as 1.1) and you want to add this new feature to a newer version (1.2 or 2.0). There is no way to know if anyone ever had 1.0.
You basically have two options:
Leave it alone. You can't convert a paid app to a free-with-IAP app without hurting at least some portion of your existing customers. If anything, leave the app paid but add IAP for any new functionality. This way, everyone pays the same for the base app and everyone has the option to pay more, through IAP, for additional features.
Depending on your ethics and the number of existing customers, you could just make the switch and make existing customers pay again for functionality they already paid for. Obviously, this is a bad idea but it is an option.
We have two Apps live on the Appstore. One for free, and one full featured version which is offered to buy. The free app has a In-App-Store so the user may update to the full featured version.
Actually I am thinking about stoping development of the full featured App (which is identical
to the free one at code level). We don't want to blame our customers. It would be nice to give them a redemption code for the free app to unlock all features. All features which will be unlocked this way are bound to the redemption code. All customers who did In-App purchases are "registered" by Apple, so the purchase will be remembered for all devices. Finally all In-App customers would have an advantage over the Pro-Version customers, which is not acceptable for us.
Is it possible to have one (hidden) free In-App purchase, which the user could "buy" if the redemption code is working? Maybe a better question is: What is the best practice for putting two similar Apps together without bugging the customers?
Not possible, I'm afraid. There is no good solution as far as I am aware (I still have a paid and a "lite" version for this reason).
You could raise a bug report with Apple (http://bugreporter.apple.com) but there's no saying if of when they'll ever make a change.
How about this idea:
Add a URL scheme to your lite app which, when invoked, enables the full featured version.
In your next update for the paid app add a button to "Enable all features in the lite version" that invokes that URL scheme (UIApplication's openURL:). This will open the lite app which will then enable all features.
One problem: if somebody else figures out what that URL scheme is, he could write a simple little app that just uses that URL scheme to enable the features in your lite app. Which means that person could get all the features without ever buying your paid app.
To prevent this I would implement this URL scheme in such a way that it only works when called with a secret parameter, maybe the hash of the device's MAC address and a salt. (Not sure if this is the best way, but that would be my first idea)