Allow users to download your own paid app for free in Android

Question

I have a paid app in the Play Store (Profile Widget, in case anyone is wondering ;)) and I want to allow some users (friends, or people who do not have a credit card) to download it for free.

Of course I could just send them the APK, but they wouldn't get the updates automatically, and with every update to the app I would have to send them all the APK file again. And also, by using this method, anyone that had access to the APK file would be able to install the app for free.

I saw that by using the Android Licensing Library you could make some users bypass the License Check, but I want the app to show as "Purchased" for them in the Play Store, and I don't think this would do it.

I searched Stack Overflow but none of the solutions I found (like creating a separate APK and checking for its existence from the "real" app) handled the auto-update part.

Has anyone found a good solution for this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can now generate and distribute promo codes to current and new users on Google Play to drive engagement. Under the Promotions tab in the Developer Console, you can set up promo codes for your apps, games, and in-app products to distribute in your own marketing campaigns (up to 500 codes per app, per quarter). Consider using promo codes to reward loyal users and attract new customers.

Reference: 1) http://android-developers.blogspot.in/2016/01/create-promo-codes-for-your-apps-and-in.html

2) https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6321495

Answer 2

The best solution is to have them buy the app, then refund their purchase. It would still show up as paid. Alternatively, you could give them the app, and license it via the LVL, and configure their email addresses as test accounts listing as purchased., but then they won't get updates.

Answer 3

I have the same problem, I've checked and from what I can see there is no analog to the Apple system (Give out a one-use code to download the app).

If you just give them the APK you don't get Crash/ANRs from them and they won't automatically get updates.

It is something that Google really do need to fix, sorry there isn't a better option.

(I have the same problem for my own device (you can't buy your own app), I had a crash that was rare in the app on my own phone, but I couldn't reproduce it at a computer and the logs had well cycled past the error by the time I did, Being able to get the crash report through the developer console would have saved me a lot of mucking around)

Answer 4

this is an updated and no credit card method.

You can create a free version of the same app in the play store, but publish it in alpha release. Then, you can create a google+ provate group of alpha testers and set it as the tester group for the alpha version.

Now add the 'free licensed' users to the alpha testing group and they have your free app.

To push updates, you will have to upload updates also to the 'free alpha', that's not gold, but I think is pretty close to the best you can get at the moment

This method has an issue. As long as licensing is per-App, you will have a different license key, and it may always return TRUE, so if the users share the apks, they may be able to let other people use the app, not totally sure about this occurrence, but you are warned, better if you are sharing the free app to trusted users.

Answer 5

You can set up a sale at price zero for the paid app and let your contacts know about it. Google allows up to 8 days of the sale at a time, but you can also set it up for a single day. This way, you may still get a few downloads from unintended recipients, but the 'problem' will be far more controlled than if you were to mail out APKs. Other problems like updates are also solved automatically.

Answer 6

You can upload in third party app stores like Amazon App Store, Aptoide , www.proapk.in to allow users to download paid Android apps for free.

Answer 7

For downloading the app as a developer: Google Playstore's official word on this, is that you must create a 2nd google account to download the app you are listed as developer for. That way the stats for downloads and terms are not breached. Spoke about same issue today (though its a while after the question was posted, others should see this with similar issues)

For giving it away free: Can't you just change the app to free at a given time then notify those people to hit it during a certain window?