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Is there a way to offer a purchase free of charge for in-app purchases? I'd like to give a free download as a promotional item and not charge the normal price that is listed in iTunes.

rmaddy
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Kevin_TA
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2 Answers2

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You have to code for this in your app. In my app all purchases are registered on parse.com and sync'd between user's devices. I can add a purchase to the class on parse.com for a user and then they get the IAP for free when the data sync's to their device.

Stephen Johnson
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Apple don't have any mechanism for this like they do with app purchases unfortunately. The best way I've found is a custom URL scheme, so you can generated a code/string of your custom URL type ://myApp/123456promoCodeFooBar12999 etc, then your app, in response can connect to your server and check this code off against your database (confirming that it has not been used before, and can't be used again on a diff device) before unlocking the feature. This circumvents needing to get UUID's off people etc (which you can't do in code anymore to check against anyway), you just need an email address, send link, user clicks in it, your app opens and away you go :)

edit addition 28 Feb 2014..

an alternate approach might be to submit an separate paid version of the application in which all upgrades are unlocked because they are paid for upfront at purchase time. You may choose to keep this off the iTunes shelf but occasionally put it up, perhaps at a prohibitively high price, $1000 etc, because you can get the normal promo codes off Apple for this one to give to journalists etc, just explain what you are doing to them in your cover letter and I'm sure they'll be more than happy to play ball

Jef
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  • That is a great idea!! – Stephen Johnson Feb 27 '14 at 16:23
  • Do you have app(s) on the app store that use this strategy? Some other SO postings suggest Apple is not so happy with these strategies (e.g.< http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2595122/workaround-to-lack-of-promotional-codes-for-in-app-purchases). – Chris Prince Feb 27 '14 at 21:39
  • of course they're not, if they wanted you doing it they'd have set up a mechanism to do so. But in my opinion no-one is being cheated if the user you're giving it to would not otherwise buy it. Let me just say that this works, you only need know how to connect to your server and do some really simple mySQL stuff. You don't want to be giving hundreds of codes away. But to let a journalist try it if it helps get favourable press? why not? ps i am well aware that i haven't answered your question @Chris Prince, sorry, must be out of characters :) – Jef Feb 28 '14 at 00:48
  • ps also very possible to unlock a feature temporarily by virtue of an NSDate to userDefaults etc, so the free unlocking is only for a month or three ;) – Jef Feb 28 '14 at 00:50