I am building an app for a client that will have 30 days of content for free, thereafter you are required to buy a subscription via in app store purchases.
However, I have read that you will get rejected if you have trials.
Don’t set time limits on any of the functionality of your app, either
for run times or life times. Applications that only run for a set
number of minutes per session, or that expire altogether after some
period of time, don’t recruit customers so much as leave a bad taste
in their mouths.
Finally, they also say "your app will be returned to you by the App Review Team for modification if it is found to have time limits".
This seems odd because I know the Guardian and all major newspaper apps have limited functionality.
The Guardian app is free but you get limited functionality?
The Daily app is free, but you have to pay for daily subscriptions
and has limited functionality for the period of your subscription.
The Times app is free, but is a free trial (of sorts) (plenty of
complaints about it)
There are other examples which seem to differ from Apple's policies.
Lets say you have an app that is free, but then you have to pay for subscriptions to gain access; however according to the rules this is considered limited functionality -- yet there are lots of newspaper apps that do exactly that.
I'm confused.
Can someone clarify the situation? Can apps have trials?
Thanks
It is difficult to clarify the situation because unfortunately the guidelines are not necessarily set in stone. They can and do vary on an app and publisher basis.
In the case of The Times and The Daily, both apps are produced by News Corp. It is perhaps safe to say that News Corp has a good deal more influence with Apple than a one-man development shop producing an iPhone game. Apple would be loath to admit it, but there are clear cases of popular apps on the store that don't conform to the guidelines, where they have tacitly made an exception.
So what I would say to you is this: be sensible. Don't have an app that quits automatically when your trial runs out. Think about what would be acceptable to users. It's very much a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained. Take a risk, submit your app with your limited trial, and see what happens.
With the Guardian app, we had to deliver an app where you always got at least some fresh content if you were using the free version. Subscribing opens up more content to the user.
I think, you are mixing up "content" and "functionality".
You can deliver content items (i.e. an magazine issue) for free or user has to pay for it — so the first n issues, or all issues in a certain timeframe, can be free, while the others need to be paid. But if an user purchased an content item before, you have to re-deliver it for free.
You can sell functionalities (i.e a search in the magazine's archive) as-well. But you cannot give it to the user for free for a certain time and them make him pay.
So the general rule is: What ever the user got from you — you cannot take it back from them and make them purchase it again.
There are plenty of free apps which provide limited functionality. They don't provide time limits though (or at least they shouldn't). I'm guessing it won't be as clear cut as accept or reject for Apple, because I did encounter an app which closes itself after 10 minutes, opening a web page to purchase it (closing an app is also against the Apple Human Interface Guidelines, as an app should never terminate itself).
The guidelines mention this is only allowed for specific types of content:
11.9 Apps containing content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected, except for specific approved content (e.g. films, television programs, music, books)
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
Related
I'm interested in unlocking features for a fixed time period in my iphone app via promo code. These same features are also offered for subscription outside of the app store. Is this still legitimate? It's imperative that the app isn't rejected by the app store for violating the terms of service.
Moreover, if we allowed the user to 'spend points' for this subscription (in app), would this be a violation? I suspect so but thought I would ask.
I've seen apps out there that use earned points to unlock features, or the user could just speed up the process and purchase it with an in app purchase, so that seems fine
Having out of app subscriptions seem debatable but I feel like they would be fine - apple would still earn a profit as people would be encouraged to buy out of the app.
Keep in mind that apple will take out a cut for themselves on every purchase (including in app)
And welcome to StackOverflow :D
I am a member of a gliding club with 150 members, and we want to have our own iPhone app. Requiring a member login, the app would be usable only by members of the club, and it would be used by an estimated 20-30 people.
Is it even possible to disribute such an app to non-jailbroken iPhones? According to my research:
It wouldn't be accepted on the App Store due to "limited audience".
Even if we were able and willing to pay $300 for the enterprise distribution model, Apple would likely not accept us as a company.
Ad hoc distribution would be fine for us except for the expiration time associated with apps distributed in the manner.
Are we at a dead end?
Thanks.
Edit: In case anyone is wondering why I didn't just ask Apple directly: I did, and their answer was, "We are unable to advise you with respect to the Apple Developer Program that best fits your needs."
I'm not 100% on your question.
But depending on your requirement, pretty much everything you need can be achieved as a web app, with the correct coding behind it i.e. CACHE MANIFEST you could make the app function similar to the a native app, available offline and can be saved to any iOS device through the browser.
Give me a shout if you need more information.
Hope it helps
Gary
You could always try to make the app a little more "global"? Perhaps offer some free stuff for Joe Bloggs to use, but tucked away you have your real motive... that way you can get it released legitimately.
I've seen some real disasters in the app store that shouldn't have made it, and I'm sure Apples screening isn't as intense as we might think. (example: that flash light application, when pressing a sequence of buttons it would enable free tethering).
Best of luck!
Yup. You seem to have all the options laid out pretty clearly, and there's no other way to do it. Except developing for android, and just distributing the application freely and without arbitrary restrictions.
Sorry.
Ad-hoc distribution would give you about 90 days expiration time, i think, whereas enterprise would give you a year. Though gaining enterprise status in the eyes of apple is easier said than done.
Even if we were able and willing to pay $300 for the enterprise distribution model, Apple would likely not accept us as a company.
You don't have to be a company to apply for the enterprise account, you just need to be an organisation with a DUNS number.
I'll soon have to implement the StoreKit functionality and I was wondering...
is there a way to also offer a product for free to a user once, like as a gift for using the app for the first time ?
In my special scenario I'll offer several products in my educational app, which the user will need to buy time by time, if he is interested in continuing to learn with the app.
But the first product I want the user to have for free and it should be his choice which one he takes. So generally all products should have a price, but the first download shall be free.
And I want this to get logged on my server so I can reidentify him, so (A) he can't delete the app, reinstall and download yet another free product and (B) so he will also get the products on any other of his devices.
I'm also open to workarounds, like maybe get something similar to the apple id or so, to be able to store it on the server. I know that I could also use the [[UIDevice currentDevice] uniqueIdentifier], but I want the user to have this first free product on all his devices, and ONLY ONE.
Is there a way to get (A) and (B)?
Apple's In-App Purchase infrastructure (and by extension, StoreKit) does not support free content.
But there's nothing stopping you from providing free content via your own mechanisms, as you surmise. You would have to do all the tracking yourself in terms of remembering device IDs on a server somewhere, and noting that device != user, so would miss some edge cases.
You don't get access to (iTunes) user data at all, so you probably can't guarantee the "only once" across multiple devices, unless your app has an associated backend service account that is already unique per user.
(Before building infrastructure for this, you should double-check the developer agreement/contracts on this stuff. You're not circumventing Apple's revenue stream here, which is good, but what you're talking about may be unusual enough to raise a flag with them in terms of experience consistency if nothing else.)
I finished building an app that allows beaming of photos, contacts and text clips over Wi-Fi
IPhone to IPhone and IPhone to desktop.
I want to decide on the feature set of the lite version of my IPhone app. I also want to come up with a pricing model. So the question is, which of these components should be free, and for which I should be charging for ?
For example, the lite version could have all features except the ability to interact with the desktop version - that is, it would work IPhone to IPhone, but not IPhone to desktop. The paid version would be able to beam to the desktop. In addition, the desktop version would be free, so you could share it with family and friends.
Alternatively, there would be a single free IPhone version and I would charge for the desktop app. The only thing here is that I would have to setup server side code for managing registration codes.
One reason to make your desktop app free and the iPhone app a paid product would be to take advantage of Apple's app store and their payment processing, hosting, etc. While I know 30% seems steep for what Apple provides, it is nice to have that part of the business be handled by someone else. For example, you will never have to deal with credit card processing or have to issue refunds - Apple does all that for you.
I like the mechanism that is more suited to viral distribution and giving people a good taste of all the features, before they are sort of convinced to go for the paid version. The marketing value of an app that can be freely tried out once one user recommends it to another, is invaluable. If someone recommends a product to me and I have to pay for it, then I probably would put off trying it till alter when I have learned more about it. However, if it is free, I can download and try it without feeling like I need to do more research prior. Once I like, and am hooked on it, then I will want locked functionality that I would have to pay to unlock.
I'd stay away from selling, payment processing, and reg code management, if your expertise is in coding - you'd make yourself more money writing more code than writing reg code management utilities...
Good luck.
I'm not sure charging for either is the best idea. If you keep both tools free, you get people trying (and liking) both apps. Viral distribution will ensure a decent user base. Once people use both tools, they're more likely to pay for the next part, which is the connector software.
I like your idea of three parts: a free iPhone app (Let people share photos on their iPhone), free PC app (There are hundreds of photo viewing apps, free... Don't try to charge for them, that way lies pain) and paid connection between 'em.
That way:
You get people using your iPhone app virally (To share with each other's phones & try out the application)
You get people using your PC app virally (Because the cost to try is nearly null)
The connection can be sold through Apple's iStore, so you don't need to do the money handling side
You could even make the connection component a subscription, but as an end user I hate that idea unless I get some additional functionality from it being a subscription (Like free hosting).
I am in the process of releasing an application to the app-store. I recently saw that you can make your application free but have in-app purchases. When I saw this I thought that this could be used to create a free trial. However in Apple's Helpful Tips for Using In App Purchase In Free Apps it says
Don’t set time limits on any of the
functionality of your app, either for
run times or life times. Applications
that only run for a set number of
minutes per session, or that expire
altogether after some period of time,
don’t recruit customers so much as
leave a bad taste in their mouths.
I know that sometimes it's tough to know what Apple is thinking but does this mean they will not allow In-App Free Trials or that they frown upon it. Does anybody know if people have tried doing this?
As indicated in your quoted text, they will reject any app that is a "trial" in that it only works for a limited amount of time or number of uses.
If you want to remove advanced functionality and allow users to pay for them, that's perfectly acceptable. In fact, it's one of the main use cases they talk about. Just keep in mind that the free version of the app (before people pay for the advanced features) should do something useful, and it should not expire.
Also, something to watch out for is "placeholder" functionality, which will get you rejected. For example, if you make a game and have difficulty levels that must be purchased, you can't make it look like those difficulty levels can be selected and then prompt the user to pay for them once they try to select them. You can tell the user that there are missing difficulty levels and encourage them to upgrade, however, which is a subtle but important distinction.