Reply to post: Still no paid upgrades in the App Store...

Still no paid upgrades in the App Store...

I notice that one of the most requested App Store features is still missing in action - the ability for third party devs to offer discounted upgrades between major versions of their apps. Third party devs have been asking for this ability since the App Store first opened. Apple seem to think that every dev should just get paid once and then offer free updates forever.

Later, Apple did allow for in-app purchases, but this can be a horrible user experience and it can be harder to persuade someone to purchase new features within an app they already own, than it can be to get them to upgrade to a whole new version.

So version two of your app could in theory offer more features that can be unlocked via an in-app purchase, but users often resist this and see it as a subscription in disguise. Also, it means you either need to charge a fee for the base product, and then expect users to pay even more money after they've just bought the app (not a great user experience), or give away the base app for free and then charge in-app purchases to unlock features, something that isn't always feasible with some app types.

I've personally had this when version two of an app I sell was a ground-up rewrite, with a completely new interface and feature set. There wasn't really an easy way of dividing the new functionality out from the existing due to the way the new interface was designed. The whole point of the new features and design was to tightly integrate everything and make it very easy to use. Splitting it up and placing some features behind a pay wall just wouldn't make sense. I've spoken to several other developers who feel the same. They've tried the in-app purchase approach to adding features, but the over all user experience is poor and the return on time invested just doesn't justify doing it.

In-app purchases are fine for in-game add-ons etc. but when it comes to upgrading between major versions of an app, with major feature improvements, it's clunky at best.

It seems every app store provider wants devs to use a subscription based model to maintain an income whilst developing their apps. I however will resist this for as long as possible. I've actually gained customers who have told me they moved to my app specifically because my competition has gone over to a subscription model and my app is pay per version based.