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Simbul
Free and Paid Subscriptions in the same publication supported?
Does this framework support that? An example would be I have a publication and some of the issues are free. But I would like to option to also charge for a "Special Edition" issue or something like that. I saw the tutorials either free or inApp purchase but not both. Would it be possible to do a Free subscription and then have some issues available for a cost?
It sounds like you're looking for free subscription + paid issues. The framework supports it, though I guess you'll have to make it clear to your users what do they get (or don't get) with the subscription.
I think it's confusing to have a free subscription plus paid issues. Why not just offer a paid subscription option, and a few paid "special" issues but then list all of the issues you want for free to be free? Users could read whatever they want for free and purchase the paid issues or a subscription to the paid issues.
Depending on how it's implemented you may or may not have an easy time getting it approved. Also you'll definitely need customization on the backend to support this sort of thing since the subscriptions and issue availability needs to be handled on the server side...
From: Alessandro Morandi [email protected] To: Simbul/baker [email protected] Sent: Friday, August 16, 2013 1:18 PM Subject: Re: [baker] Free and Paid Subscriptions in the same publication supported? (#1089)
It sounds like you're looking for free subscription + paid issues. The framework supports it, though I guess you'll have to make it clear to your users what do they get (or don't get) with the subscription. — Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.
I word of caution that Apple can be very picky when it comes to free subscriptions. We went through several rounds with them and were not successful in convincing them to offer free subscriptions.
In addition, if you have free subscriptions, the "subscribe" button will not show at the top. Apple then thinks somethings wrong with your newsstand framework, your IAP framework, and others (which I can't recall) as they essentially think you newsstand app is not a newsstand app. A very confusing and difficult path....
In the end, we made everything paid just to get through the approval process and show them that the app has all purchase/subscribe/IAP functionality built in, then changed items to free post-approval.
I have recently had a Baker based Newstand app approved by Apple with a free subscription and with paid special edition issues, which sounds very much like the original post here. I had absolutely no issues with Apple and it was approved on the first go, which was a very pleasant surprised! I definitely thought I'd hit at least one hurdle on my first attempt.
In our case we definitely wanted to offer free quarterly magazines with special editions made available in the interim. The special editions won't all appeal to everyone so a paid subscription wasn't appropriate, whereas one off purchases for the special editions they want makes perfect sense for our customers. And given that it's mandatory to have at least a free subscription, I suspect it would be a reasonably common scenario.
@jbavington the Subscribe button is very much showing in our app with the free subscription in place and I'm quite sure that if you have correctly set the FREE_SUBSCRIPTION_PRODUCT_ID value in Constants.h then it should always be available (according to the code). I'd say that if you're offering a free subscription without the subscribe button present then it probably is going to trigger alarms in the approval process!
Thanks! Will look into that. What's the name of your mag app again? I seem to recall you announcing its release.