On Friday evening, WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg reported on the social network Twitter to speak. He announced that there are currently no updates to the WordPress app on the iOS platform. You have allegedly been banned by Apple until you commit to adding in-app purchase options. You have to be careful here, because although Matt Mullenweg is the creator of the basically free content management system WordPress, in the specific case it is not about WordPress.org, which uses a large part of the network, but about the WordPress.com service. You can get WordPress as a service for free against advertising or for a fee.
The WordPress app can serve both platforms, the free one, which we use, for example, or the paid one. For the latter, the in-app purchases should obviously be built into the app, then Apple would also earn money from the sales. Basically, WordPress.com does not sell anything at first, but lets you set up a free website – if you want more, you pay accordingly. Kind of like Dropbox. Free of charge X GB, if you want more, you have to book.
WordPress pricing
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Mullenweg worked out various options, so one could also use two apps, one for self-hosted apps and one for the paid services. It is also clear to him that these rules exist in the App Store and he does not want to circumvent them. In the meantime, an update of the WordPress app has also been released and WordPress is working with Apple to bring the app into compliance with the app store review guidelines – this means that you can make an in-app purchase. Of course, you don’t have to do this on the iPhone, you can also do it on the web without Apple getting a piece of the pie.
I am sure that we will encounter cases of this kind even more often – or there are certainly already regular ones, they probably do not cause as much waves as with WordPress, Epic or the uprising of the publishers. Apps that are free and represent clients for paid services are apparently currently being put under the microscope.
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