How to remove a subscription for non-existing users

We have 1 subscription group with 2 auto renewable subscriptions, A and B. We would like to remove subscription A.

Existing users that have subscription A should keep this subscription, keep being charged and be able to use the restore functionality. In our code we made sure that users with subscription A still have their access to our product.

We don't want new users and users with subscription B being able to purchase or switch to subscription A via the iTunes screen in the iOS settings.

How can we achieve this best?

Reading some Stackoverflow and Apple Developer Forums posts regarding this topic seem to suggest to uncheck "Cleared for sale". But when we read the document on https://help.apple.com/app-store-connect/#/dev840c56fb6 it states: "When you remove an in-app purchase product from sale, customers that already purchased the product can’t restore it to their device or renew the in-app purchase if it’s an auto-renewable subscription. If you clear the product for sale, the status changes to Approved."

So we think this is not to prefered way to do this (anymore).

Replies

We had a similar situation. As understand the docs, removing an item for sale will end the subscription for current subscribers. Obviously, we did not want to do this. For our case, we stopped presenting the legacy SKU in our in-app UI. We also raised the price for new subscribers to discourage people from switching to it within the App Store UI. We do continue to support it though if they do. I'm not sure if there's another approach, but this worked for us.