I want to publish an Android app with 15 days as a trial period and after that, there will be a one-time subscription charge applicable for the lifetime. I see there is an option in play store developer account for the trial period, so my question is if the user cancels the subscription in the trial period after that is that user will able to use the app? I don't want to change any code for this in my .apk file.
In the Developer Console, you can set up a free trial period that lets users try your subscription content before buying it. The trial period runs for the period of time that you set and then automatically converts to a full subscription managed according to the subscription's billing interval and price.
When the trial period ends, Google Play automatically initiates billing against the credit card that the user provided during the initial purchase, at the amount set for the full subscription, and continuing at the subscription interval. If necessary, the user can cancel the subscription at any time during the trial period. In this case, the subscription remains active until the end of the trial period, but Google Play sets the subscription not to renew automatically; at the end of the trial period the subscription expires, and Google Play does not charge the user.
You can set up a trial period for a subscription in the Developer Console, without needing to modify or update your APK. Just locate and edit the subscription in your product list, set a valid number of days for the trial (must be 7 days or longer), and publish. You can change the period any time, although note that Google Play does not apply the change to users who have already "purchased" a trial period for the subscription. Only new subscription purchases will use the updated trial period. You can create one free trial period per subscription product.
For more information, please check the documentation: https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_subscriptions.html
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I hope I'm in the right place to ask this question. If not, please help to point out a better place to ask this.
I have a subscription-based app.
Now, I want to give a free period of subscription to a user who is already subscribing to my app.
For example, if the user started a monthly subscription (not a trial) on the 1st of July 2021. The original next billing date should be the 1st of August 2021.
But on the 15th of July, I give him a free month, then he shouldn't be billed on the 1st of August, instead, the next billing should become 1st of September.
Or if on the 15th of July, instead of giving 1 month free, I give him 2 weeks free, then the next billing cycle should be changed to 15th of August, and the consecutive billing cycle should be changed as well to reflect the 2 weeks period.
How can I do that with Google Play and Apple App Store?
I thought of the Promotion Codes. But it requires the user to unsubscribe and then enter the promotion code. A very tedious process.
I want to be able to give it without the user need to do anything else.
An example of App that does this is ExpressVPN, which adds a free-30-days for every successful referral. So if I can convince 2 of my friends to purchase a subscription, I will get 2x 30 days free on my subscription and my billing cycle will be pushed back accordingly. They also charge through the App Store / Google Play billing methods.
Promotion codes is way to giving free subscription for a user and testing purpose In-App Purchase.And other way you can generate the token from back-end behalf of promotion codes.
My app is published in alpha, and allows for purchasing a yearly subscription with a 7-days trial period.
I just tested the purchase process with a test account (declared as such in dev console).
The purchase went ok, and the user received a mail confirming his purchase. This mail is full of mistakes:
1) the price is without tax, which is confusing
2) It says the trial-period will expire tomorrow, instead of in 7 days (we are on Feb 27):
You have signed up for a free trial subscription from xxx on Google
Play. Your trial will end on Feb 28, 2015. You will be automatically
subscribed for €15.83/day at the end of your trial unless you cancel.
3) Funnily enough, it says that after the trial period, he will be charged DAILY, instead of yearly:
By subscribing you authorize us to charge you the subscription cost
(currently €15.83/day) automatically, charged daily to the payment
method provided. You can cancel at any time
Moreover, I couldn't find a way to cancel the subscription. I went to the wallet account of the user, no transaction there. Same thing in the merchant wallet account from my side. How am I supposed to cancel the transaction and try again eventually?
The only good point is that my app and google api (V3) recognizes that the user has purchased the subscription.
Maybe it's just because I declared the user as a test-user in google-dev console?
Thanks in advance for any input or advice.
The reason why it says 'day' instead of year is answered here:
Android In App BIlling v3 - Wrong Subscription Trial Period
This is a normal response. I guess you're testing with an account
added as a tester to Google Play account. Test subscriptions are valid
for 1 day and get cancelled after 1 day.
Quoting the official docs
http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_testing.html
Note: Test subscription purchases recur daily, regardless of the
product's subscription period.
I am implementing an in-app subscription in an Android app. In the developer console I have a subscription item with a 7 day free trial. While debugging, I purchased this subscription. A couple days later, before the 7 day trial is over, I cancelled the subscription from the Play Store | My Apps | Subscriptions.
Many days later, long after the 7 day trial period, in my code when I get the owned subscriptions (with inAppBillingService.getPurchases()) it still says I own the subscription. Since I cancelled it during the trial, I am not billed for it, but also, I no longer own that subscription. As far as I can tell, this is a bug with Google's In-App Billing Service. Any one know how this bug can be reported to Google so it can be fixed? As it is right now, customers can purchase my subscription and then cancel it during the trial period. They then get to keep using the subscription because Google says they own it. This is a MAJOR BUG.
I went ahead and tested this in my app. Using the sample app, I call the method launchSubscriptionPurchaseFlow() from the IabHelper class to start the subscription purchase. After the user confirms it, I get the purchase validated and handle the UI update on OnIabPurchaseFinishedListener.
I also check every time on my activity's onCreate() method if the user has the purchased items and subscriptions. This is done with the method queryInventoryAsync() of the same class. In my case, after canceling the subscription and waiting a few hours after the 7 days trial period elapsed, the user no longer had the subscription. You can test this by checking in the Purchase object if myPurchase.getPurchaseState() != 0. Possible purchase state values are listed in the documentation.
Finally, note that the cancellation will not be propagated immediately so it might take more than 7 days for that to go through. And it will take at least 7 days regardless of when the user cancels it. According to the documentation:
When the user cancels a subscription, Google Play does not offer a
refund for the current billing cycle. Instead, it allows the user to
have access to the cancelled subscription until the end of the current
billing cycle, at which time it terminates the subscription. For
example, if a user purchases a monthly subscription and cancels it on
the 15th day of the cycle, Google Play will consider the subscription
valid until the end of the 30th day (or other day, depending on the
month).
Hope that helps.
Now that a month has passed, I have more info.
Clearly what I was seeing in October IS A BUG in Google's code.
With absolutely NO change to my code, everything works as it should in the code deployed from the play store. This was true for alpha, beta and production.
It did not work as expected for code installed on the device from Eclipse - hence the Google BUG.
I've searched high and low for guidance on how best to address this...
I've read Google Play In-App Subscriptions (http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_subscriptions.html) and the section on Implementing Subscriptions (http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_integrate.html#Subs) but I still don't see a way to avoid abuse.
I've also seen the related question here - Google Inapp purchasing and trial period. However, using the SharedPreferences is subject to relatively easy abuse.
I have an app that will require a subscription for full functionality. I set up a monthly subscription in-app purchase product, say ID = "myapp.subscription.monthly", costing $0.99/month.
I want to give people a chance to experience the full functionality, so I give "myapp.subscription.monthly" a 30-day trial period.
When the user installs the app for the first time, they are prompted to purchase the monthly subscription, they are charged $0.00 and told that starting 30 days from now their card will start getting charged $0.99/month.
When my app calls "getPurchases()", the fact that they have a subscription will be returned.
If they cancel during the free trial, or say after a couple of months of billing, a call to "getPurchases()" returns nothing, according to the "Implementing" section:
The call returns a Bundle with all the active subscriptions owned by the user. Once a subscription expires without renewal, it will no longer appear in the returned Bundle.
Since the user has no active subscriptions, my app will prompt them to purchase the subscription for full functionality. Again, they will get the 30-day free trial.
I've thought about having a second subscription product, say "myapp.subscription.monthly.no.free.trial" and I would have that be the available item for purchase. However, without a way to ask Google Play if the user ever previously purchased a subscription, my app can't know that is should be offering the "no free trial" product.
So, how to avoid someone just subscribing and cancelling over and over to keep getting the free 30 days? Is there a way to ask Google Play for the complete purchase history?
According to documentation (https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2476088?hl=en, Trial subscriptions), its says:
You can't sign up for multiple trials.
I guess Google automatically handle this
Google Play Store handles this automatically
If your user cancels the free trial and then tries to make a purchase, they will be shown the $0.99 rather than giving a Free trial again. But, if the user pays the $0.99 after canceling the free trial, the actual billing will only start after the canceled Free trial period has ended.
It would have been helpful if there was any way to know whether a product has a free trial or not on the client side. Hope that will be put into the In-App Billing APIs soon.
I am also using in app billing but google always provide one free trial per user.
If u subscribe same sku again then google will not provide trial period to that user.
Scenario:
I am on the verge of completing my google playstore in-app billing implementation. I am using a monthly or yearly subscription in order to charge my consumers.
Problem: I can't seem to find a way to remove a subscription from active state, since cancellation simply stops the billing from occurring. This doesn't allow QA to thoroughly test the purchase procedure without creating an account for each test, or waiting until the subscription period ends.
Question: Have I missed or am wrong about something? If so, what is it? If not, what should be done to allow QA to do proper testing?
According to what I have understood from your question,
you can not test subscription from the test account. Google play doesn't provide subscription testing using dummy product. you have to test on the real product.
Now question arises how can I test subscription
you can check subscription by purchasing real product and check product status or purchase cancellation using the purchase status api from your server.
you can also get more information from the given link below for the step by step cancellation purchase status:
1) link1
2) link2
you can simply query every day and check your subscription is valid or not and also get it's expiration date.
I also have one other option with out pay for any charges on your real product, you can set trial period in the Google console and before trial period ends up cancel subscription from the Google play store Menu -> MyApp -> Subsciption and cancel product and check above procedure given in the links.
EDIT:
Important: In all cases, you must continue to offer the content that
your subscribers have purchased through their subscriptions, for as
long any users are able to access it. That is, you must not remove any
subscriber’s content while any user still has an active subscription
to it, even if that subscription will terminate at the end of the
current billing cycle. Removing content that a subscriber is entitled
to access will result in penalties. Please see the policies document
for more information.
more information check below links:
1)
http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_subscriptions.html#cancellation
2) https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2476088?hl=en
3)
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/140504?hl=en
You can not done this with out waiting until the subscription process cycle completes after cancellation of subs product, the only way remaining which is Free trial version it's only the way to provide us to test for the product cancellation in which product cancel immediately after you cancel subscription trial period, it will not continue until even trial periods ends.
more information check below link:
http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_subscriptions.html#administering
And I think it is better way because in the trial period you should go
with the actual credit card payment process but you doesn't need to
pay anything for it. Google play record the transaction as $0.00 for
the subscription process. And if you cancel the subscription the you
should not pay anything for testing, but yes I am not sure free trial version
is worked before you publish the app but it is only get by efforts only.
Conclusion:
In the current api it is not possible to test subcription product like
normal products and if user has been cancel the subscription product
then you have to wait to purchase the same product until the
subscription cycle has been expired, there is no another way if the
subscription cycle is going on and you can test for the same product
again before subscription cycle ends. And if you still want to test
for the same product then you have to choose another account for
testing it or another way is Free trials, you will not be any charged
until your Free trials period expired or cancel subscription in that
period and for the testing account before publish the app you will be refunded
automatically after 14 days of purchased product according to my
knowledge.
Hope it will solve your problem.
I have a horribly clunky workaround for this problem. Here is what I do every time I want to do a test of in-app subscriptions:
Create a new in-app subscription product in the google play developer console.
Point the android app at the new subscription product you just created.
In your code to check for active subscriptions, add a line to specifically ignore the order number of the previous subscription that you tested.
Export a release build of the app and transfer it directly to your testing device.
After testing, return to step #1 to test the next time.
Don't forget to fix your change from step #2 before deploying the app!
You might want to create many subscriptions in step #1 so you don't have to continually wait hours for them to propagate. Please comment if you know of a better way!
UPDATE: Google now has test subscriptions and is making it easier to use them! https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/01/faster-renewals-for-test-subscriptions.html
It seems that nowadays there is better solution:
Open your app page in Google Play Store application
Click "Manage subscriptions"
Click "Cancel subscription"
Go to "Settings", "Apps" in your phone.
Find Google Play Store and clear application data.
You should now be able to re-buy subscription.
Create a mock class that mocks out the Google Play methods that you are using.