I wonder if there is any policy for free app publishing but with monthly charge, equal to Netflix and Spotify, both in PlayStore and AppStore.
Is there any specific policy for this case in the two stores mentioned?
Thank you.
In Google Play it is actively encouraged as a way to monetize your app. And they provide APIs for doing it:
Overview documentation is here
Related
I'm developing an iPhone app to share locally with friends. I need a way to get it on their phones, and this is the only free way I know, but I'm not sure how do it. Thanks.
Apple does not allow you to simply Download apps from your website. Apple is much more strict in how you can download apps and does not allow this.
However the cost is $99 USD per year for a developer account:
The Apple Developer Program is 99 USD per membership year or in local currency where available.
Which you can enroll here.
This account gives you many features that you don't get with a standard Apple ID including:
App distribution
Access to beta releases
Safari extentions
However if you would rather choose to make an Android App you have a number of bonus features that you would not get if you went with Apple:
You dont need to pay $99 USD per year. Google only requires you to pay a one time fee of $25 USD for a "Publisher Account".
Pay a $25 USD registration fee using Google payments. If you don't have a Google payments account, you can quickly set one up during the process.
And if you want any sort of payment.. ie: paid apps, in app-purchases, etc. It seems that google allows you to set up a merchant account for free.
However keep in mind: Android doesn't requre you to publish your app to test it. And you also don't need a "Publisher Account" to test apps on your phone or device! You can do that for free on any Android phone.
This means that you can put you apk onto your website and android users can download and install it!
However if you want to do it with Apple you need a "Developer Account" as far as I know at least. I don't think there is any way to get your app able to download for free (however I have not done much research on this topic, so you may want to).
Hope this helps!
we are developing an iPhone app as an extension of a classifieds system (web site). On that web site users can buy (prepaid) credits and use them to boost and promote their ads. Will Apple reject our app if we implement consumption of credits? We are not gonna allow buying the credits, just using them (users will still have to buy credits on the web site).
Only worrying thing I found is item 11.2 in App Store review guidelines:
11.2 Apps utilizing a system other than the In-App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an App will be
rejected.
Is there a way to contact Apple directly regarding this question?
And a add-on question. I suppose we can implement a payment gateway system like Amazon and Ebay and get a way with buying credits? I don't see any restrictions in guidelines regarding non in-app purchase system.
"In-app purchase" is only required to purchase content or extra-functionality or extra feature or to remove any type of limitations inside the application. To achieve these things you shouldn't use any other external purchase mechanism (per App Store review guidelines ยง11.2).
In your application, the user will only use the available credits which are already bought on your website, so there is not an issue, although you shouldn't provide any type of link to your website inside your application.
Genererally "will Apple reject this if..."-questions can only be answered as such:
Apple does as they like. If they feel this in some way breaks the review guidelines, they will reject it and tell you, but you have no way of knowing for sure until you have submitted the actual app. In your case, I can't see why they would ban it, as you are not able to use real money within the actual app, but as I said, you don't know.
If you want to try to get an answer from Apple, you can try to contact them from this page.
I finally got an answer from Apple. It took a while and it wasn't worth a wait. I think Siba was right, but I'll get back to you after we submit our app just to verify everything.
Apple replied:
Thank you for taking the time to contact us about your app design and concept questions. I understand that you would like to know if you
implement consumption credits into your app would be acceptable for
your app.
While we cannot pre-approve apps, we can address compliance questions
about specific App Store Review Guidelines or sections of the iOS
Developer Program License Agreement (PLA). I understand that this may
be a little frustrating and I apologize for any inconvenience this may
cause, however, we may only answer specific questions concerning the
following resources, unless the app is submitted for review so that we
may test the functionality.
Here's the problem. We have several partner to promo our apps (at Apple App Store). But we can't know how many downloads from each partner.
Is there have any solution?
Apple provides no analytics information as to referer for any download. If you put your own analytics in the app, you might be able to guess a referral if a customer use the same IP address for the first run of the app as for the referrer, but an estimate using this method won't be accurate for a number of reasons.
I would like to track which websites link to my app in the app store. Is this possible?
Apple do not provide metrics and I'd say they would frown on any attempts to insert analytics code into your description.
Use of Google Alerts for your app name and possibly and inurl:appID might help.
We intend to launch a free iPhone/iPad app on the AppStore.
The content will actually be accessible thanks to a subscription model (login/pwd authentication in iPhone app).
The subscription (about 100$ a month) is handled via a dedicated web server.
If used without subscription, this app will provide minimum value.
Does anyone know if this kind of subscription model can be rejected by Apple ?
I know some apps follow this model, but I'd like to have your thought on this before starting in this direction.
Thanks for your answer.
This is fine AFAIK - As long your app is free and you put in the description that it requires a subscription to whichever service. When you submit the app, you'll need to hand over details to a test account to Apple so that they can test it, but other than that it's no hassle at all.
I know of an app which works just like that on the app store right now - Spotify for iPhone. It's a music playing app which streams music from the web - but you need a Spotify premium account. When you first open the app, you have to sign in, and if you don't have a premium account it just tells you that you're not allowed in!
Javawag
There are plenty of apps which only work if I have an account somewhere, and some for which I have to pay for that account so, without knowing the specifics, there is nothing which immediately rules out your subscription model. There are even Apple apps, iDisk for example, which are useless if you don't have a $100 mobile me subscription.
If there are issues you can look at selling your subscription as an in app purchase (apple will take their 30% which should make them happy) or look at making the app more functional without the subscription.
Either way, when submitting for approval make sure to set up a sample account with a full subscription that the apple testers can use (there is space in the submission for including logins for this kind of thing).
Our app, previously approved, update was just rejected because we sell subscriptions through our website. (We have been doing this for 15 years, without giving Apple 30% of our money.) They are requiring that all subscriptions for iphone/ipad content go through in-app purchasing. I guess we will be looking at building a browser based app instead.
Cheers,
Gerry