Can I offer custom discount on in App Purchase?

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Created Jun ’18

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I have two mobile apps in store, one I am offering for free with limited content and another one as paid with access to the complete version. Now I want to combine it as one app and offer the content for the paid app as in app content. There are two questions I have:

1. What version of the app shall I keep in store, as in shall I remove the free version and just keep the paid version (have more users in free version) and make it available for free with in app purchase or vice versa. Both the users are on same database so login for anyone will work on the app, if I remove the paid version of the app then will it mean that my customers will need to pay again to get the in app content from the free version.

2. More important question:) : The reason behind doing this is as we want to offer discounts to our customers who wish to purchase the app, now with Apple the price which is set cannot be changed by offering someone the discount, so if price of the app is $1 then I cannot give a discount to the customer on that, either I have to give the promo code to get it for free or I have to change the price of the app in store itself. What if we want to is to offer custom discounts in form of coupon codes, like it happens on other apps like (Uber, but ours is a content based app so payment will need to happen via the app only) so something like I have in backend the option to generate a coupon code, set discount for it, the validity for it and the number of times it can be used and then I can share the code with some of the customers and if the customer enters the code then they get the discount on the in app cost, this means that the in app purchase price for the costomer who entered the code changes so somehow the coupon code will need to change the price of the in app product which was defined earlier. From what I have read and understood, inapp purchase does not lets you do that and any price that is set for the product during submission cannot be changed on the fly or can it be?

I did chat with Goolge support and they said that it is not possible as of now, tried reaching support for Apple but have not got the answer yet and it has put our product on hold, any answer to this will be much appreciated!

Thank you,
Ankit

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Answer 1

PBK OP

Jun ’18

Two questions. 2) you cannot offer users a discount on an IAP. You can create a reader app (3.1.3) that allows the user to purchase content outside the app and display it in the app. Apple does this to prevent sales outside their IAP control. 1) to convert to a fermium model use the paid app and check the receipt for the original_application_version. (That’s actually the build number.). If that field indicates the user paid then grant them rights to the IAP.

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Answer 2

Ankits29 OP

Jun ’18

Thank you for the response on both the questions, it is certainly helpful 🙂 On the option for creating reader app, the thing is that the app is not just a content based app (it is only a small part of it) but it has other functioanlity as well like adding a reminder, accessing to different sections, tracking location, check in etc. and that is what becomes available when the app is purchased so going outside and offering will unfortunately not work. I think I understand that we cannot offer discount on IAP so that is something we will need to live by.

P.S.: Not related to this but I did not get a notification for the answer to my question and also had a hard time finding the question, where can I see the questions I posted.

Thanks,

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