I am creating an note taking app like Evernote for iPad. I decided to provide some In App Purchase plans for 2 reasons.
- Unlock more features in app.
- Should be Auto renewable after specified time period.
Now i have confusion which type of In App Purchase to select for this. I am interested in Auto-Renewable Subscriptions
After visiting the guidlines here, i found
You may sell and unlock additional functionality within your
application using In-App Purchase. Adding additional functionality to
an app should generally be considered Non-Consumable.
But Non-consumable are not Auto-Renewable.
So which type of product should i choose?
Does Apple approve unlocking app features with Auto-Renewable Subscriptions?
Also, after purchasing a plan, on how many devices user can unlock(restore) features with same Apple ID?
Beware of using Auto-Renewable subscription becuase Auto-Renewable subscription's world is very small. 99% of the apps gets rejected in this case. Basically apple allows Auto-Renewable subscription for apps those follows:
- Newspaper, Magazine
- News Stand
- audio/video streaming feeds
- membership to a dating service
- Business app providing cloud storage services
you can read a well defined document (page 4) by apple here:
https://developer.apple.com/in-app-purchase/In-App-Purchase-Guidelines.pdf
A application of mine got rejected with these comments by apple:
We found that the Purchasability Type for one or more of your In-App
Purchase products was inappropriately set, which is not in compliance
with the App Store Review Guidelines.
Cloud-books is set to Auto-Renew Subscription.
Based on product functionality, it would be more appropriate to use
the non-renewing subscription In-App Purchase type. The Auto-Renewable
Subscription product is best suited for apps that require or feature
dynamically or frequently changing content, such as digital
periodicals or radio subscriptions.
Non-renewing subscriptions can still be offered, but auto-renewable
subscriptions are now preferred for the following reasons
I have submitted app today with non-auto subs and see now they approves it or not, otherwise finally I would have to make if consumable with some server mechanism of forcing user to buy it again after a certain time period.
Go through this thread, might me useful for you:
iOS recurring subscription policy for service, not content
and read this article also:
http://www.marco.org/2012/01/06/autorenewable-subscription-restrictions
UPDATE:
My another app on auto-renewable subscription got approved by apple. Before approval it got 2 rejections. First for insufficient content in IAP Product identifiers and second for insufficient application description.
