Google I/O 22 Announcements - RC Product Priorities


  • Anonymous
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What features are you the most excited about?
What would you like to learn more about?


Many updates and changes have been introduced during Google I/O 22 and our team is busy deep diving into these topics and prioritizing them according to your needs. We would love to hear your thoughts and needs on these features.
 

  • New Subscription Model - is it all clear what that means or would you rather we just take care of it? 
  • Play Console – how does your setup look after the changes? does this create an opportunity for your app?
  • Flexible Offers - would you see yourself making a use of this? 
  • Prepaid plans - does this solve an issue for you? would you like to learn more about the payment landscape of recurring payments? 
  • Play Index - do you see yourself using the index moving forwards? If so, what kinds of communications would you expect from RevenueCat?


Excited to hear from you!


62 replies

Badge +3

Hello Anna,

Do you know when the free trial intro offers will work?

Manuel

Badge +4

@AnnaToro  I’m in the process of integrating subscriptions in my app for the first time and I’m wondering if I should wait for RevenueCat to support the new subscription model or to go with what is currently supported.
With the new model it looks like you can have one subscription and multiple plans, so for example you could have a subscription called “Premium” and “Monthly” and “Annual” plans.
I tried that and it didn’t work with RevenueCat, so I created 2 separate subscriptions, one for the “Monthly” plan and another for the “Annual” plan and that worked.

Do you have any idea when the new model will be supported? Do you see any benefits on waiting and use the new model? Is Google doing this to make it easier to the user to switch plans?

 

Userlevel 6
Badge +8

Hey @Gabriel Reis and @Manuel Briand 👋

RevenueCat continues to support Google Play subscriptions just as before - you are safe to keep creating subscription products and attach a single offer at a time (for example, a free trial). The new subscription features include attaching multiple offers to a single product, but this is not supported at this time.

Fortunately, Google Play adds a “Backwards Compatible” badge to features that are still supported with prior implementations. As long as your products and offers indicate that they are backwards compatible, you’re good to go from a RevenueCat perspective.

We don’t have an ETA yet for supporting the new features, but it’s worth noting that it’s definitely top of mind for us here at RevenueCat, and we’ll provide updates as we have them!

Userlevel 2
Badge +3

What should we be putting as the “Base Plan ID” on our new products that we create post-changes?

Userlevel 1
Badge +3

Can you give us a rough ETA? like 2 weeks, 2 months?!

Badge +3

We look forward to new features as soon as possible. This is important

Thank you so much for your responses, I really appreciate it. It helps us prioritize.

Our team is currently scoping the size of the change on our end for the ‘New Subscription Model’ and hopefully I can share a rough ETA shortly. It seems like this is what is top of your mind as well. 

In the meantime if you have any further thoughts or questions on the other features, feel free to drop a comment here. 
 

Badge +1

This update is very important. We are waiting for the New Subscription Model

Badge +3

Hello @AnnaToro et @cody,

Still no news on a release date  for the ‘New Subscription Model’ ?

 

 

Userlevel 1
Badge +2

We are waiting for it

Userlevel 1
Badge +4

What should we be putting as the “Base Plan ID” on our new products that we create post-changes?

After struggling a bit about this, I found this working:

  • For each of your plans (monthly, yearly…) create a subscription in the Play Console. The subscription ID will be the product identifier you use in RevenueCat
  • In each of those subscriptions, create one base plan. This plan ID is not yet used anywhere in RevenueCat. It should be indicated as “backwards compatible” in the plans list. You can create an offer for this plan, and it should be indicated as “backwards compatible” as well
  • If you create multiple plans or offers, only the one marked as “backwards compatible” will be used by RevenueCat, the others ignored

We are planning to launch our app in the coming weeks and are a bit uneasy to have to create multiple subscriptions in the Play Console as this will force us to merge or handle those legacy subscriptions in the future, but I guess there is no other choice yet.

Badge +3

I’m trying to implement https://docs.revenuecat.com/docs/android-products for https://getnofilter.com.

I also got blocked by these temporal changes.

If you have any ETA (2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years), will be super useful, in order to prioritize my backlog.

 

Thank you a lot!

Userlevel 3
Badge +3

Hey all, 

We totally hear you… this update is our top priority for Android. Due to the complexity of the updates, we want to be sure we take our time getting the implementation right. We will be beginning work on the update next week, but we still don’t have an ETA on the completion. We’ll update this thread as soon as we do. 

@renchap thank you for the excellent description, you’re totally correct. We’ll keep your merging/handling of legacy subscriptions in mind as we finalize our implementation plans.

Badge +2

I am hoping to hear an update on this, especially for a single subscription with a single base plan that is prepaid and non-renewing.  The Google Play Store states that “Prepaid base plans cannot be backwards compatible” and I really need this feature as my app will be offering short subscriptions (1 day) that are not auto-renewing.  Any update on an ETA will greatly help my ability to determine a launch date, etc.  Thanks in advance.

Badge +3

We look forward to new features as soon as possible!!!

Happy Q3 everyone! 

As promised we have prioritized and now began working on the New Google Subscription Model. 
No ETA on launch date yet but we will keep you posted.
We might have some edge care scenario questions while implementation in which case I will ask your help. 

Thank you for your patience and have a great rest of the week!

 

Badge +2

hi, is there an estimated release date?

Hello Everyone, 

As we mentioned before, this is one of our priorities this quarter and we are at a point that we would like to get your feedback. 

Joining a call with the Product Manager & Developer working on this will enable you to make an impact on our product and highlight your needs and use cases. 

In case a call or the date/time doesn’t suit you, we can also do it via email. If you like this post, we will reach out to you. 

Thank you and have a great week!

Anna

Badge +5

Too slow RevenueCat. :( Is it just me that feels like that? 

 

I mean, This is what you should be focusing on. Being the best and COMPLETE subscription service for App Store- and Google Play-stores. Now 2 months after the new release of Google you have barely started to implement the changes.

 

With all do respect, I have liked your service a lot, but keep up with the updates by Google and Apple. All the rest is secondary (like the new UI that was released today for the revenuecat-console..).

Hello Saku and others who might feel frustrated about this,


We hear you and we feel that the best thing we can do is to be totally transparent.

Updating the Google Subscription Model is our Q3 priority within the Catforms team.
The UI update came from a different team and we hope you are happy with that, if not please leave us a feedback.

We have started this update in the beginning of July as we first wrapped up another project that you will hear about next week.

This update is rather a major refactor on our end, as data models and the relationships between them have changed. With these changes, we want to be sure we can continue to support all the features you expect from RevenueCat.

For instance, Google has made it trickier to determine which base plan (product ID) was purchased. We are currently working on a POC for a workaround we feel good about, so that you can see the proper product and price associated with each purchase.
We are doing our best to keep you happy and continue to put out quality work. We do appreciate feedback and pushing us. In case you feel like digging into this last issue you can read more here:

https://github.com/android/play-billing-samples/issues/547
https://github.com/android/play-billing-samples/issues/538
https://github.com/android/play-billing-samples/issues/548

In case you are up for helping, please schedule a call with us, which is the best way to support us at any stage.

Please continue to share your feedback with us, we really appreciate it.

Have a great rest of the week, and as always, we will keep you posted.

Platforms Features Team (Catforms)

Badge +3

Is it possible to be more explicit in the docs on the Android section to include supported libraries (as highlighted this thread in github)?

It would be good to have it called out on the SDK docs that only version `4.x.x` of Google Play’s billing client is supported

Userlevel 2
Badge +6

We are about to change subscription prices in some countries due to inflation. One of the new features Google Play now supports is changing subscription prices just for new users - so existing users keep the old subscription prices. Is this supported by RevenueCat already? Or will we see wrong numbers in RevenueCat when doing that?

Badge +3

Unfortunately, time is running out now and we will have to leave you. For this reason, we do not move many new applications to revenuecat. If you don't give a clear release date, escape is inevitable.

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Google did some truly boneheaded stuff and didn’t include clear pricing information so we probably need to rebuild all the price collection hacks we do on iOS. It’s not trivial. 

We’re working on it, I can say that. It’s not just on a someday roadmap.

It’s probably more likely months than weeks. It’s complicated and unless Google extends their API, we’re gonna have to build a lot of stuff to support it properly. Sorry, wish it could be different.

 

We are about to change subscription prices in some countries due to inflation. One of the new features Google Play now supports is changing subscription prices just for new users - so existing users keep the old subscription prices. Is this supported by RevenueCat already? Or will we see wrong numbers in RevenueCat when doing that?

I’m not certain, I’ve opened a ticket. As long as the old subscriptions endpoint reports the right price it will work.

 

Is it possible to be more explicit in the docs on the Android section to include supported libraries (as highlighted this thread in github)?

It would be good to have it called out on the SDK docs that only version `4.x.x` of Google Play’s billing client is supported

Good point! I added a note.

Userlevel 3
Badge +3

Hey @sven good news — subscription price changes should report in RevenueCat as expected (only updating the price for new customers). I’ve confirmed that the V1 endpoint will report the old price for customers that purchased before a price change. Let me know if you have further questions.

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