I am going to publish my first app on google play store. Currently my app is completely free but later on I want to add some in app purchases ( but users should still be able to download it for free).Now how should I set the pricing now - free or paid ??
You can publish your application for free. You can add in-app purchases with IAP.
Best practices:
Make your app available as a free download with limited features or full features for a limited time. Then use an in-app purchase to
unlock the full, unlimited app.
Offer additional features or content items through in-app purchases, such as new levels, special playing pieces, or other
features in games.
Use subscriptions where your app provides regularly updated or time-based content.
I'm releasing an app soon and I know once you open a listing for a free app, it can not be converted to a paid app.
My app is free, but i'm planning to add an optional donation feature in the future using the in app purchases api. I haven't put this in my app yet, so once I make my listing for a free app, can it be updated to allow in app purchases?
thanks
I have a successful paid for application on Google Play Store and want to update this app to be a free application with in-app purchasing.
I have just completed developing the free version of the app which gives users restricted access which can then be unlocked using an in-app purchase system.
The issue i have is that all my existing users who have paid for the app will upgrade and then be prompted to pay again, which of course isn't right.
Is there any way to check the purchase history of the user, identify that they have paid for the app previously and unlock the extra features without the in-app purchase?
Thanks for any help.
Lewis
It's been a year, so the OP probably doesn't need this, but in case anyone else happens upon this one...
You could approach this a couple of ways. Obviously there is some business logic on your new in-app purchasing app to track who has/hasn't paid. So the two ways I see you being able to go about this is as follows:
Idea 1:
You could do a preliminary update to your paid app that stores a SharedPreference or some other persistence in the app (you could store the versionCode, so you know what you're upgrading from and have business logic around that). Then update to the free version, and have the free version check your shared preference and do the right thing on an update from a "paid" versionCode.
Idea 2:
You could keep both apps separate (have a paid version and a free with in-app purchases) and push an update to the paid version to have a BroadcastReceiver that doesn't really do anything other than listen to specific intents and have your in-app purchase check to see if something will receiver your custom intent. If your old paid-version exists, then they paid for it, if not they didn't. (If they paid for the paid version then uninstalled you'll have problems obviously...)
Idea 3:
You could keep both apps separate (have a paid version and a free with in-app purchases), and push an update to the paid version that just posts an Intent to open the in-app purchase app (if it's installed) with some special arguments, to let you know they opened it via a paid app and do the right thing to set them up as having paid for it in-app. That opens yourself up to some detection problems though... (Solvable but kind of clunky)
You can keep the existing paid version and create another free version.
If you really don't want to have 2 versions, just make it free and tell users something like 'Contact us if you have bought the paid version. We will give you redeem code to unlock xxx'.
https://developer.android.com/distribute/tools/launch-checklist.html#decide-price
This link seems relevant, hope it helps
On Google Play, you can publish apps as free to download or priced. Free apps can be downloaded by any Android user in Google Play. Paid apps can be downloaded only by users who are in a country that supports paid downloads and have registered a form of payment in Google Play, such as a credit card or Direct Carrier Billing.
Deciding whether you apps will be free or paid is important because, on Google Play, free apps must remain free.
Once you publish an app as a free app, you cannot change it to being a priced app. However, you can still sell in-app products and subscriptions through Google Play's In-app Billing service.
If you publish your app as a priced app, you can change it at any time to be a free app (but cannot then change it back to priced). You can also sell in-app products and subscriptions.
If your app is be priced, or if you'll be selling in-app products, you need to set up a Google payments merchant account before you can publish.
I feel the most easy way is to use theese line of codes
This gives you the old version code
SharedPreferences prefs = getSharedPreferences("Name_of_Prefs", MODE_PRIVATE);
int oldVersionCode = prefs.getInt("version_code", -1);
This gives you the current version code
int currentVersionCode = getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(getPackageName(),0).versionCode;
Now you can compare and do what you want. Don't forget to update after every time
with this line of code
prefs.edit().putInt(PREF_VERSION_CODE_KEY, currentVersionCode).commit();
In my case (affirmations counter app)
my paid app is running based on sharepreference value "lastaffirmationcount"
in my new iap app i just changed the way of I'm saving the affirmations counter values like "lastaffirmationscount_foriap"
So what i did in my free with In app purchase app is,just cross checked the "lastaffirmationcount" value is not null,if its null then it means new user,if not null then it means he is old user who bought the paid app
so the old user will not suffer forever
(Optionally Once its checked i immediately ask this user to sign in with google and saved his email as a premium user to ur database)
For Google Play there's no distinction between having paid for an app or downloading it for free. For example, if an user download an app while it's free and it's later changed to paid that user will still have full access to it, even being able to download it on other devices.
There are some lame workarounds for that:
Enable google play game services on the paid version and try to convince users to connect to it. Use google play services to store "bought while paid" information to the cloud and restore it whenever that user logins
Give all the users who've bought some key to unlock features
Create a different for the free version of the game
That said, keep in mind that many games have become free after some time. Maybe the users won't mind it that much.
I want to publish an android app which is free on download but can be upgraded using in app purchase. Right not I want to keep all functionality intact in the paid version and implement inapp purchase and disable full functionality later when releasing a new update.
Is this possible to do such a thing because on the developers console it says that"Setting the price to 'Free' is permanent. You cannot change it back to 'Paid' again after publishing"
Or should I follow the first few steps of implementing inapp purchases like adding permissions,aidl files etc.,then release the free app?
This term is only about the initial prize of the app.
In app purchases are totally independent of that.
Yep you can add in-app purchases later altough your app is free without problems.
I want to launch an application to Android market. It will be free. But in the future I'm planning to add more features and these features can be used with in app billing.
Regarding to Android checklist, in Google Play a free application can't be changed to paid application. http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/publish/preparing.html#free-priced
But what about in app billing. Any user freely can install my application but will pay if he/she wants more features.
What should I do while launching application ? Is it OK to select free as app type ?
you can always add in-app billing into a free application, what they mean when they say you cannot change a free application to paid is you cannot change a free app to an app that you have to pay to download