/bundles-and-licensing

name: bundles-and-licensing
description: Revenue beyond the single-app price tag — own-app bundles, Family Sharing as a conversion lever, cross-developer bundles & suites, and institutional licensing via Group Purchases / Apple School & Business Manager. Use when a developer has multiple apps, a subscription worth sharing, complementary indie partners, or school/clinic/business buyers.
allowed-tools: [Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep]
last_verified: 2026-07-16
review_by: 2027-06-22

Bundles & Licensing

Four ways one piece of software earns more than one price tag.

When This Skill Activates

• A portfolio developer asks how apps can sell each other ("bundle my apps?")
• Deciding whether to enable Family Sharing on a subscription or purchase
• Exploring partnerships with complementary indie apps
• Schools, clinics, or businesses keep asking "how do we buy 30 seats?"
• The store-growth audit flags P8.5, P8.6, or P8.7

1. Own-app bundles (available now)

App bundles group up to 10 of your own paid apps — or apps sharing a subscription — at a bundle price, with **Complete My Bundle** crediting what a user already paid.

• ✅ Portfolio play: your catalog cross-sells itself on every member app's product page — a

discovery surface, not just a discount (pairs with the checkbox-storefront and portfolio tactics in `app-store/marketing-strategy`).

• ✅ Price the bundle at "second app ~half off, third+ nearly free" — the goal is basket size

and page presence, not margin per unit.

• ❌ Bundling apps with no shared audience; the bundle card confuses both product pages.
• Mechanics: paid apps only (or one subscription spanning the bundle); free apps can't bundle.

2. Family Sharing (available now — chronically under-enabled)

A checkbox per IAP/subscription in ASC, plus StoreKit handling for shared entitlements. One purchase covers up to 5 additional family members — 6 entitlements, "6 for the price of 1".

• ✅ Enable for subscriptions whose *job* is shareable (utilities, education, health, home) —

"the whole family for one price" beats a 6× cheaper feel at maybe 1.5× usage cost, and it's a paywall differentiator against non-sharing competitors.

• ✅ Drive paywall copy off `isFamilyShareable` rather than hardcoding "share with your family".
• ✅ Distinguish `ownershipType` — `PURCHASED` vs `FAMILY_PURCHASED` — to tailor onboarding;

the family member never saw your paywall or purchase flow.

• ✅ Family entitlements arrive *outside* any purchase flow, and after a deliberate delay (the

purchaser gets a window to disable sharing first) — listen on `Transaction.updates`, and check entitlement before merchandising (a family member may already be covered).

• ✅ Handle `revocationDate` + the REVOKE server notification by re-deriving entitlements from

the full transaction history; test the revoked-from-family path.

• ❌ Enabling it on a per-seat B2B-ish product where sharing cannibalizes real seats — that's

what volume licensing (below) is for.

• One-way door: enabling takes effect **within hours for new and existing customers** and is

irreversible — turning it off only affects new purchases.

3. Cross-developer bundles & suites

Combined subscriptions spanning apps from *different* developers — the "indie suite" model (several complementary tools, one subscription).

• The unlock: each partner's install base becomes the others' warm audience — distribution

cheaper than any paid channel.

• ✅ Partner selection: same buyer, adjacent jobs, no feature overlap (writing tool + reference

manager + focus timer, not three writing tools). Draft revenue-share on *attribution of the acquiring app*, not equal splits.

• ✅ Verify current ASC mechanics before promising a ship date — cross-developer suites are a

recent capability and terms/tooling are still settling; the fallback is coordinated own-app pricing + mutual offer codes (`generators/offer-codes-setup`).

• ❌ Partnering with an app whose rating or privacy posture you wouldn't put your name on — a

suite shares reputational blast radius (run `app-store/originality-check` thinking on partners).

4. Group Purchases & Volume Purchasing — institutional sales

Live for all auto-renewable subscriptions using StoreKit 2 (StoreKit 2 required). ON by default for most new and existing StoreKit 2 subscriptions — but Family Sharing-enabled subscriptions are opted OUT by default. Configure per subscription in ASC.

Two sale paths, same seat pool:

• **In-app group purchases** — a customer buys N seats, shares an invite link, and accepters are

auto-assigned to seats.

• **Volume purchasing** through **Apple Business Manager / Apple School Manager** — the

institutional channel for schools, clinics, and businesses.

Mechanics:

• **Volume pricing = up to 5 price bands**, with full control of seat thresholds and each band's

price. The default is every seat at the current price — no discount exists until you configure bands (e.g., $19.99 → $13.99 at 21–40 seats → $10.99 at 41+; a 50-seat purchase then averages ~20% off).

• ✅ Prefer the built-in seat management (invites, acceptance tracking, seat lifecycle) unless

you already run member management — then use the App Store Server API group endpoints instead.

• ✅ Merchandise the group value in-app — buyers won't discover multi-seat pricing on their own.
• ✅ Education/health apps: this often outearns consumer conversion optimization by an order of

magnitude — one district buys more seats than a year of paywall A/B tests adds.

• ❌ Building custom seat management UI before validating a single institutional buyer exists —

the built-in flow covers the first sale.

• Custom Apps via Apple Business Manager remain the path for bespoke B2B distribution; Group

Purchases brings multi-seat to the mainstream store — different tools, same buyer.

• Reference: the WWDC26 session on group purchases and volume purchasing.

Decision sketch

| You have | Reach for | |---|---| | 2+ paid apps, shar