Management URL switches to App Store after restoring web purchase on iOS – is this expected?

Hi Alex! 👋

Thanks for your detailed explanation—this is a great question.

Yes, what you're seeing is expected behavior. The management_url returned by RevenueCat's API depends upon the store of purchase. Hence, when the user initially makes a purchase through Web Billing the management_url returned by the API points to your customer portal. However, when the user restores their purchase on iOS the management_url gets updated to point to the App Store subscription management page.

However, this raises a curious point: a restore on iOS would only succeed if the purchase was made through the App Store. Web purchases aren't usually restorable via restorePurchases() on iOS, since they aren't linked to a StoreKit receipt. The only logical explanation in this case would be that the user has bought the subscription through iOS and Web Billing (essentially having 2 active subscriptions) this is why they can restore a purchase on iOS, and this causes the management_url to be overriden.

If the user only purchased via web billing, and nothing was bought on the App Store, the restore shouldn't be possible, and the user would have to login to the app to access there subscription through whatever entitlement was granted to their account, and in this case the management_url would remain unchanged.

Also, just to clarify: the management_url is set automatically based on the store and cannot be overridden manually.

Hope this clears things up! Let me know if you need help digging further into this behavior.

Best,

Hussain