How to grant free months to an auto-renewal subscription (iOS)?

Question

I have an iOS app with different auto-renewal subscription possibilities, and I want to offer it's user the chance to earn a free month when they invite friends to the app.

I know how to handle the scenario where I'd give a free month to a user that's not already subscribed, but I'm wondering how to handle a user that's in the middle of a year-long paid subscription and should receive a free month..

Answer 1

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EDIT

Make sure to read budiDino reply below, it seems this is now possible (Full disclosure, I haven't tried it myself but I did glance over the references linked).

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OLD ANSWER

Ok, after some digging and asking around on Apple's forums I can confirm it's not possible.

The only way to achieve this is to give users a free month outside of Apple's subscription process...meaning users should turn off auto renewal to enjoy those free months.

Whether this is good or bad for your app depends, but it required that the user manually turns off auto-renewal while using the earner out of charge time, and then turn it on to get back into the normal auto-renewal flow handled by Apple.

Answer 2

You can maintain a value like additionalMonths on your server side.

So once his subscription period gets over, you can check for the value of additionalMonths and accordingly provide him subscription for those number of months.

Answer 3

1. Promotional Offers

This option allows you to add a free or discounted price for a period that you specify and it will be executed before the next payment cycle. You can use this feature starting with iOS 12.2.

Apple Documentation:

You can provide lapsed or current subscribers a limited-time offer of a discounted or free period of service for auto-renewable subscriptions on macOS, iOS, and tvOS.

Some useful links:

• Implementing Promotional Offers in Your App
• Set up promotional offers for auto-renewable subscriptions
• Subscription Offers Best Practices video - WWDC 2019.

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2. Offer Codes

Apple Documentation:

Offer codes can help you acquire, retain, and win back subscribers by providing a subscription at a discount or for free for a limited time.

Read more

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3. "Extend a Subscription Renewal Date" endpoint:

Potentially simpler alternative that is not really suggested to use for this use-case. It has certain limitations though:

• you can move the renewal date for a customer’s subscription up to 90 days into the future for each extension
• you can extend the renewal date twice within a year (365 days) per customer

The following types of subscriptions aren’t eligible for renewal date extensions:

• Subscriptions in a free offer period
• Inactive subscriptions in a billing retry state
• Subscriptions in a grace period state, with an expiration date in the past
• Subscriptions that have already received two renewal date extensions within the last 365 days

Read more