Allow users to download your own paid app for free in Android

Question

I have a paid app in the Play Store (Profile Widget, in case anyone is wondering ;)) and I want to allow some users (friends, or people who do not have a credit card) to dow

Answer 1

You can set up a sale at price zero for the paid app and let your contacts know about it. Google allows up to 8 days of the sale at a time, but you can also set it up for a single day. This way, you may still get a few downloads from unintended recipients, but the 'problem' will be far more controlled than if you were to mail out APKs. Other problems like updates are also solved automatically.

Answer 2

The best solution is to have them buy the app, then refund their purchase. It would still show up as paid. Alternatively, you could give them the app, and license it via the LVL, and configure their email addresses as test accounts listing as purchased., but then they won't get updates.

Answer 3

You can upload in third party app stores like Amazon App Store, Aptoide , www.proapk.in to allow users to download paid Android apps for free.

Answer 4

this is an updated and no credit card method.

You can create a free version of the same app in the play store, but publish it in alpha release. Then, you can create a google+ provate group of alpha testers and set it as the tester group for the alpha version.

Now add the 'free licensed' users to the alpha testing group and they have your free app.

To push updates, you will have to upload updates also to the 'free alpha', that's not gold, but I think is pretty close to the best you can get at the moment

This method has an issue. As long as licensing is per-App, you will have a different license key, and it may always return TRUE, so if the users share the apks, they may be able to let other people use the app, not totally sure about this occurrence, but you are warned, better if you are sharing the free app to trusted users.

Answer 5

For downloading the app as a developer: Google Playstore's official word on this, is that you must create a 2nd google account to download the app you are listed as developer for. That way the stats for downloads and terms are not breached. Spoke about same issue today (though its a while after the question was posted, others should see this with similar issues)

For giving it away free: Can't you just change the app to free at a given time then notify those people to hit it during a certain window?

Answer 6

You can now generate and distribute promo codes to current and new users on Google Play to drive engagement. Under the Promotions tab in the Developer Console, you can set up promo codes for your apps, games, and in-app products to distribute in your own marketing campaigns (up to 500 codes per app, per quarter). Consider using promo codes to reward loyal users and attract new customers.

Reference: 1) http://android-developers.blogspot.in/2016/01/create-promo-codes-for-your-apps-and-in.html

2) https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6321495