Omni Group Is Moving to An In-App Purchase Model For macOS and iOS Products
Earlier this year, Apple made significant changes to the company’s App Store Review Guidelines for developers. The biggest change was the introduction of automatically renewing subscriptions, which allow developers to offer free app trials to users. On Thursday, an important app developer announced plans to begin offering in-app purchase options on both the App Store and Mac App Store.
Sample app subscription
Credit: AppleIn a message on its blog site, the Omni Group has announced that it’s going to start offering an in-app purchase model. This move is significant in that Omni’s productivity apps are among the highest priced in the industry.
OmniGraffle is a popular diagramming and digital illustration application for macOS and iOS. It allows you to convey ideas, organize thoughts visually, and communicate these thoughts and ideas to the world.
The current version of OmniGraffle for macOS is currently priced at $99.99 on the Mac App Store, while the iOS version is $49.99.
When OmniGraffle 7 launches for macOS next month, it will be free to download and include multiple in-app purchase options. There options will include discounts for current OmniGraffle users. This isn’t a subscription as there will be no recurring costs.
Omni Group notes:
With the original download free, we can implement any pricing options we want to offer customers through In-App Purchases. We can offer our standard unlocks of Standard and Pro, of course. But we can also offer a free 2-week trial which unlocks all of the features of Pro and Standard, letting you freely choose between them. We can offer a discounted upgrade to the new Standard. And we can offer free upgrades to the new versions to any customers who recently purchased the old app.
Pricing for current OmniGraffle customers
Credit: Omni GroupOmni Group has not yet announced when its other applications (including OmniGraffle for iOS) will switch to the new model. However, we know they are coming.
In a message on Twitter, Omni Group CEO explains:
To be clear: We’re starting with OmniGraffle 7 on Mac, but will be bringing free downloads to all our App Store apps on both Mac & iOS.
— Ken Case (@kcase) September 29, 2016
One of the biggest complaints from iOS users has been the inability to try full versions of apps for free. Thanks to the availability of the new pricing options, there is finally a solution — assuming your favorite developer moves into this direction.
You can find out more about OmniGraffle 7 by clicking here.
Which iOS apps would you like to try for free?
When we originally published, we called Omni’s new pricing model a “subscription.” Because there are no recurring costs, this wasn’t correct and we regret the error.
