Concept for product upgrade in a productline without inapp payment

Question

I have a "Base", "Normal" and a "Deluxe" App. "Base" is free, "Normal" costs 1$ and "Deluxe" costs 2$.

• The "Base" app holds the entire logic for all content and shows the trial content at the same time. The "Normal" and "Deluxe" are only unlocker apps without any logic.
• The "Base" app simple checks if the "normal" or "deluxe" apps are installed as well and shows the corresponding content. ( This is no security question, I am doing this with certs compare ... )

I am looking for a way to allow the Users, who already payed the "Normal" App to only pay another 1$ to unlock the Deluxe content.

What I evaluated so far, which I don't like :

• I don't like to use inapp payment for several reasons, which I do not want to discuss here please :-)
• I could create a "upgrade2Deluxe" and in the "Base"-App I could check if "Normal" and "upgrade2Deluxe" is installed and show the Deluxe Content. But I also don't like that, because the User will see 3 Apps on his device.

Do anyone have a idea howto do this in another way ?

Answer 1

I'm faced with a similar choice, and I'm still exploring a number of ideas:

• although I also don't want to have in-app purchases in my Base app (which currently needs no permissions at all), I'm thinking that having in-app purchases in the Normal app will be acceptable, so the user installs the Base app (which holds all the Base + Normal code), and the first upgrade is to install the Normal app, then future upgrades are achieved by running the very limited upgrade code from the Normal app.

• I intend that the user does not see multiple apps on their device - the Normal app will not declare any launcher intent, so will be hidden from the user

• I'm looking to have the Base app change it's declared launcher activity so that the icon changes from Base to Normal (or beyond)

By keeping in-app billing out of the Base app, I keep the ability of that app to work on Kindle Fire and other devices outside the Google Play ecosystem.

Answer 2

Refund users $1 if they buy both normal and deluxe.

You cannot manipulate prices on a per-user basis. There also isn't anything stopping users from buying both normal and deluxe versions from the play store.

If your problem with IAP is having a server side component, you could use something like http://doc.applicasa.com/docs/content/android/#monetization to help.

Answer 3

You can make two versions of the app - Free(Base) & Premium(Deluxe).

Although I understand you do not want to implement IAP, however you could provide them some of the additional features(after the trial) via the In-app purchases that would transform your app to the Normal version as it seems the only viable option.

Now for the Deluxe app you have to make another app with all the features you want to provide & provide the link in your app for the user to download. After the download of the Deluxe app the user can delete the Free app!

This is the norm that developers follow for trial & full version apps ( Example: The Dictionary.com app in iOS)