Annual subscription question

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Created Sep ’17

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I am developing an app and would like to have it setup to use an annual subscription. I have a couple of questions about how it works with the App Store. I want to make the app free with a paid subscription. I assume that this isn't a problem. For this question, lets say the subscription price is $10 (I know in the app store it'll probably be 9.99 but for easy math, I'm rounding up a penny). If someone purchases an annual subscription, uses my app for 6 months, then decides to Cancel, how does Apple handle this? Does a $5 refund get sent back to the customer? If so, then my app would somehow need to know this and turn itself off. If no refund is given, then my app probably should continue to work for the remainder of the year, as the customer paid for a full year.

As I haven't developed a subscription based app before (as you can plainly see from this question), I'm looking for some advice on how to set this up properly, before I get too far into the development of the app. Any guidance would be appreciated.

TIA

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Answer 1

flipabit OP

Sep ’17

There are two ways a users end-of-subscription can happen:

They manually "cancel" their subscription from their iTunes account. This is not really a cancellation, but rather just them turning off auto-renew. They will be able to continue to use their subscription for the remaining 6 months in your scenario.
The user contacts Apple support for a cancellation. This usually involves Apple issuing a refund and immediately revoking their subscription. You can use Apple's server-to-server notifications to be notified when this happens.

The only part I'm uncertain of is Apple's refund policy on a subscription of that length, but generally speaking I've seen full refunds given for shorter subscriptions that I've worked with. Whether or not a refund is given should be irrelivant though. If you use Apple's server-to-server notifications and get a cancellation event, you should revoke the subscription.

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Answer 2

PBK OP

Sep ’17

All apps must function at some level so you can't shut the app down if the user ends the subscription - you must continue to operate at a 'lite' level.

Cancellations of a subscription during its term is rare and requires a good reason validated by Apple. But if you think a user will get tired of the app and want to cancel after a set time then it might be better to also offer an autorenewable subscription with that duration - e.g. a monthly subscription for 1/10th the price of a yearly subscription.

Your app can use the notification system to be informed of a cancellation; or you could ignore the (expected to be rare) issue.

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