In App Purchases Overview
Why do I need In App Purchases?
If you sell digital items in your app like a membership or an ebook, you must use an app purchase subscription.
You can still offer payments through your website, but you must also add an in app purchase in your app. Please see section 3.1.1 of the App Store Review guidelines for more information. If you sell subscriptions, and you do not add in in app purchase, your app may be rejected.
The app stores take 15-30% of revenue from in app purchases (Apple announced in January 2021 that they are reducing fees to 15%), and they require extra setup and some custom coding. We only support 1 subscription level in the app. Multiple subscriptions are available for an additional cost.
What about Netflix? They don't use in app purchases?
You might be wondering why you need an in app purchase when Netflix and some other apps don't. Apple seems to have made an exception for some large companies, and we don't know why. All we know is that they have consistently rejected apps that use a subscription model if they do not include an in app purchase. This is not our rule, it is theirs, so we cannot provide any more information. All we know is that they don't mess around.
If you are concerned about losing revenue, you can make the in app purchase more expensive than your website purchases. For example:
- Subscription through website: $10/month
- Subscription in app: $13/month
To learn more about in app purchases, please read this blog post.
How to Use In App Purchases
To add in app purchase subscriptions to your app, this is the process:
- Create your purchase or subscription on the app stores: instructions for iOS and instructions for Android
- Setup your receipt validator
- Add 2 plugins to your site, the core AppPresser In App Purchases plugin and a custom plugin for your membership integration.
- Add the purchase form to your app
- Rebuild and test on real devices
- Submit a new version of your app
- Profit!
We set this up for you for an additional cost, email us for details.
This feature is not available on all plans.
Non-Subscriptions (Consumables)
If you are using a consumable purchase, not a subscription, you do not need to do steps 2 or 3.