iPhone app with or without AppStore

Question

My company is offering a service to our clients which we would like to implement on iphone. Our clients would be paying $5000 per month for the service, so they can give it free of charge to their customers. We have been looking (so far with no success) for a distribution method where we can sell our service to our clients, and they can give it to their customers, without charging the end users and without paying the 30% distribution fees to Apple.

We did our research and found that non of the convenient solutions would work for us:

• Putting the app for free download on the App store, protecting it with user/password and charging our clients remotely may violate the App Store terms and conditions.

• Ad hoc development would be insufficient as we are aiming towards over 10K downloads on different client devices.

• And the Enterprise solution is for internal distribution in US companies with more than 500 employees (and we are not using it internally, we are outside US and currently have only 5 employees :)

Your help would be much appreciated!

Daniel

Garate

Your information on Enterprise distribution is outdated. The 500 employee restriction is no longer applied. The new requirement is that your company have a Duns & Bradstreet number. (Like a SSN for companies) size is no longer a requirement. – Leticia

Looking at your first option, do you charge your clients $5k, and then they charge their clients to use the app? – Cog

No, I charge my clients $5K, and then they give it free of charge to their clients as a good customers service. – Garate

Answer 1

The first solution could be envisaged as the best one but is not compliant with Apple Term Of Agreement.

The idea would be:

• sell freely (to avoid 30%) your application thru the app store
• sell a subscription directly to your client

To be compliant you need to:

• sell a subscription also as an in app purchase to be compliant with Apple Terms (would be never used in your case). It has changed since June, 30 2011 (BlogArticle & MacRumors) and you can found official text there : [AppleTerms] (requires a developer account)
• don't put any button to get a subscription within your application and avoid text like buy or something like that in the deployed application.

11.14 Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content. Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app.

[AppleTerms]:https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ (requires a developer account)

Earlap

Thanks, but then it means that the end users would have to purchase the subscription. My clients should be offering the app to their customers (the end users) free of charge, so I only charge my clients for the service. Would it be a problem if I put it on App Store so users can download it for free with a very basic set of features, and other users (who are the customers of my clients) would be able to log-in using special log-in code in order to use the full version, so I can then charge my clients directly outside the app store? – Garate

Ok I understand, you can sell your application freely, and add an account management system inside the application, as soon as the user is recognized by you as a powerful one you open all modules in the application. The most simple way is to proceed like a trial version ... By default your application contains all modules but only decided one are opened, after login, you open all required modules. Does it answer? – Earlap

Oh great, the 11.14 corrections sounds exactly what I need! In this case, am I still allowed to have a log-in page on my app requiring the subscription user/password? – Garate

yes no problem a lot of application are working like that (newspaper for example, dropbox, readitlater...). But don't forget the subscription would be subscribe by an other way else you need to propose the same stuff inside the apple store. Do you want I update my first post to be clearer? – Earlap

When you say i can't put any button to get a subscription within your application, do you mean i can't put a link to my website: "get a premium account on our website" ?? And for apple i will have to add in app purchase also? – Vigilance

Answer 2

Apple Terms has been updated.

• If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than IAP.

• Any credits or in-game currencies purchased via IAP must be consumed within the app and may not expire, and you should make sure you have a restore mechanism for any restorable in-app purchases. Remember to assign the correct purchasability type or your app will be rejected.

• Apps should not directly or indirectly enable gifting of IAP content, features, or consumable items to others.

• Apps distributed via the Mac App Store may host plug-ins or extensions that are enabled with mechanisms other than the App Store.

you can look at : https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Potency

I wonder what this is going to mean. I think a lot of apps will be hit by this change! – Skell

Answer 3

Another possibility is to do a HTML5 web app which can run stand-alone on the device as a web clipping. Then your clients could distribute the app directly from their own web site(s), either behind a paywall or password protected page or not.

The Financial Times did this (convert from an app store app to a web app) to avoid Apple's app store restrictions on certain types of subscriptions.

Adaminah

Thanks, I guess this might work for "normal" HTML5 web apps, but in our case we are willing to use phonegap, so I'm not sure we can package and distribute it directly from the clients web site. Is it possible? – Garate

Willing or required? Do you really need any of the features or APIs that only phonegap provides to implement the client's specs? Or could you do a pure web page for Safari? And then make it clip-able? – Adaminah

That's a good point. Phonegap offers some cool native APIs such as access to the device storage, notification system, camera, etc. which I am not sure if can be accessed by using pure HTML5 only. – Garate

You re right at the moment but maybe in the future html 5 can cover most issue... What kind of native APIs do you really need to use? – Earlap