Best practice to prevent users from switching between subscriptions in the same group?

Question

Created 2w

Replies 4

Boosts 0

Participants 2

Hello everyone,

For example, our app currently has one subscription group in App Store Connect with 5 plans (2 annual, 2 monthly, and 1 quarterly). By default, users can go into Apple Subscriptions in Settings and freely switch between all of these plans.

However, our business requirement is to only allow users to stay on one annual plan and one quarterly plan. We don’t want them to switch to the other plans.

My questions are:

Is there any best practice or recommended approach to restrict subscription switching within the same group?

Would removing the unwanted products from sale be the correct approach, or are there any risks/downsides with this method?

Has anyone faced a similar situation and found a practical solution?

Any guidance or shared experience would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Boost

Answer 1

App Store Commerce Engineer OP

Apple

2w

Hello -

When offering in-app purchase subscriptions, it is common to offer different subscription periods for the same level of access - where the only differences are price and duration of subscriptions (e.g. monthly, quarterly, and annual.)

If the access entitled by various subscriptions is the same (that is, a monthly subscriber has access to all of the same content, features, etc. as an annual subscriber), it is best practice to assign all of those subscription products to the same subscription group in App Store Connect, as documented here - including the assignment of subscription levels. This will ensure correct handling of upgrades, crossgrades, and downgrades, as documented here, and prevent customers from having more than one active subscription at a time.

While developers can control how and when to merchandise subscription products in their app, it is not possible to restrict customers from switching between available products in the same subscription group from their Manage Subscriptions page in their account Settings, as documented here.

If you no longer wish to offer your monthly subscription products, you can remove them from sale as documented here.

Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Thank you.

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Answer 2

tvanguyen OP

2w

Thank you for the clarification. That answers our question, and we’ll proceed with the remove from sale approach as recommended.

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Answer 3

tvanguyen OP

1w

Hello again,

I have one quick follow-up question regarding the remove from sale approach. If a user is already subscribed to a plan that we later remove from sale, will their subscription continue to auto-renew in the next billing cycles, or will it be impacted by the removal?

Thank you for clarifying this point.

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Answer 4

App Store Commerce Engineer OP

Apple

1w

Hello -

When you remove a subscription from sale, existing subscribers will stop auto-renewing as documented here. As noted in that documentation, developers need to consider the impact and communicate to their customers accordingly.

Thank you.

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