Android: Managing Ad-Free and Ad supported version. Move to in-app purchase?

Question

I currently have an Android app which is distributed as two applications an Ad supported version and an ad-free version. The Ad-Supported version has over 10,000 users and the Ad-Free version has a couple of hundred. Currently both projects are completely independent making updates a fairly tedious task. Ideally I would like to just updated one project and build be able to build both versions. After looking online it seems I have two options:

1. Make a library containing most of the class files and then just extend this for the two versions (changing only the files that are different). As the project is fairly big this may be a large task and may cause some serious headaches.

2. Just release one version and use in-app purchases to remove the ads. This seems the easiest route but how do I allow my existing ad-free users to remove the ads via in-app purchase without paying?

Hopefully someone has been in a similar predicament before and can point me in the right direction.

Answer 1

Where I used to work we had the 2nd option. It helped us a lot since you just need to maintain 1 code/app/apk. In your case, I suggest you to do the same thing.

In order to migrate all your users to a single App, you can give a random code (generated with the email they are using and an algorithm to create it) via your "Ad-Free version" app. Then, in your All-in-one app you can ask for that code or activate the "In-App-workflow" in order to remove all Ads.

Edit:

Check this link: How to get the Android device's primary e-mail address

Answer 2

I am always recommend SO user to used android inapp purchase.

Benefits:

1) Easily track manage your playstore user.

2) If updation require then update code on one place.

3) Secure payment with google policy.

4) many more feature.

@bencallis as per your question i recommend to you option 2 is better.

if you require any inapp information then put comment.