How can I limit ios app purchasers to one account?

Question

I want to create a social networking ios app which costs money, and when the user buys it they are allowed to create only one account on the app. So the purchase is associated with the account somehow... or the app has a specific id on each device its bought on... would I need to use gamecenter somehow...

How would I approach something like this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I see one problem in that a user might want two accounts and they couldn't do that because they can't purchase it more than once. — Lee Meador, Jul 29 '13 at 21:27
But that's precisely what I want to avoid: one person creating multiple accounts. — Spencer Lively, Jul 29 '13 at 21:28
Lol Meador. "I want the user to only be able to create one account." "Well, one problem with that is that if the user wants to create more than one account, they wont be able to." — Jsdodgers, Jul 29 '13 at 21:37

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 29 '13 at 21:36

First of all, more than one person may use the device (think a family with an iPad) so what your doing is inherently a bad idea.

That said, you can use an in-app purchase to let them buy account access - check with the server first to make sure a desired username is available, then let them use an in-app purchase to buy access, and on your server tie that purchase ID to the user name. Even if they deleted the app and tried to re-purchase (while logged into the same iTunes store account) it would see a purchase had been made and essentially be the same user. It even does kind of work with multiple users as they could switch iTunes accounts (though that is a pain).

I would also suggest trying to tie it to the users iCloud account in some way, which is easier for users to switch between on an device (a family might use one iTunes account but have separate iCloud accounts).

If you don't want to give Apple 30% of the registration fee, your only option is to have users sign up on the web and pay there, then have a login they can use in your app. Then it's a matter of trying to prevent duplicate logins on you server, although as a last point of thought, I can't remember a business that succeeded by refusing people's money.

Read through the documentation on in-app purchases. You get a receipt of some kind for a purchase, you would use that in whatever way made sense to you. — Kendall Helmstetter Gelner, Jul 29 '13 at 21:48
If they are charging for their app, Apple is getting 30% regardless. — JonahGabriel, Jul 29 '13 at 21:48
He didn't say the app would cost money, just accounts... there are many applications that are free but required paid accounts to use. — Kendall Helmstetter Gelner, Jul 29 '13 at 21:48

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

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Since you are creating your own account management system, just save the user information once they do the account creation bit and never show the option again. Because developers no longer have access to the device id, you may have problems identifying an existing user if they delete and re-install the app, but I am not sure that there is a solution to that problem.

Edit: As a commenter to this question mentioned, you can save things to the keychain. Check out this link for a good lib for modifying the keychain.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

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answered Jul 29 '13 at 21:33

JonahGabriel

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So you're saying there is no way to associate an app purchase with a user account? – Spencer Lively Jul 29 '13 at 21:35
You can probably do it with an in-app purchase because then, the upgrade is tied to the user's Apple id. – JonahGabriel Jul 29 '13 at 21:37
You can save data in the keychain, that persists even after an application is deleted and is there if the app is re-installed (not sure for how long). – Kendall Helmstetter Gelner Jul 29 '13 at 21:37
Yes, this is true. Check out this post for a good utility for saving things to the keychain: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7663443/sfhfkeychainutils-ios-keychain-arc-compatible – JonahGabriel Jul 29 '13 at 21:39

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 29 '13 at 21:36

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You could generate an unique id on the phone, store it in the keychain, and use that to communicate with the server.

answered Jul 29 '13 at 21:36

Rob van der Veer

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I understand the logic, but how would I go about this? – Spencer Lively Jul 29 '13 at 21:40

How can I limit ios app purchasers to one account?

3 Answers3