What is an In-App Subscription and How to Implement It [ 6 Tools]

Today, in-app subscriptions are everywhere; users are required to sign up for a recurring subscription to get access to app offerings on streaming platforms, learning apps, and newspapers.

Let’s consider a scenario- you installed an e-learning app to learn new skills. Now, the app offers only some basic lessons for free, but you need to spend money to purchase a subscription for accessing the advanced learning content. This is what is termed as in-app subscriptions. 

In-app subscriptions grant access to the exclusive app content, and the access is revoked as soon as the subscription is canceled. It’s worth mentioning that the system automatically renews the subscription until the user cancels the in-app subscription. Sounds intriguing? Let’s talk more about it! 

Benefits of In-App Subscription

In-app subscriptions offer manifold benefits; the obvious ones are listed below. 

Monetization

In-app subscriptions offer a convenient way to monetize your app and get rewarded for your hard work. 

Revenue Generation

App subscriptions comprise nearly 50% of the total revenue generated by apps, and hence they ensure consistent revenue generation. 

Brand Loyalty 

Since there are thousands of apps for each category, capturing and building a promising user base is a tough task. In-app subscriptions offer a sure-shot way of preventing users from migrating somewhere else. 

Ease of Payments

In-app purchases facilitate easy payment and signup options offering ease of use and increasing users’ satisfaction. 

Easy Promotions 

Last but not least, in-app purchases are an efficient way to promote the most popular content using luring offers to your users. 

Features of In-App Subscription

The typical features of in-app subscriptions are as follows: 

Low subscriptions 

Usually, in-app subscriptions charge a smaller amount from the customers to attract new users instead of charging a huge amount at a time. 

Recurring revenue

In-app subscriptions ensure steady revenue, which can be a source of consistent income for app owners.

Cross-platform syncing

In-app subscriptions should sync with the account and reflect when signed in on different subscriptions.

How to implement In-App Subscriptions?

Here is the step-by-step process of implementing in-app purchases in your app:

• Create your offer describing your content, price, and rules.
• Restrict your exclusive app offerings and preview them.
• Submit and publish your app containing in-app subscriptions on the store.

Implementing in-app purchases in your app is easier said than done.

Thankfully, there are several tools available for you to help implement in-app subscriptions and generate definite revenue from your app. 

RevenueCat

Companies like Notion, Buffer, and VSCO love RevenueCat for the simplicity and easy integration process for implementing the subscription feature.

As claimed by RevenueCat, the best subscription apps rely on them for implementing in-app purchases, managing customers, and growing revenue on their platform without the need for developers to write tons of code. 

The platform provides open-source field-tested mobile SDKs, which can be deployed in a few minutes to implement app subscriptions.

It also offers a wrapper around Apple’s StoreKit and Google Play Billing, which provide all the details regarding the subscription status of the customers and eliminates the need for server maintenance or the need of writing backend code. 

RevenueCat can effortlessly handle real-time purchase events like trial starts, subscriptions, and cancelations and provides in-depth subscription analytics and real-time reporting for the key metrics.

Thanks to its robust integration and webhooks, it is possible to quickly sync the in-app revenue data and customer lifecycle events with every platform you practically use. RevenueCat offers cross-platform capabilities and is compatible with almost all the popular apps around the world. 

GoodBarber

Drive revenue from your app by implementing in-app purchase subscriptions using GoodBarber’s in-App purchase extension. The add-on is undoubtedly one of the best ways to monetize your app by selling subscriptions and, at the same time keeping the users engaged. 

GoodBarber provides native in-app subscription capabilities in all the apps designed on its platform and the users over a trial period of 30 days.

It makes it possible to implement an auto-renewable subscription model in the app that allows users to access exclusive content and features as long as the subscription is active. This system gives users permanent access to exclusive content. 

GoodBarber’s in-app purchase extension is used by different content creators to earn subscriptions, along with apps offering online courses, newspaper, radio content, and more to implement a seamless purchase experience 

Qonversion

Qonversion is a subscription data platform for mobile-first companies that offers cross-platform subscriptions along with revenue analytics, engagement automation, and integrations in one place, allowing your app to generate more revenue. 

The platform looks after the best interest of the developers by offering SDKs that make implementing in-app purchases, checking subscription statuses, managing subscribers, and viewing in-depth subscription analytics a breeze. 

The features you can avail of using Qonversion are listed below: 

• Automatically send personalized notifications along with promotional offers during subscription offers or in-app events.
• Cross-platform capabilities on iOS, Android, Stripe, and more for handling purchases and subscriptions. 
• Use built-in real-time dashboards to analyze cohorts and recurring revenue analytics. 
• A/B testing feature to experiment with the different pricing of in-app purchases and paywalls.
• Use multiple tracking metrics such as revenue, the number of subscriptions and purchases, the trial started and converted events, and more to make informed decisions. 

Apphud 

Providing all-in-one infrastructure for your app growth, Apphud assists the marketing and product management teams to intake the right decision backed by data and tools.

The tool also makes it possible to integrate the in-app purchase subscriptions into your mobile app by using a code snippet eliminating the requirement of server code. 

Apphud facilitates powerful revenue and offers an in-depth insight into user acquisition analytics, along with integrations into mobile analytics, marketing platforms, and messengers. It also enables you to run A/B experiments to determine which in-app purchase performs better.

Additionally, the tool also assists you in automatically attracting lapsed customers, decreasing the churn rate, and getting valuable insights into cancellations. 

Apphud is compatible with both iOS and Android platforms, and the subscription purchased on either platform is available for you to access on both platforms. 

Checkaso 

Leveraging the opportunity by Apple to promote content and generate revenue through iOS apps, Checkaso can prove to be the perfect in-app purchase option for charging your users the extra content your app has got to offer them.

The in-app subscription purchase option offered by the platform comes along with competitive analysis and promotional tools that promote your offering to your app’s customer base.  

Keeping the best interests of iOS developers and creators in mind and maximizing the revenue generation effort, Checkaso is armed with powerful features that compel your users to make an in-app purchase.

What’s unique about Checkaso is the useful price policy insights of your competitors that you can easily sneak peek at here, giving you an idea of where you should start. It also enables you to track the keywords and ASO matrices like Search Volume, Impressions, and Rank to stay ahead of the in-app purchase competition. 

Paddle

Finally, let’s check out Paddle an in-app purchase implementation tool that affirms to boost your app revenue without you needing to spend a hefty amount as price. Focused on the Apple ecosystem, Paddle In-app purchase provides a variety of flexible subscription options along with useful retention tools to the app creators.

Moreover, Paddle allows the creators for implementing additional payment methods along with Apple Pay and choosing more billing models. Thus, Paddle can be considered a strong alternative to Apple’s payment system.

Once implemented, Paddle manages all the complex purchase admin responsibilities ranging from global sales taxes to customer support automatically, removing the burden from your shoulders.

Its lower fees help you earn more, and the option to make the payment in advance accelerates your revenue generation, helps retain subscriptions, implements payment recovery flows, and also provides a PayPal payment option.

Conclusion

In-app purchases are rapidly catching popularity, and they play a key role in the revenue generation of several apps. Implementing in-app purchases can be tricky and is a time-consuming and demanding task. 

Thankfully, the tools we’ve listed above are equipped with powerful features that can help streamline the process of implementing an in-app subscription in your app.

You may also explore some best app store optimization tools to increase conversion rates and download numbers.