I'm confused on how subscriptions work. Let's say I have add a subscription for for my magazine. It's for a whole year. My magazine is released on a quarterly basis. Now this is what confuses me:
Does the actual content, ie the magazine issues, have to be created as a Non-Consumable item?
The only reason you'd need a separate non-consumable item for each issue is if you wanted to offer individual issues for sale outside of a subscription. Presumably you'd hide these individual sale-items from subscribers since they have no need to purchase them.
Once the user has a subscription it becomes your responsibility to verify that the subscription is current and to download your new content to the app. If you save the transaction receipt from the subscription purchase then you can resubmit that to Apple each quarter and validate it prior to downloading content to the app.
Related
My application had updated subscription prices.
However, in the details of our app in the app store, you can still see all existing subscription prices.
The question is: How can I make visible only the prices we charge today?
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If I uncheck the "Cleared for Sale" as #PaulSchröder suggest.
When old subscribers complete their subscription time. Will they be able to automatically renew (old price) or will they be canceled (since this subscription no longer exists)?
You need to go to your subscription in App Store Connect and uncheck the "Cleared for Sale" checkbox (it is next to the Product-id). Unfortunately this can only do the Account Holder.
According to this post from PBK in Apples developer forum (third post), after unchecking the checkbox, it should open a dialog stating the following:
Your in-app purchase will be removed from sale on the App Store and discontinued as an auto-renewable subscription. Existing subscribers won’t be able to renew this subscription. To view the number of existing subscribers, go to Sales and Trends.
By selecting this checkbox and clicking Remove from Sale, you agree to provide the full amount of content to eligible subscribers through November 30, 2019. If you’re unable to do this, you allow Apple to refund the full amount or portion of the price paid by the user for that subscription.
So old subscribers will be affected in the way that their subscription won't re-new.
I am having a programmer code my iOS app, which he has done great. However, due to a new competitor we have decided to change from our current revenue model with In-App Purchases as subscription based to just having users pay a one-time fee. He tells me it'll take a lot of hours to make that change. Is it really true that there is no easy way around changing the code from having renewable purchases to simply have one-time purchases?
Well, this is a very objective question. It's impossible to tell you with any certainty without reviewing the actual code, but here are a few of the obstacles your developer may face:
The methods to buy a subscription is slightly different to buying a non-consumable product, however the app will need to continue to provide content users who are currently paying for a subscription. There is no way to change a subscription to a non-consumable product in iTunes Connect, and you may need to, or should ask and remind the user to cancel their subscription to prevent further renewals (you can't do this yourself or in the app, you can only link to the subscriptions page in their iTunes settings).
The app will need to check for either the subscription product (active or expired) or the non-consumable product has been purchased in order to provide the content. Support for this will need to be on the start of the app, purchase of a product and on the restore in-app purchases function.
There may be further complexities too, particularly if your app uses a backend API that syncs purchase information with a user account.
In conclusion, it's non-trivial, if your developer says it will take a lot of hours, I would be inclined to believe him.
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.
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.
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.