i am developing an iDevice chat application. The user of this application can use it free for 1 week, but after the trial period is over, the user needs to make an in-app purchase for $1.99 to continue using the app, or it will be disabled. Does Apple accept such a condition, and if so how do I implement it? Please help.
Thanks!
Apple will not accept it. App Store Review Guidelines state that:
Apps containing "rental" content or services that expire after a limited time are not permitted
Apps that are "beta", "demo", "trial", or "test" versions are not permitted
Based on your description, the app will be a trial one after expiration, so it will become unusable, which is not allowed.
In order to avoid the app to be rejected for the reasons above, you should provide for the app at least a minimum functionality after the trial period expires. E.g. you can offer unlimited chat messages by IAP and, for people that don't unlock this feature, you can offer a maximum of 10 or so messages per day, or intermix messages with ads.
Related
I want to offer a free trial and the option to BUY (Non-Consumable In-App Purchase) on my ios app. I can see that I can offer a trial and then SUBSCRIBE (Auto-Renewable Subscription), but I personally don't like having to pay over and over for a simple app, but I do want to try it first. Is there a way to achieve the same thing when setting the option to buy? I realize I could track the first usage after download, but this presents a couple of issues:
Will Apple now approve apps for a trial period - previously they have been rejected, but that was before IAP and subscribe was available at all!
How do I prevent the user deleting the app (and any data I might store to know they have activated a trial) and then downloading again?
Or do I have to succumb to the pernicious "subscribe" model or release a "light" version with an upgrade? The last time I went "light", Apple insisted I make so much functionality available, I may well have not bothered with the full version - but that was a while ago.
Apple now allows you to add a free trial for Non-Subscription apps. It's a 0 price plan for fixed days. After this trial expires, you can show the non-subscription plan for purchase. The downside is user need to do a purchase again after trials end. But offering a free trial is a good user experience.
Non-subscription apps may offer a free time-based trial period before
presenting a full unlock option by setting up a Non-Consumable IAP
item at Price Tier 0 that follows the naming convention: "14-day
Trial." Prior to the start of the trial, your app must clearly
identify its duration, the content or services that will no longer be
accessible when the trial ends, and any downstream charges the user
would need to pay for full functionality.
Dont prevent the user from deleting the app. Just store the data online when user hits the trial button, you can store a flag in the web services which can be zero or one based on the user.
One way you could do this if you only care about iOS 11 is using the new DeviceCheck API. It's pretty limited in functionality (it lets you track 2 bits, or 4 cases, total) but should persist between install.
I am developing an app for a client, where he wishes the app to be able to have users to sign up and try out the app for 14 days, after which they have to make a purchase to continue using the app.
My client does not want to absorb Apple's 30% cut for using Apple's in-app purchase mechanism. Initially I suggested implementing a 3rd party payment gateway, but it seems that Apple does not allow app that unlocks app functionalities via a 3rd party payment gateway.
My question is this: if we submit the app that allows users to sign up and login, but only use the app for 14 days without any form of payment mechanisms in the app to allow the user to continue using the app, will the app be rejected? As I was thinking to just have the payment gateway on a website, and during user sign-up, send the user an email informing them that they can go to the website to make a payment.
I know that Apple rejects trial/demo apps, but this is technically a full fledged app where users that purchased via the website will be able to login and perform full functionality. I will also provide Apple with a test account that is fully functional.
Thanks!
Short answer: Apple will reject you if you allow signups and block functionality after a trial period without allowing IAP. Period.
I have first hand knowledge of this, shameless plug in 3..2..1.., Simple In/Out offers a 45 day free trial, after which users are blocked from using the app. In the early days, we escaped Apple's ban hammer by being small and using a blessed trial account that never expired. Apple would review using test account, never see rejection or blocked alerts and prompts to sign up on our website. That did change one day after requesting an expedited review. We got a lot more scrutiny and they rejected us for essentially steering users to our website for subscribing.
The IAP for trials and subscriptions other than magazines is pretty terrible. It is essentially designed for magazines, and that's it. So beware going in. What we eventually did was allow users to subscribe in the app using IAP. Our server manages who is subscribed and who isn't. It also manages which subscription they have (IAP or our own). There is a lot of weird receipt checks you need to do to manage the subscription from Apple. The user is also stuck if they want to change to a bigger/lower subscription plan. Which kinda works for us because the only way to do it is email us, in which we can convert from IAP (-30%) to our own (-2.5% for card processing).
The moral of this story is that if you plan on allowing users to create accounts inside your app, then you will most likely be obligated to offer subscriptions via IAP. If you want to avoid IAP, then you will also need to strip any references to your website from your app and description. They will bust you on meta if you try and steer them around the IAP process. Once we added IAP, we were allowed to point everyone to our website for "more information" in which we are able to convert more users to our own subscription rather than IAP. Right now, our number of our own subscribers vs. Apple is about 75:1. So we don't lose much over the signups we get from Apple.
I believe this should be perfectly fine as long as the 14 day "trial" is a fully functional version of the app.
Your model seems similar to Spotify. Pay for subscription on their website, but use the service in the app.
These resources may help:
https://news.layervault.com/stories/9695-how-do-apps-like-lyft-uber-airbnb-skirt-apples-30-cut-on-each-transaction
http://www.quora.com/How-does-Apple-define-digital-content-when-taking-its-30-cut
I am planing to publish an iOS app. App should be Free for first 1 month from installation in the Device. Once the 1 month period is over , user has to subscribe to use the application every month by paying some X amount.
1) Will apple allows such applications ?
2) If allows, how to achieve this kind of Payments ?
3) How to prevent user to access the app after 1 month. (Calculation of the Days)?
4) Should i reinstall the app after subscription ?
IAP is supposed to be used to provide additional content and features to an already functional app.
If you render your app useless or without functionality after a month, it will probably be rejected, or banned after approved. I believe you can't have an app that will simply say "Your trial expired.".
In my opinion, you would need to think of a functionality that you can provide to all users, regardless of they paying for it or not, and have the premium or the extra functionality purchased as a In-App Purchase.
Apple does not allow free trials in the app store. If you try to do this, your app will get rejected. Still, there is one category of app where Apple does allow a free trial: apps with auto-renewing subscriptions. These were originally intended for (and only allowed with) Newsstand apps where the subscription is for getting new content such as magazine editions etc.
Apple recently allowed the use of auto-renewing subscriptions in non-Newsstand apps but it's still a very grey area as to what exactly Apple will allow with these. Usually the subscription will have to provide some kind of periodic new content in your app. I agree with those who recommend against using them.
I am implementing an App with in app purchase of type:non-renewing subscriptions.
according to apple documents:
If your app uses non-renewing subscriptions, your app is responsible for the restoration process.
FROM HERE
My question is, if the restoring is mandatory by apple, how to prevent thousands of users sharing one apple account with only one description?
For example, if in my app, you pay $0.99 that can use this app for 10 days, from apple's requirements, the user must be able to use app within 10 days on any his/her devices, with simply enter the credentials. However, if the user set a simple account credentials and share it with 100 people, then, the 100 people don't have to buy the subscription anymore and can use the app free during the 10 days.
Some people keep assert that people won't share their account... how do you know that? i saw people register some apple id exclusive for sharing apps and games, and only need to pay once.
Besides, i don't implement my own server and my App don't need one. Is there a way to prevent this?
Thanks in advance
Since non-renewing subscriptions seem to require the app (developer) to use a separate (non-Apple) server to deal with the restore process (for example, see How to support multiple devices with non-renewing In-App Purchase?), why not have that server keep track of the number of restores per "user"? Then you could impose a maximum number of restores per "user". Each installed app that has made a purchase could have its own unique_token (for example, see app rejected.how to track user non-renewing subscription). The user would then have to have a username/password, which would be associated with the unique_token, in order to do a restore (for example, see Restore transactions for Non-renewing subscriptions without registration; and see Registration should be always optional on non-renewing subscription?).
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.