Is there a way to give promo/coupon codes for people to download your app for free?

Question

I need a way to share my app to allow people to download it for free with a coupon code or promo code or checkout code. I would like to post the code to a board, and invalidate it after some time. My app uses licensing and in-app billing, so mailing the APK may not be appropriate. The last question I saw regarding this was 6 months old, so I did not know if there was a newer solution available.

Solution 1

Google has recently enabled support for promotion codes for paid apps and in app purchases. You will first need to setup a promotion through your Google play store developer console:

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

Or add support for in app purchase codes through in app promotions:

https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_promotions.html

Note however that there are limits to the amount and type of codes that can be created:

For each app, you can create up to 500 promo codes per quarter. To reach that limit, you can use any combination of paid app and in-app promo codes.

Here are some ways you could reach your promo code limit for an app:

• 500 paid app promo codes, or
• 500 promo codes for one in-app product, or
• 250 paid app promo codes + 250 promo codes for one in-app product, or
• 100 promo codes for five in-app products

Solution 2

There is not a way to do this with the current feature set in the Play store.

You could produce a similar effect using the Licensing service (http://developer.android.com/guide/market/licensing) and perhaps in-app purchases. However sadly you will have to do most of the work yourself.

Solution 3

As others have said, this is currently not supported by the Android Market/Play. There is, I believe, a feature request, you can vote/star it. If you are already using in-app billing, it is fairly easy to implement this yourself though. All you need is a database with Web access, so you can check if the coupon code is valid. You might want to implement some sort of restore functionality, so people can reuse the code if they switched devices. And/or set up an upper limit for coupon use, so that you can prevent people from sharing the coupon code.

Solution 4

I think I have a part-way ok way to do it. I use the licensing service, which is not terribly hard (10 times easier than in-app billing), and embedded an expiration time into my app, and post the debug version on a web site. Before the expiration, it ignores the license server response. After the expiration, it reports "Unlicensed App" with the option to purchase.

Solution 5

You can do this if you distribute your app through a third-party app market, such as Appia. However, this functionality is not built into Google Play.

If you wish to provide users with a coupon so that they can download a paid app for free on Google Play store, that can't be done. You either need to use another market or distribute the paid app yourself.

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Comments

[Amir Uval]

Any idea if this is allowed by Google Play Terms of service?

[Nikolay Elenkov]

As long as your not charging money you are probably OK. Consult a lawyer if want to be sure.

[Amir Uval]

I'm considering using this as a way to reward my beta testers, so no money involved. Makes sense, thanks!

[caskey]

I know of no announced features that indicate such enhancements to the google play store. Most of google's big product announcements occur at Google I/O which is in June.

[Leonardo]

@MikeT Feature Available

[Mike T]

@Leonardo Do you have a link?

[Leonardo]

@MikeT check out support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/…

[Mike T]

@Leonardo I may not be understanding correctly, but as far as I know, alpha and beta testers don't get to test paid-apps for free. They still need to pay for the app.

[Colin Holgate]

I dropped in here looking for a solution to the original question, but on the point about beta testers and in-app purchases, I believe you do have to do the purchase, but as a trusted tester you immediately get a refund. I have a long list of my own apps in my Google Play account that show as "cancelled". So, it didn't end up costing me anything to test the feature.

[Jose Gómez]

I don't think this response is up to date anymore. When I buy something from Google Play, I now have the possibility to redeem a code. I have redeemed a 6.99€ app myself, which I downloaded for free, from a promotion code I received.

[Jose Gómez]

What is the link to that feature request? I think it may actually have already been implemented (stackoverflow.com/questions/10079840/…).

[mjn]

From the question: post the code to a board - this will not work because every promo code can only be used once. So either the full list (up to 500) of codes is posted (would this be allowed by the terms of use?), or the developer has to give away the promo code on a per individual base.

[B4dT0bi]

For that usecase ive created a Website called androidpromocode.com where you can register an app and add codes, afterwards you can distribute a link and my website will take care of the code distribution.

[AxA]

Do NOT use promo codes if your app does validation of dev payload since purchases done using promo codes return empty dev payload!

[Androidcoder]

Do you know if different people can use the same code, so you could use it as a general reward in your app, or does it expire for everyone once one person redeems it for an inapp product.

[sathya]

@JoseGómez can u please share how you got the promotion code..it will be helpful for my new app promotion

[Jose Gómez]

@sathya this response (stackoverflow.com/a/34802209/1816603) has the up to date details.