Hi, I am aware there is the promise and even a screenshot as evidence that In-App-Purchase is in the pipeline but can anyone tell us if we are talking days, months or years?
Just so I know wether to continue to wait or to proceed looking at alternate payment options. My interest is in subscription services.
As I think has been stated by a few others, I am also happy to be involved in any beta testing that may be required.
On another note is there any chance of a NFC reader component in the future?
its actually incredibly easy to integrate stripe into your app using the web api component! however, I am not certain on how google or apple would respond to such a thing.
i hear inconsistent things about them not liking how people use an html url on a mobile device to post for transactions.
i feel like thatās a āonly one way to figure out, just tryā sort of deal though.
Look at tencent. iOS put the heat on them. Theyāll rip a little guy out of their store if they find you use stripe for in app payment and I imagine accounts could get blocked if you did it several times.
I would say itās more like a few weeks away @martint (which was not included in your list of options, but itās a more realistic time frame) how many users do you currently have in your app?
Usually Iād be all in favour of that sort of approach @bluerfox15uht9 , but in this case Iād exercise extreme caution as you donāt want your account to be suspended.
I appreciate the concern. I know that doing this reliably is a monumental task. And to have it be a drag and drop component that can pass inspection increases difficulty several orders of magnitude.
Heck, I canāt even make heads or tails out of the rules, myself. I just know that theyāre not a fan of having the prices being on the client end.
Currently, Iām trying to use firebase as a loophole. The support staff at google, well, Iām sure you know how they are they totally like to āManually review ā everything in a completely non-manual way.
Tldr, I appreciate your effort in responding to things like this. It really goes to show the content of your character
Hello Dom, not sure if possible but I would also like to be a part of the beta if able. I have a subscription-based website and reader apps to go with it (as currently no in-app purchase). I have been live for around 3 months and have 500 paying users so far so this would be a big big feature for me.
I would also like to see this option soon. I have no app users because, well, itās brand new, but in-app purchases are weighing heavy on my mind as I near my version 1 release on the app store. At the start, I see the price I can charge as ok for my app. However, a lot depends on how popular it becomes. The more users, the more potential there is for me to have significant costs associated with the services my app is built around. Add to that the annual fees for Thunkable, licensing fees for data services, and minor other costs, and an in-app subscription for āproā features is very lucrative to help offset all of those costs. Of course, an ad-supported option is there too, but I would really like to see the ability to set up an in-app subscription plan. Eager to see this feature added!
Just coming back to this topic with some updates from my end.
I launched my app on the App Store on March 22 and on the Play Store on March 29. Since then, I have pushed 316 units between both platforms with AdMob as my only source of monetization. Iām generating roughly $0.06/day. Itās not bad, but not greatā¦yet. I could really benefit from having the ability to set up an IAP for a subscription ($4.99/year) to help maintain my app.
With the Thunkable PRO fees and other licensing fees I pay for services to run the app, it costs me about $125/month. Converting those 316 users into annual subscriptions would absolutely cover all of my annual fees. Is this something that is coming soon or is this something that, while I absolutely love this platform, I may need to look at other development options?
I ask, because this looks like a great benefit to several users and it has been discussed many times over for several months now with no real updates or movements. If this is something that is not really being actively developed, can you let us know?
I really love this platform because I donāt have to be programming proficient in two languages to develop a cross-platform app. The lure of being able to monetize and help offset my costs was the driving factor for my PRO subscription. However, if itās not something I can further push to move away from ads in the near future, Iād like to know now so I can explore other options. People hate ads. I need a better solution.
Also, while itās on my mind, is there any chance of Thunkable taking a cut of IAP proceeds when this is implemented? I donāt mind sharing a cut of my ad revenue, as I know you guys have extra work to do to ensure the quality of AdMob publishers with Googleās policies, but I feel like subscription payments should absolutely go 100% to the app creator. Just curious about that.
Canāt thank you all enough for having this platform! Itās been great and made it really easy for me to get a very useful app out to the masses in a very, VERY short amount of time (less than a month from concept to published).
For the part of the in-app purchase maybe you could set up a website that will give the user a code once they have paid. Connect your website to the real-time database. The code would be sent to the database and have the key in the real-time database could be called ācodeā and the value could be the code from the website, then the user would enter the code on the app and the app would check to see if the code was valid by looking for ācodeā in the realtime database and if it is then you could call the local storage to save that it is a valid code.
I have not tried this but I hope that you find it useful
Good luck
I would have to reread through the guidelines, but I think that would be a violation of Apple and Googleās terms of service with respect to in app purchases. Good idea thoughā¦
Thanks @ronnie - this is always nice to hear. For me the ability to ship a project to the Play Store and the App Store in 4 or 5 week instead of 4 or 5 months is a massive game changer, glad to hear youāve also had a positive experience in this regard.
The goal is to have this out during this quarter, as you can see here I have access to a test version of this that Wei has built already. Itās not ready for prime time just yet, but weāre making great progress.
Donāt quote me on this, but I donāt think thereās a way for us to do this? My feeling is that it will probably be a PRO component (again, supposition on my part here, that may change in the future!)
Some back-of-the-envelope calculations:
Congrats on your first 300 users!
assuming a $2 cpm thatās like 10% DAU? Thatās really good. The only issue, as you can probably tell is that if you 10x that to 100% (an no app in the world has 100% Daily Active Users) then youāre still only at $0.60/day. At that rate it will take you over 160 days to reach AdMobās cash-out threshold of $100ā¦so the immediate focus should be getting from 300 to 3,000 users. Have you posted about your app in #madewiththunkable?
Donāt forget that Apple and Google take 30% of you subscription fee so, if youāre paying out $1500 in subscription costs to run your app and you gross 316 x $4.99 ($1576.84) after the stores get their cut you nett $1103.78 so you end up losing about a dollar a day. The biggest assumption here is that 100% of you users convert to subscribers, which (unfortunately) never happens. I you got 10 subscribers out of your 300 users that would be a good conversion rate, anything between 30 and 60 would be excellent but as you can see thatās results in a significant shortfall. Again, if you focus on growing your userbase from 300 to 3,000 then itās not unrealistic to think that you might get 200 or 300 subscribers from that.
Finallyā¦
Thunkable is only $25 per months and the Apple developer account is $8.25 per month - where is the other $90 per month going? Perhaps as you expand you user base you could also start looking into ways to reduce your overheads? Iām not sure which membership youāre on, but swapping from monthly PRO to annual PRO will save you 16% ($50 per year) and if you can do that with your other costs youāll be able to get closer to $1,000 per year in running costs which, just typing it out, seems like incredible value!
Anyway - I love getting into the weeds with this type of thing, let me know if thereās anything else I can do to help!
And, I would definitely be willing to maintain my PRO subscription for thatā¦
Thank you! It was a crazy five weeks of trying to get everything running smoothly, but it does!
Not yet, but I certainly can/will. Itās a pretty specialized app (aurora chasing), so not sure how many of the masses here would be interested, but I can definitely share it!
Rough calculations on my end. Converting 300+ users to subscribers would certainly help more than the ad revenueā¦right now. Iām not looking to make millions, but the idea of having my user base substantially offset any costs associated with maintaining the app is really what I am after.
I pay $300/year for an astronomical API for sun/moon data, $25/month for weather data API access, roughly $30/month for a Google Cloud VM instance to run the web/data portion of the app, and some other smaller recurring costs. Nothing too substantialā¦more like another utility billā¦but, itād be nice to have more help covering all of those costs.
I will say, I have looked around. I tried a couple of other app development sites looking for any good alternatives. The rest are all ācookie cutterā development sites. Thunkable is, by far, the best I have found. As you have said, the HUGE plus is being able to develop one application and push it to BOTH Apple and Google. Again, you guys have made this SO EASY for me to accomplish. Very, very grateful this platform exists!
Very appreciative of the inputs. I am excited to see what lies ahead!
@domhnallohanlon Hello Domhnall, really appreciate the hard work of you and the teamš
Any updates regarding the in-app purchase component? Are you working on NFC components as well?
Looking forward to these two
ā everything in a completely non-manual way.
THIS! 
