In-app Purchases & Subscriptions

RevenueCat (opens in a new tab) is a platform that streamlines the integration and management of in-app purchases and subscriptions for mobile apps. It facilitates the creation of payment features, including both subscription-based and one-time purchase options. The process involves two key components:

1. Setting up purchasable products, either as subscriptions or single payments, in the mobile app stores (App Store Connect and Google Play Store)
2. Utilising RevenueCat to make these in-app purchases and subscriptions accessible within your app

RevenueCat sits between your app and the mobile app stores. As products are added and updated in the app stores, RevenueCat ensures these updates are made visible in your app via paywalls (more on this later):

Before we begin, let's uncover some terminology used.

Understanding Entitlements, Offerings and Products in RevenueCat

RevenueCat categorises in-app purchases and subscriptions into three main parts:

• products are the individual in-app purchases or subscriptions your customers have access to in your app. They could be a monthly/annual subscription to exclusive content, or in-game currency to purchase items
• entitlements represent a level of access to those products. A customer is "entitled" to different products
• offers are a selection of entitlements that are offered to a customer on a paywall

Let's look at an example: Uber. The popular cab ride app may have the following products availabile:

1. Discount on Uber rides (e.g. 10% off)
2. Access to premium features such as pre-book a ride
3. Discount on UberEats orders (e.g. 20% off)

These products are made availabile to customers via entitlements (e.g. a customer is entitled to a specific product). In this example, we have two entitlements: Uber Regular and Uber Plus. These entitlements offer different products:

During the year, Uber provide offerings that customers see in the app via a paywall. For example, a Black Friday offering is availabile with an enhanced discount of 20% on Uber rides, and 40% off UberEats orders. A similar offering can exist, for instance a Christmas offering that has further discounts and access to new features:

The combination of products, entitlements and offerings make it easy to manage in-app purchases and subscriptions in your app with the power of RevenueCat. You can check this video (opens in a new tab) explaination for more information.

Consumables and Non-Consumables

Consumables are products that customers can "consume" multiple times. This could be purchasing in-app currencies or items during gameplay. Non-consumables are the opposite - products that can only be bought once. This could be removing adds, unlocking a level in a game or upgrading to a pro edition of an app.

Next steps

We are now going to focus on setting up RevenueCat for in-app purchases and subscriptions.