Subscription Groups

A subscription group is a collection of subscription products. Users can only subscribe to one subscription within a group at a time, but can change subscriptions within the group as often as they like. This is useful for selling related subscription tiers (eg. Bronze, Silver, Gold) and for selling variations in subscription durations (eg. Monthly, Yearly). If a user is already subscribed to one subscription product, and then purchases another product from the same subscription group, this action will unsubscribe them from the original subscription group.

If you want to give users the ability to buy multiple subscriptions that are billed separately, you can put the products into different groups. For example, you may have multiple subscription options for each course.

Creating Subscription Groups

When creating an iOS in-app purchase, Apple requires that all in-app purchases (products) that are of the type Auto-renewable Subscription be added into a subscription group, and at the same time, Apple does not allow any other product types to be added into subscription groups. For this reason, BuddyBoss App can only support subscription groups for subscription-type products. You can read this article from Apple for more information.

However, when creating an Android subscription, Android does not provide any built-in support for subscription groups. It is expected that developers will provide this type of logic in their app’s code. This is the reason that we have a Subscription Groups setting in the BuddyBoss App plugin. To get a consistent experience for both your iOS and Android users, you will need to copy the subscription groups from your App Store Connect into the plugin, and assign the iOS and Android products into the correct matching subscription groups.

  1. Log into App Store Connect

  2. Click on My Apps, and then select your app

  3. Under In-App Purchases, click on Subscription Groups

  4. Make a note of all subscription groups, which you will copy in the next step…

  5. In your website admin, go to BuddyBoss App > In-App Purchases

  6. Click the tab for Subscription Groups

  7. Copy and paste every subscription group from your Apple account

Assigning products to Subscription Groups

It is very important that you match the products and their subscription groups exactly to how you have them set up in App Store Connect. This will provide an experience in the app that works correctly for Apple, and is consistent across both platforms for your users. Apple does not provide the plugin with this data by API, so it is necessary that you manually copy this data from Apple to your plugin settings.

Once done, in your app if a user has purchased a product from a subscription group, and then purchases another product from the same subscription group, their original purchase will be automatically revoked, and they will see a purchase created for the second product.

  1. Log into App Store Connect

  2. Click on My Apps, and then select your app

  3. Under In-App Purchases, click on Subscription Groups

  4. Click on each subscription group, and make a note of the products listed in each group…

  5. In your website admin, go to BuddyBoss App > In-App Purchases

  6. Click the tab for Products

  7. Click to Add or Edit a product

  8. Make sure the product type is Auto-Renewable Subscription for iOS, and Subscription for Android

  9. Under the Subscription Group dropdown, assign the product to the same group from App Store Connect

  10. Click Update Product