Dear fellow HNers, we are getting into Enterprise App soon. It could have different subscription channel for payments - web, actual offline sales (bank cheques), another app store like Google play.<p>Can there be a model where users pay via 'web only' and are served through ios and android apps.
- is this possible
- are there any examples of such apps
- have/can store take any objections to this model.<p>Thanks in advance.
It does.<p>AFAIK, for IOS, if you want your users to pay via 'web only', you cannot mention anything related to external payment within the app, you cannot have a payment flow within the app.<p>What you can do is, ask users to sign in and/or visit your web page from where you can convert users. You can run email campaigns etc. Or if your users already have a premium login by making payment elsewhere, that should be fine.
There are many many examples of this. Beats Music was one of the more recent high-profile ones that comes to mind (for shifting from an offline-only pay model to in-app payments for subscriptions). Most of the team productivity apps, as another example category here, that have a premium tier don't offer them in app (Asana, Trello, etc).<p>There are particular rules to how you do it. You can't promote it in the app. The app has to have some functionality for non-subscribers. You can't use the itunes subscription SKU functionality to delivery your subscription content (obviously, I hope).<p>You should also consider joining the Enterprise app developer program that Apple offers if you want to by pass some of the above issues.<p>Not to be overly pointed, but it doesn't seem like you have done much homework here. I recommend you get more familiar with the market you're about to enter.
I am pretty sure amazon prime movies use this functionality. I can view movies on my iPad, but there is no way to purchase a movie through the app. You just have to know to go through amazon.com if you want to see something that is not prime eligible.