Hello there!
I have noticed that the revenuecat events differentiate in behavior for android and ios but i did not find a specific explanation for that.
If a subscription is canelled and a user purchases again, a renewal event is sent for ios but an initial_purchase is sent for android. Is this correct behaviour?
Ive seen that initial_purchase events are sent for first subscriptions or if a “lapsed” user resubscribes. What exactly is a “lapsed” user? The documentation says an active user is someone who interacted with revenue cat in the past 28 days. But then again android is sending initial purchases. I have not come to a conclusion with this. I hope anyone can help me out, thanks!
Initial purchase vs renewal events on Android and Ios
Best answer by Michael Fogel
Hey
INITIAL_PURCHASE events are sent when a new subscription has been purchased or a lapsed user has resubscribed. In this case, a lapsed user is a user who has had that previous subscription expire and the billing period ended therefore they would be starting a new subscription rather than continuing an old one.
- More information on this flow can be found here: https://www.revenuecat.com/docs/event-flows#initial-purchase-flow
RENEWAL events are sent when an existing subscription has been renewed. So these are sent for subscriptions that have not yet expired and were successfully renewed.
When a user resubscribes, the way it is treated depends on whether they are on iOS or Android like you assumed above. I will break it down a bit here:
- Google: If the subscription term ends meaning the subscription has expired already, then we will send an INITIAL_PURCHASE event.
- iOS: If the subscription term ends meaning the subscription has expired already and the resubscription is part of a different subscription group, then we will send an INITIAL_PURCHASE event.
- iOS: If the subscription term ends meaning the subscription has expired already and the resubscription is part of the same subscription group, then we will send a RENEWAL event.
More information on this flow can be found here: https://www.revenuecat.com/docs/event-flows#resubscribe-flow
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