Apple App Store cuts commissions by half for small businesses that meet the conditions, what do developers think?

In November 2020, Apple announced a new App Store Small Business Program that will reduce App Store fees for small business owners and independent developers.

Starting January 1, 2021, all app developers with less than $1 million in annual transactions in the App Store will pay Apple a 15% commission instead of the standard 30% .

Shortly after the program's launch, Apple shared a press release that included plenty of positive reviews for the program. Apple said the new App Store Small Business program will benefit "the vast majority" of developers, giving them more revenue to grow their teams and improve their apps .

Curtis Herbert, an indie developer of iOS apps, joined the project after learning of the news, commenting:

"I'm very happy to hear this. This means a 15% revenue increase for us and it lowers the threshold for developers to try to start a business. The pandemic has affected us a lot this year, and this policy will help many of us get through Difficulty."

But as the transaction volume of the apps he developed continued to rise, Curtis Herbert began to worry that he would lose his eligibility for support. Because if an app's transactions exceed the $1 million limit within a year, the developer is no longer eligible for the program, and the rest of the year and all transactions in the next year are subject to a 30% commission to Apple .

Curtis Herbert stated:

"If the annual transaction volume is $1 million, I will save $150,000, which is a huge amount of money that can be used for marketing or recruiting."

In addition, he also said that participating in the project allowed him to complete the established plan at least half a year ahead of schedule, but according to his estimation, his application will lose the eligibility for support in November this year.

Nonetheless, Curtis Herbert is not worried about losing money after the transaction volume exceeds the project limit, and he believes that the business growth trajectory can offset the extra 15% commission.

Unlike Curtis Herbert, indie developer Emmanuel Crouvisier also took the pleasure of saving transaction fees from the App Store Small Business Program. But as the annual transaction volume in the app approached the $1 million mark, Crouvisier began to limit the transaction volume in various ways to maximize his own interests .

Crouvisier took advantage of the Apple App Store to allow developers to communicate with users about other ways to order from other non-Apple channels. He will occasionally email users with special offers to subscribe through Stripe so they don’t count toward the annual in-app transaction.

In addition, many developers have adopted various methods, such as offering users a discount on subscription if they find that the annual transaction volume is approaching the limit of $1 million towards the end of the year.

An indie developer who quit the project last December said anonymously:

"If I make all of my subscriptions free at the end of the year, that means $150,000 in savings next year."

"But I'm not trying to trick the system."

The developer called deliberately circumventing the limit wrong and stupid , and revealed that he was not immediately kicked out of the project when the annual transaction volume reached $1 million, only when the transaction volume exceeded the limit by about $20,000, 30% of the The commission just starts to take effect .

In the end, he said he was grateful for the project, but he still wanted Apple to learn from the Google App Store and take a 15% commission on the first $1 million in revenue that developers make each year.