Free Trials for All Paid Apps Now Possible Thanks to Updated App Store Guidelines

[ackmondual]

I think this addresses a couple concerns raised in the movie - App: The Human Story and https://www.thedevelopersunion.org. Specifically creators of more expensive apps can now offer free trials for potential customers to check out before committing $$. Plus it'll help reduce the number of negative reviews based on expectations for pricey apps. https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/18/app-store-developers-form-union-ahead-of-wwdc/ @appdocu

It didn't help games like Super Mario Run. AFAIK, there will still be people who will still somehow manage to miss that what they're playing is only a trial.. not some full, free version of a game!

 

[Diatribe]

Great summary of why this is not the solution everyone has been waiting for:

https://bitsplitting.org/2018/06/06/ersatz-free-trials/


Daniel Jalkut:

I think it’s particularly important, in the face of all the celebration this week about Apple’s perceived changes to the App Store, to appreciate all the many ways in which this solution falls short of what many developers still hope for: bona fide support for real free trials in the App Store.

In summary: none of the mechanics of supporting ersatz free trials are substantially supported by the App Store. Every aspect of the solution is bolted on to a system which was not designed for, yet is somewhat admirably being used to simulate real support for free trials. Let me elaborate by listing several shortcomings and how they affect users, and developers, in significant ways.

 

[ShinySteelRobot]

Apple needs to add the ability for developers to offer a discount to owners of the previous version of an app purchased through the App Store.

For example, you buy MyGreatApp 3.0, and the developers release MyGreatApp 4.0 a week later. Now you get to pay full price again for the latest version of MyGreatApp because the devs can't offer you a previous-owner discount through the App Store.

 

[jclardy]

Doesn’t this encourage developers to use IAP more often, making it more difficult for users to take advantage of Family Sharing? I hate when they do that.

Family sharing is quite terrible, for both users and developers right now. For developers, family sharing is literally a requirement of publishing an app - there is no way to turn it off to be upfront with users. Even if your app is free with IAP/Subscriptions, you can't turn it off. So then users see "GET" (and turn it into "FREE" in their heads), see it has IAP, buy it, then expect it to work on other devices, and it doesn't.

For users it sucks, because to a user there isn't much difference between paying for something in the App Store, and paying for an in-app purchase. But one gets shared and the other doesn't. The family sharing description in the App Store doesn't mention anything about IAP or subscriptions, so naturally a user would assume they are shared. The only place it says it doesn't is in the fine print if you search for the Apple support article on family sharing.

The problem with these trials is still that it isn't clear up front in the App Store - they should have a way to directly start the free trial from the App Store and change the "GET" to "START TRIAL" or something along those lines. And an app can't say that it costs $2.99 after the trial anywhere other than down the page in the list of IAP's. Really a terrible solution for everyone involved.

 

[wpguy]

this policy change that Apple announced at WWDC applies only to the (iOS) App Store, and not the Mac App Store (MAS) -- is this correct? If so, that's disappointing and very unfortunate. As has been pointed out before, free trials are most useful for apps that cost more than a mere pittance, and by nature Mac apps much more so than iOS apps tend to fall in that category.

 

[Ali Göktürk]

I added a 3-day FREE Trial to one of my apps, & it should get Reviewed today.

If it gets Approved, it should be one of the very first to adopt the modified 3.1.1 Rule.

FREE Trials of NON-Sub apps / IAPs is the single biggest thing to come out of this year's WWDC !

A secure RESTORE implementation is the ONLY thing Devs really need to worry about.

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Hi,

I'm a new developer and I also want to add FREE Trial to one of my apps. I have been searching everywhere for a tutorial of how to do it, but couldn't find anything. I watched the WWDC2018 video of Apple, but couldn't really get much out of it.

If you know any links to any tutorials or guidelines of how to implement this FREE trial, can you share it please.

 

[Cosmosent]

Does anybody know if this has been a success OR not ?

I can't remember the specifics of my efforts in Dec of 2018 with it.

For whatever reason, I didn't move forward with it.