Google I/O 22 Announcements - RC Product Priorities


  • Anonymous
  • 0 replies

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 +5

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.

Hey @Maddie I hope you’re doing well,

When I open a subscription to change its pricing or other settings, I get a warning in the Google Play Console that “This subscription has been migrated from a legacy subscription and is read-only. You can make this subscription editable. This means that you will no longer be able to configure or update this subscription through the InAppProducts API.”

In this case what should I do? Make the subscription editable or not?

Thank you for your help.

 

Badge +6

Cmon, 2 months should be enough to create the decisive clarity. It’s a money management service, smth vital. I’m absolutely sure it’s a damn-hard task to solve. And it would be harder for me to solve independently.
 

The most important topics here for me is: can I tight my businesses with your service or not. Will you be able to solve every problem with a good-enough-eta.

So there is a problem with pricing. Can it be solved? Is that is blocked by some unknown variables? Blocked is the blocker? Can that be solved? When the ETA for the new information? In a bad case scenario can some workaround be created? If yes, what should be required? In a worst case scenarios, what functionality will we loose?  Have you contacted Google through official channels? What did they say?Have you contacted Google through unofficial channels? What did they say?

What is not cool:

​​​​​​New UI instead of solving a new problem. Also it’s not cool to hear that ‘it’s a separate team, so it’s not a big deal’. Instead of spending 2-team-resources solving a vital problem there is one team solving a vital problem. From my perspective,  I have no idea of your internal structure, so I’m sure from inside you have plenty or reasons to do what you do.

Maybe it make sense to redistribute resources?

Summary
- too little concrete clarity after too much time passed
- lack of certainty in the service due to observable lack of pace

It might be a harsh feedback. I still like RevenueCat and wish you all the best. I would be happy to pay you while receiving a solid confidence with a such nasty task as billing.

Badge +4

Just wanted to show my support for the RevenueCat team here - can’t imagine what a massive task this change must be to accommodate. I’ve had a look, some of these API changes that Google have foisted on the world are bonkers, and make things way harder to work with.

As a developer I have some insight into how much work this will involve, how much stress you must be under to get this right, how much testing will be needed, etc. For people here who are not developers, I guarantee you it’s more than you think. I also know how difficult (arguably impossible) it is to estimate how long it will take to make these changes. Again, this is only something that developers will appreciate - when creating some new and complicated functionality there are always, always unforeseen issues and edge cases which arise which significantly delay plans, so I can understand the hesitancy to provide an ETA, especially given that there is no functionality lost here - we can still do everything we used to. It’s just that brand new Play functionality is not yet supported. So personally I’m happy to be patient and just wait for a solid, tested solution when it’s ready and not a half-baked, rushed solution.

So, thanks RevenueCat for supporting my 1-person microbusiness and shielding me from the unholy hot mess that is in-app billing which Google and Apple inflicted on the world. I seriously wouldn’t have been able to make my app without you. Good luck in making these changes and let me buy you a round of beers when it’s done.

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.

Hey @Maddie I hope you’re doing well,

When I open a subscription to change its pricing or other settings, I get a warning in the Google Play Console that “This subscription has been migrated from a legacy subscription and is read-only. You can make this subscription editable. This means that you will no longer be able to configure or update this subscription through the InAppProducts API.”

In this case what should I do? Make the subscription editable or not?

Thank you for your help.

 

Hey @Faraz no need to worry about that message - RevenueCat doesn’t use the InAppProducts API on your behalf. As long as your base plans and offers are marked as backwards compatible, you’re good… so changing prices is okay to do. Let me know if you have any other questions!

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

@rohovdmytro 

Ultimately it’s my call how much resourcing we throw at it so don’t blame anyone but me. However, like most problems in computers, more people does not equal more faster. 

 

The truth is Google just threw some stupid curveballs that our architecture wasn’t quite expecting so we have to back and make some tricky changes. It’s like surgery, two surgeons will not make the surgery go faster. We’re making progress though, and think we have it all figured out. I’ll see if we can update this thread with more concrete timelines once we’ve got everything more laid out.

In the mean time, there isn’t very much in the new subscription stuff that is going to make or break your app business. Spend the time improving your paywall, refining your app, and talking to customers. That will have a bigger effect on bottom line than Google’s special tricks. At least that’s my belief. 

Badge +1

This subscription has been migrated from a legacy subscription and is read-only

You can make this subscription editable. This means that you will no longer be able to configure or update this subscription through the InAppProducts API.

 

When I going to update my existing subscription, it shows me an alert message. If I change it to editable, is it work properly or not?? It is very much urgent to edit my subscription.

Userlevel 3
Badge +3

This subscription has been migrated from a legacy subscription and is read-only

You can make this subscription editable. This means that you will no longer be able to configure or update this subscription through the InAppProducts API.

 

When I going to update my existing subscription, it shows me an alert message. If I change it to editable, is it work properly or not?? It is very much urgent to edit my subscription.

Hey @Dallas Clarksean, feel free to edit your subscription in a backwards-compatible way (see our Android product docs for more details on what is backwards-compatible).

We don’t call the InAppProducts API on your behalf, so unless you’re calling that yourself, you don’t need to worry about this message.

Badge +1

Can I change it? Please ensure me. Because of my apps on live. Both android & iOS version. If I change android subscription, is't work properly??

 

Userlevel 3
Badge +3

Can I change it? Please ensure me. Because of my apps on live. Both android & iOS version. If I change android subscription, is't work properly??

Hi @Dallas Clarksean, unless you are using the InAppProducts API, feel free to make your subscriptions editable. We are not using that API on your behalf.

Just make sure you only have one base plan per subscription, up to one offer per base plan, and that both of those are marked “backwards compatible” in the dashboard (the screenshot you attached shows p1y and freetrial as backwards compatible). If anything isn’t backwards compatible, RevenueCat won’t work with it.

To make something backwards compatible, click the overflow menu and choose “Use for deprecated billing methods”.

For a more detailed description, look here

Badge +3

Unfortunately, the process is too long, I have to turn to alternative services. Bye but I'm still following you.

Badge

Hello RevenueCat team,

Are there any updates as to when the multiple offers model will be possible with RevenueCat?

The multiple offers model saves a lot of logistics for us. Is enabling the new structure in Q1 next year a realistic timeline?

 

We are deep into the weeds of figuring out the new Google Subscription Model to be able to simplify your adoption of it.

TL;DR: We are looking to release a Beta by the end of Q4. Are you interested in participating in that?

Why is it taking this long, you might ask?

We started scoping out this project immediately following the announcement. Currently, we have four full-time engineers working on this along with our senior designer. This team will keep this as their top priority until we release. Other product releases might happen in the meantime but those do not interfere with our focus on this.

We have bumped into many challenges along the way, let me mention a few:

- No ability to get purchased base plan and offer from a subscription → Issue tracker on Google 

 - No ability to get price information from the API → Jacob Eiting has tweeted about this 

 - Having to add an entirely new concept to our backend (the "subscription") since base plans don't have unique identifiers



We have worked through some of these challenges and we are speeding towards an internal release and a testing process in the upcoming weeks.

Once we have a successful purchase, we will complete this initial release with events and some of our other core functionality.

We aim to release a basic purchase flow and setup in beta by the end of Q4 for you to test, however bear in mind that this version will not support Observer mode and Restore.

We will keep you posted and thank you so much for your patience and support!

Badge

Thank you for the update. It is much appreciated.

Badge +2
How is the work going? @AnnaToro 
Badge
How is the work going? @AnnaToro 

We will be working closely with the RevenueCat team once they are ready to beta the changes in Q4 2022 / Q1 2023.
As Anna kindly provided us a Q4 beta test estimation, I would expect an update from their team early next year. I would be happy to provide insight from a end user (developer customer) perspective once we have had a chance to test out the beta and sort out any potential bugs with the RevenueCat team.

Hello, 

Thanks for the kind response Michael. Looking forward to working on the beta together. 

Ismet, it’s going well. We are expecting to do an internal release in a couple of weeks with the purchase flow while already working on the events part of the project. 

Let me know if you would like to join our beta at the end of this quarter and also let us know if there is anything that we can help with in the meantime.

Update here and an open invitation to our closed beta test → 

 

Badge +4

On a related note, has anyone been able to get non-renewing subscriptions to work with RevenueCat/App Store ? I am seeing the same issues as with Android/PlayStore - the product cannot be located. Auto-renewing subscriptions of course work fine on both iOS and Android.

@AnnaToro - could you confirm one way or another about non-renewing subscriptions on the App Store? I am using the latest version of the Cordova plugin (3.3.2) if that matters

Appreciate your help

 

Userlevel 5
Badge +9

@chea seed  Apple non-renewing subscriptions should work like any other in-app purchase. One limitation is that RevenueCat won’t calculate the expiration date, so it will function more like a consumable than a subscription. The workaround would be to check the purchase date of the non-renewing subscription and calculate the expiration date on the fly. If you’re not seeing products on iOS that’s probably a configuration error - check this guide out.

Badge +2

Any updates on the testing and how is the new system coming along? Thank you.

Hello MoneyDrone, 

We are in currently in beta while completing the set of functionalities that we set out for the release. 

Are you interested in testing with us? 

We are excited to have you use multiple base plans and offers soon!

 

Badge +2

Hello MoneyDrone, 

We are in currently in beta while completing the set of functionalities that we set out for the release. 

Are you interested in testing with us? 

We are excited to have you use multiple base plans and offers soon!

 

What do you require, pre-requisites for helping you do tests on my end?

I would love to help in anyway I can!

Badge +2

Hi, any update regrading getting into the beta?

I would really like to get into it and design my app around the new system instead of working with the current one.

Thank you.

Userlevel 4
Badge +6

Hi, any update regrading getting into the beta?

I would really like to get into it and design my app around the new system instead of working with the current one.

Thank you.

Hey @MonkeyDrone, Thanks for your interest! Shoot an email to anna@revenuecat.com for more information!

Badge +2

Hey, is there already an ETA on this?

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