Managing subscriptions on multiple devices with the same App User ID

👋 Hey @rlacamara-www!

I did some digging into this today with another engineer and it doesn’t appear that we have a great way within the SDK to handle this 😔 

One of the solutions would be to manually do a purchase history query. If there are no purchases on that device but there it an entitlement then you would know to not show that upgrade/downgrade options. But it might also get weird if there is a purchase for that user but its different than the logged in RevenueCat user.

I’m going to keep noodling on this but just wanted to let you know that we couldn’t think of an already built-in solution!

Managing Subscriptions

A user can only manage their subscription on the platform it was purchased from.

Does this statement really mean the user can only manage their subscription on the device in which he purchased the subscription? For what I read it’s actually saying “on the platform”, not “ont he device” it was purchased from.

For example, if a user has purchased a subscription in an Android device, he could then only manage his subscription on Google Play Store on any Android device, whereas if the user has purchased the subscription on an iPhone then he would only be able to manage his subscription on Apple’s App Store on any iOS device.

Is my understing about it correct? Or does the user really can only manage his subscription on the actual device he used to purchase the subscription? 

Hey @UlyssesAlves! 

Is my understing about it correct? Or does the user really can only manage his subscription on the actual device he used to purchase the subscription? 

The user can manage their subscription from any device on the platform it was purchased (as long as the same account that purchased the subscription is the one that is logged in)

Example: I have an iPhone and an iPad. I can cancel my subscriptions on either of those because I’m logged into the same Apple ID on both.

Hope this helps!

The user can manage their subscription from any device on the platform it was purchased (as long as the same account that purchased the subscription is the one that is logged in)

That’s what I thought. 

But if this is the case, I can’t see why it could be an issue as described by @rlacamara-www when he said

What we’re having problems is with subscription management since many actions (Upgrade, Downgrade, etc...) will only work from the device that did the original purchase as stated in the docs:

Wouldn’t it be a solution @rlacamara-www if you write your code in a way that’s not dependend upon the device on which the subscription was purchased? Then you could just verify the platform (Android or iOS) rather than the physical device.

Running into a similar issues myself too.

First, to clarify, so is it the platform or the device that matters? @joshdholtz  your example was iPad and iPhone but the question was about iOS vs Android. If I purchase on Android phone and then login on my iPad, I can definitely compare the platform vs the “store” value in customerInfo object to tell the iPad app to repoint the user back to Android.

How would this work for repeated or multiple purchases, not just the first one?

First, to clarify, so is it the platform or the device that matters?

​@vic-a563d7 The platform and the device and the user’s account. 

• The platform because the user’s payments and thus money goes only to the platform owner (e.g: Apple or Google) in which the user made the purchase. If your app runs both on Android and iOS, then the user may choose in which of those two platforms he wants to buy a subscription. If he buys it on Google, Apple will not make any money with this purchase, and vice versa.
• The device because the user’s device determines which platform the app is running on, which could be Google Play/Android or App Store / iOS on this context.
• The user’s account because the user may use the same RevenueCat account to access your app on the different platforms. The user’s account is the means by which RevenueCat can know that your app’s user is accessing your app on Google or on Apple, and if the user bought the subscription on Google or Apple, etc.

How would this work for repeated or multiple purchases, not just the first one?

If by “repeated or multiple purchases” you mean recurring subscriptions, it works just ike I described above. For consumable products it should be very similar too, but someone else could give you a better answer on this subject.