How to convert from a paid app to in app purchase? iOS and Android + Flutter

Question

I have an app that I have marketing and sold successfully for the first year of it's existence as a paid app for both iOS and Android. The app is developed in Flutter.

I would like to move to a freemium model using in app purchases. For Android/Google Play, I am planning to just make a 2nd Android app that has the in app purchase functionality. I will continue to maintain the paid app as well.

I'm at a loss as to what to do for iOS. I've read that I should be able to mine the original purchase date, but I'm not sure how to get this information. I'm familiar with in_app_purchase but I don't believe this resolves this issue.

Thanks!

Solution

In the Apple receipt there is a field, original_application_version.

You can check the value of this field when a user restores purchases to see if they had originally installed the app from a paid version and grant them "premium" access.

I'm not super familiar with the in_app_purchase plugin specifically and if they expose this field or not.

Comments

[moh warf]

Did you find a solution for this? I need to do the same thing, but I'm unsure what is the best way.

[TrollMaster]

Yes, RevenueCat is the answer! It exposes the original installed version. Be aware that this value is not actually the app version, it is the build version.

[TrollMaster]

For Android I have kept both the paid version and the freemium version alive, and that works really well. I have been making more money with both of them going than I did with just one. For Apple, you have no choice but to use the one single app.

[TrollMaster]

I have read about this, but I have not found any flutter libraries that expose this value. The search continues...!

[enc_life]

This one has it: github.com/RevenueCat/purchases-flutter