Posted by Steve Hartford, Product Manager, Google Play
Digital subscriptions are still one of the fastest growing ways developers can make money on Google Play. As the subscription business model evolves, many developers have asked us for more flexibility and less complexity in how they sell subscriptions.
To meet those needs, we rethought the developer experience for selling subscriptions on Play. Today we introduce new subscription capabilities and a new console UI to help you grow your business. At its inception we divorced that the subscription benefits are from how you sell the subscription. For each subscription, you can now set up several basic plans and offers. It allows you to sell your subscription in a variety of ways, reducing operating costs by eliminating the need to create and manage an ever-increasing number of SKUs.
You may have already noticed the change in Play Console as we took existing subscription SKUs and split them into subscriptions, base plans and offers. The new subscription configuration performs as before, with no immediate need to update your applications or backend integrations.
Example of a subscription setup
More flexibility to improve reach, conversion and retention
Elken basic plan in a subscription define a different billing period and renewal type. For example, you can create a subscription with a monthly auto-renewal plan, an annual auto-renewal plan, and a 1-month prepaid plan.
prepaid plan is a completely new option that gives users access to benefits for a fixed period of time. Users can extend this access by purchasing add-ons in your app or in the Play Store. Prepaid plans allow you to reach users in regions where pay-as-you-go are standard, including India and Southeast Asia. They can also provide an alternative for users who are not ready to buy an auto-renewal subscription.
A basic plan can have multiple presentations support different stages of the subscription lifecycle – whether to acquire new subscribers, encourage upgrades, or retain existing subscribers. Whenever users can benefit from the value your subscriptions offer, we want to help you reach them with an offer they find worthwhile and convenient.
Offers offer a wide range of pricing and fitness options. While the base plan contains the price available to all users, offers offer alternative prices to qualifying users. You can create listings that are available wherever their base plan is available, or you can create listings for specific regions. For example:
- Purchase offers allow users to try your subscription for free or at a discounted price
- Upgrade and cross-upgrade offer users to take advantage of longer billing periods or higher service levels
- Upgrade offers can also help you move subscribers from a prepaid plan to an auto-renewal plan
If you want even more flexibility, you can create custom offers for which you decide the business logic, such as second-chance free trials, or return offers for expired subscribers.
Better criteria for understanding your business
We have improved reporting by updating how benchmarks are calculated in Play Console. Measures such as new subscription counts, conversion and retention rates and cancellations are more consistent and calculated in line with financial measures. You can now compare data directly between Play Console and the Real Time Developer Notifications API. In addition, subscription metrics are now cumulative. This means that data reported for previous days will not change over time.
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As of today, all of these new subscription capabilities are available. To find out more, please visit the Help Center. When you are ready to integrate, look at this guide, documentation and sample program.
Please let us know how we are doing and contact us with any problems you may encounter.
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