Is there a way to make an app that requires a subscription?
My customer wants their users to pay an annual fee for their app. They don't want to offer any content or functions for free. What they've asked me to do is build an app that when it opens, requires you to subscribe immediately.
I'm guessing this won't pass Apple review, or at least it didn't used to.
Is it possible to do something like this, either with in-app purchase or otherwise?
Thanks.
Forcing users to buy the app every year has been a goal with various devs for some time. Apple resisted then, and still does now, preferring that users either pay and go, or, subscribe to additional features that keep them on the hook, witnessed by this quote from the ASRGs:
Apps must not force users to rate the app, review the app, download other apps, or other similar actions in order to access functionality, content, or use of the app.
If you consider including a free trial, ASRGs say this about that:
Non-subscription apps may offer a free time-based trial period before presenting a full unlock option by setting up a Non-Consumable IAP item at Price Tier 0 that follows the naming convention: “XX-day Trial.” Prior to the start of the trial, your app must clearly identify its duration, the content or services that will no longer be accessible when the trial ends, and any downstream charges the user would need to pay for full functionality. Learn more about managing content access and the duration of the trial period using Receipts and Device Check.
Your issue, tho, is that you want repeating charges, not just a one-time unlock, which then become subscriptions, so yeah, IAP.
My advise is to create an app that offers enough functionality that users want it on their device regardless of annual level-up fees and that App Review still wants it in the store. Any cost burdens that an annual buy-again are meant to cover would of course be tied to a yearly IAP subscription.
All apps have to do something 'useful' before a purchase is made.
You can have the app open and show all the great things it would do if the user purchased a subscription. You can explain the terms of the subscription to the user and give the user the option of purchasing the subscritpion. That is usually enough to satisfy App Review. But no one can say what App Review will or will not do.
Consider the app pre-subscription an opportunity to market the subscription.