Paid and Free versions of android app

Question

I am wondering what is the best way to have two different versions of an android app. I would like to have version of my app with ads and one without ads (the paid one). What is the easiest way to achieve this ? I have found something called version flavours here but since I am new to android development I am not sure if that is what I want. Please any suggestions for addressing this ?

Answer 1

You could have two versions of the application in Play store. However, you would have to maintain these separately and it is frustrating to upgrade from free to paid with this approach. If you chose this way of maintaining your application, you would have to have two projects, one for each version. This would result you into having two copies of almost identical source code.

One approach I've seen people do is that the free version also contains the premium features which are unlocked once the user installs a paid unlocker application from the store. However, this has the same result as the first option: you would have to maintain two applications (this time different, though) and the users would have to install additional software.

The best option is to include the premium version as an in-app purchase. The app would contain all the premium features but would be locked by default. Once the user pays for the in-app product (in this case the premium membership), he would unlock all the features.

You can read more about in-app billing here.

Answer 2

Why not just publish two apps with the free one as this :

MyApp

and the paid one as this:

MyApp(Paid).

And this is how to prepare them:

Get your app working, and add ads and then sign it and generate the apk. Publish it. MyApp.apk

Then go back, and remeove the ads, change the package name, add the Paid to the name, and then sign the apk. MyApp(Paid).apk

Then Publish it.