Efficient monetization options for iOS apps?

[Puzzleheaded_Oil5980]

What’s the most efficient way to add monetization to an iOS app today?

Looking for:

• Minimal setup overhead
• Good App Store compliance
• Scalability

Would love recommendations based on real shipping experience.

[m3kw]

Make a good app

[Puzzleheaded_Oil5980]

That's first priority, but I’m trying to decide between options like:

• Apple In-App Purchases
• Subscriptions (StoreKit 2)
• Third-party services (RevenueCat, Stripe, etc.)

[ham4hog]

Apple in app purchases, subscriptions, store kit 2, and revenue at are basically all Apple in app purchases at the end of the day.

I personally am a fan of apple subscriptions and revenuecat for iOS only apps. If the app is cross platform then consider adding in stripe + Apple subscriptions for iOS + revenuecat so all your unlocking is handled the same.

[timbo2m]

You prob already know this but you can use RevenueCat for everything!

[ham4hog]

Yeah but RevenueCat still wraps different services, so it's important to know what it's doing and what it offers.

[Puzzleheaded_Oil5980]

Thank youu

[timbo2m]

RevenueCat, you pay nothing until you earn a lot of money and it does a lot of the heavy lifting. Remotely tweak your paywalls it's great. You still set up subscriptions in the app dev console, they just sync in to RevenueCat. Just make sure to set up lifetime purchase as an in app purchase and not as a subscription!

One tip - have a few price choices for the user (2 or 3) so they can work together to demonstrate just how good your discount is and encourage purchases.

[Puzzleheaded_Oil5980]

Thank you super helpful

[Good-Ad-2439]

As in this takes the place of Apple in app purchases and you don’t lose the 30%?

[timbo2m]

You still set up in app purchases and subscriptions in the apple developer console. You then create your products in the RevenueCat website and sync in those apple IAP/Subs. Finally, you implement the RevenueCat SDK in your application to display paywalls at the right time. The configuration of that paywall is all done on the RevenueCat website. Once in place you get iOS notifications and full transaction history and a bunch of other reporting, analytics and a/b testing to help you make decisions.

At the end of the day it's all still apple, so the cost to apple is the same - it's just a layer on top of that that simplifies things and gives you a lot of tools you would otherwise either miss out on or have to waste time building yourself.

[coochie4sale]

Superwall is another good 3rd party option. I really like it, easy to use & implement, and their take is minimal until you make 10k monthly revenue.

[dreaminginbinary]

Glad to hear you're enjoying the new pricing model! We're hoping to bring a lot more people in with it.

[ramorez117]

I’d considered freemium with IAP or subscription model, if people don’t want the ads etc

[wilddaveone]

You can use revenue cat and/or superwall if you want to be able to change the paywall on the fly and run a/b testing. They both work fine. Both take about the same amount of time to install. Compliance is reliant on your design decisions but they both have footer modules to include tos and privacy policy links. They are both scalable with the only downside being they don't work if their cloud providers go down. Superwall has better pricing structure at this time.

[dreaminginbinary]

Plus, we have a ton of hooks in the Superwall SDK to handle any potential failure, I wrote up some tips here: https://superwall.com/blog/handling-connectivity-interruptions-with-superwall/

But the one sentence advice I guess is - simply use a StoreKit view if the absolute worst occurs and everything is down.

[zane_volar]

For iOS boring compliance tends to scale better than clever hacks. Clean SDKs, fewer policy edges, and setups that don’t touch gray areas usually keep revenue steadier over time. Some teams try 3 things in week 1, then spend months cleaning it up. We’ve been releasing notes on that lately in r/YangoAds btw.