We are a B2B SAAS company offering analytics and marketing data. We wanted to offer our customer the ability to have a free app to interact with our service on their phone. We wanted our customers to subscribe on the web but not using in-app subscriptions.

We are unable to release this app on the AppStore until we change our whole payment/subscription/billing stack to support Apple subscription system and agree to give them 30% / 15% of our revenues on those users (this is more than we pay for AWS, comparatively).

Keep in mind that a good chunk of of revenues comes from custom plans, so I don't even know how that would work with Apple system.

So much for not forcing developers to do anything.

Are you sure that you’re interpreting the guidelines correctly? Lots of apps serve content related to subscriptions/digital purchases that are signed up for on the web (Netflix, Prime Video, etc.). Or are you trying to use the app as an acquisition channel?

It does not matter how we interpret the guidelines. The fact is that our app has been developed and tested, but was rejected by the app store reviewer citing this reason.

We believe we fall under the exception of "business databases" which are exempted from this restriction, but the reviewer does not believe so. Guess who won.

We are not trying to use the app as an acquisition channel, we don't believe our customers would discover our service through an app store search. We want to make it more easy for our current customers to view their data on a mobile device, the app is pretty simple, coded in react native and also available on the play store.

What was their specific rejection reason? Generally the rule is you can offer a service paid for elsewhere if you don't link to it and don't tell people you can pay elsewhere.

I have apps on my phone that accept payment only on the web.

Can you release the app using enterprise distribution? While not ideal, this will at least allow your customers to use your app instead of getting nothing.

Enterprise distribution is meant just for internal use of the company using it and distributing to customers via that method is exactly why Facebook and Google had their Apple enterprise services disabled a few months ago (although I’m sure they resolved their issues with Apple to get them enabled again)

> We wanted our customers to subscribe on the web but not using in-app subscriptions.

But you can, and that's what a lot of companies including Netflix do?

Netflix offers subscription through the app as well. If you offer those and do not advertise your other channels, you are allowed to publish. The important part here is that you have to offer the same subscriptions at the same price between your web version and your in-app version.

But this would require a significant amount of work on our side to support both web and mobile subscription. We do not expect to get any new business straight from the mobile app, we just want to offer an additional free service to our existing and future customers.

It would take us at least 2 to 3 man-month to rework our billing stack so that Apple has a chance to get 30% on some subscription. Which they won't since we really doubt B2B customers will subscribe to $2k+ yearly contracts using in-apps purchases. So it's really spending all that time/effort so that the Apple reviewer feels OK can safely check the little box on his list next to "in-app policy" :-(

>> The important part here is that you have to offer the same subscriptions at the same price between your web version and your in-app version.

I don't think that's true. Youtube premium costs $16/mo when you subscribe using their iOS app, but $12-13 when you subscribe on the web.

Netflix removed in app subscriptions. It is still on the app store. Fairly sure your company is wrong about this, or the reviewer made a mistake.

> The important part here is that you have to offer the same subscriptions at the same price between your web version and your in-app version.

That can't be true, SoundCloud offers differing prices between their Go+ on their website and app store. $9.99 and $12.99. They even tell you if you sign-up through their website instead of the app store you get a "discount".

Well seeing that their are plenty of examples of apps that do this, I find it hard to believe.

I worked at a SAAS company that allowed the app to be on the App Store but you had to have a contract with us to use it.

I’m pretty sure you’re mistaken about this. Apple can be sticklers about ensuring that if you offer a way to sign up for the service in the app, you must support App Store subscriptions, but there are a lot of SaaS companies with free apps for subscribers. You just can’t offer a path to signing up from the app if you don’t want to pay apple.

This is not true. Using apple's in-app billing system is optional. You can always keep your billing entirely out of your free app.

You just can't link to your own website or have any flow that could lead to a billing system that isn't apples. "always" is a farce to that end.

Not anymore, they updated their policy recently

You absolutely, 100% can handle billing completely outside of Apple's infrastructure and have your app be a "Reader app," to use Apple's term for such apps. Apple just posted a document[0] that lists Amazon Kindle, Netflix, Audible, and Spotify as examples of this.

You seem very confident about your understanding of things, but you seem to have misidentified the exact cause of your rejection.

[0] https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/principles-practices/

Here is the response we got :

--- START ---

Hello XXX team,

We are writing to let you know the results of your appeal for your app, XXX.

The App Review Board evaluated your app and determined that the original rejection feedback is valid. Your app does not comply with:

Guideline 3.1.1 - Business - Payments - In-App Purchase

We continue to find that your app offers a subscription with a mechanism other than the in-app purchase API.

While we understand that the app reads data, it does not fall into any of the categories listed in guideline 3.1.3 for reader apps:

3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase

We hope you will consider making the necessary changes to be in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines and will resubmit your revised binary.

Best regards, XXX App Review Board

--- END ---

So unless you are in one of those listed categories, it does not work. Don't know why we can't be considered to be a professional database tho.

Spotify have lodged a complaint against Apple with the European Competition Commission over precisely this issue.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/13/spotify-files-a-complaint-...

I use Spotify, FreeAgent, Toggl, Zoom, Pipedrive, Asana and Trello (plus Basecamp previously) on my iOS devices - and pay for all of those through the respective websites without any option to pay in the App Store.

(Edit: I know Spotify used to have an option for it but they dropped that and I never used it anyway)

It doesn’t force you, but if you don’t, you can’t even tell people how to subscribe. See Spotify, Kindle.

You can tell people how to subscribe outside the app.

But you just can't use Apple's own platform against them.

You can't link, at least, to an external website to buy

https://www.pcworld.com/article/229880/Apple_Backs_Off_In_Ap...

You can't even tell that such a thing exists. E.g., Audible only gives you an option to add to the wish list, and is mum about how to buy a book.

So in a way apple is forcing them.

Hm... The Amazon Prime app doesn't allow purchases in the app, you've got to purchase through Amazon and then you can watch them just fine.