Custom Products

In-app purchase is not the only way to get paid, and for a growing number of apps it is not required at all. If you are exempt, you can sell through the payment provider you prefer and keep more of every dollar. Custom products let those purchases live on a Superwall paywall like any other. The paywall shows the price, the trial, and the plan details, and when the customer taps buy, the checkout you chose takes over.

Who can skip in-app purchase

Apple and Google require in-app purchase for digital goods used inside the app, but there are real exceptions, and they cover more apps than most teams realize.

• Selling to users in the United States. Apps on the US storefront can send customers to an external purchase link. Superwall's App-to-Web Checkout handles the common case with Stripe, and custom products cover any other provider.

• Physical goods and in-person services. Meal kits, merchandise, a class at a studio, a session with a coach. Anything consumed outside the app is meant to be paid for outside in-app purchase.

• Business software and web-first products. Plans that are bought and managed on the web, or by a company rather than a person, often fall outside the in-app purchase rules too.

Which rule applies to you depends on what you sell and where. Check the store guidelines for your case. Once you are clear you are exempt, the rest of this page is how to sell.

Stripe works out of the box

If you sell through Stripe, you do not need custom products at all. Superwall's web checkout runs Stripe checkout for you, tracks the revenue, and unlocks the app when the customer comes back. Paddle is available in the same way as a private beta. Start there if you can.

Any other provider, or your own checkout page

If you already sell through Paddle, Polar, Appcharge, a billing system your team built, or a checkout page on your own website, custom products are the answer. You add the product in Superwall with its price and period, put it on any paywall, and tell Superwall where purchases should go.

• Looks like every other product. Price, billing period, and trial copy fill in on the paywall the same way they do for App Store products, so the design does not change.

• Trials that behave. Superwall remembers who has already had access, so a returning customer is not offered a free trial twice.

• Counted in your numbers. Each purchase, cancellation, and failure is recorded, so custom products show up in the same experiments and charts as everything else.

Your engineers connect the provider with a small piece of code the custom store products guide supplies. It runs the checkout when a customer buys and tells Superwall whether the purchase went through, so the app unlocks right away. Available on iOS and Android.

Send the guide to your engineers

What you can do with it

• Put a Polar-billed plan next to an App Store plan on one paywall and test which mix earns more.
• Sell a coaching package or a physical bundle from inside the app without routing it through in-app purchase.
• Send US customers to your own checkout page and keep the store commission.
• Keep the billing provider you already use and still run remote paywall experiments in front of it.

Get started

Decide which exemption applies to you. If Stripe fits, set up web checkout and you are done. If not, create the product in Superwall, add it to a paywall, and hand the custom store products guide to your engineering team. If you also sell credits or lifetime unlocks, see Consumables & One-Time Purchases.