In the Web Store Developer Dashboard, I see no way to set the price for an extension I am uploading. Am I missing something? Or is it no longer possible to create a paid extension? I saw an article saying they were removing paid extensions in January but there are still paid extensions on the store.
I got an email yesterday from chromewebstore-dev-support#google.com that included this info:
Chrome Web Store payments - We are disabling the ability to create new paid items or add payments to existing items. This includes extensions, themes, apps, and in-app purchases.
Here is the full text of the email:
Dear Developer,
We want to tell you about impending changes to the Chrome Web Store as
a result of the COVID-19 situation.
Given adjusted work schedules due to these unprecedented times, there
may be some temporary limitations and delays in support in some cases:
Delay in publishing - New versions submitted to the Store will take longer to be reviewed and published.
Delay in responses to appeals - If you appeal an item rejection or removal, or appeal an account suspension, expect the response to be
delayed. However, we will respond to every appeal request and we will
get back to you as soon as we can.
Delay in developer account transfers - If you are transferring your extension to a different account, expect a significant increase
in the time taken to complete the transfer.
Delay in general support - If you are trying to reach out to our support team for issues related to your account(s) or extension(s),
expect a delayed response from our team. We will get back to you as
soon as we can.
Chrome Web Store payments - We are disabling the ability to create new paid items or add payments to existing items. This includes
extensions, themes, apps, and in-app purchases.
You can help by making sure that your extensions comply with the
Developer program policies before you submit them. Refer to these
resources for more information:
Help center articles
chromium-extensions Google Group
StackOverflow
Chrome support forum
We understand that these changes may cause inconvenience, and we
apologize for any interruption of service. Thank you for your support
during this challenging time and for your participation in the Chrome
extension ecosystem.
The Google Chrome Web Store team
Sorry about the formatting.
Related
I am developing a Google Action for Google Assistant and it is not yet a state where I can release. Even so I want it to be available for some tester, and in a near future, my client.
The simulator with the "test" is somewhat limited at auth request, name recognition (since it will only knows my action) and experience (to show my client), so I prefer not to depend on it for this case.
I found it is only possible to interact with a test version of an action if the project owner's account is logged in as a Google account in the phone where you want to call the action. Is it correct? Or there is another way?
I even tried adding my wife's Google account as a viewer to the project, but I am unable to call my action from her phone.
You can add people as a viewer to the project. Before those users can call your action on any of their devices, they will need to use the test console at https://console.actions.google.com/ once, this will enable testing on their device. After that they will be able to interact with your action on their devices.
Do note, the time in which the action is available on their account is limited by a time period (about a couple of months). If they cant access the action any more after a couple of months, just repeat the above step to reactivate testing for their account.
Update
One thing that you could consider in the two approached posted by #Prisoner and me is if your testers need to test on just a device or need access to the console as well. Using the approach from #Prisoner will allow your users to test on devices. The above approach will also allow testers to use the console at https://console.actions.google.com/.
In addition to #Jordi's answer, you can also do an Alpha Release of your Action. This lets you permit up to 20 additional accounts to the released version
Once you permit them using the console, you will send them the opt-in URL, which they should visit on a mobile device with that account. Once they have opted into the Alpha, they can activate it using the regular trigger phrase.
I have a published and used Chrome extension that I want to monetize. I've added a small monthly subscription ($0.99) for use of the extension and maintain it frequently.
I introduced the subscription after some of the users installed the extension, none of which are subscribed but still use the application as if they were.
Is there a way to prompt the user for a subscription if they already have the extension installed? Or do I accept that they won't have to pay and cut my losses?
While this comes from One-Time Payment page in the docs, I think it's generally a good advice:
Migrating from a free to a paid experience
If you decide to migrate from a free experience to a paid experience, you should consider what experience you want to provide for any user who installed your item prior to the change. We strongly recommend grandfathering these users into the full, paid experience though the decision is yours.
From a technical standpoint, prior users do have a license issued authomatically:
Users who installed your item prior to the change will have a FREE_TRIAL license. To determine if a user installed your item prior to the price change, you can check the createdTime value in the license to determine when they first installed it.
Are you checking the license.accessLevel in the extension? If you don't, your license code may think they are fully licensed.
But suppose that you do want to charge users (subscription implies ongoing costs), then the usual dilemma applies.
Users that are not grandfathered in are likely to complain if you degrade their experience. You have to be careful with the announcement.
If you don't have any logic offloaded to a server, anyone can go in and rip your license code out. That is a fight likely not worth fighting.
As long as they have that .crx file (older version) in their computer and your extension's functionality and features are not server side, you cannot do anything about it.
You can however note at the change log or through your extension that the subscription helps you with the development and maybe some of the users will be kind enough to support you.
This comment mentions a partial roll out in Chrome Web Store. Where can I find that feature? My extension has more than 8,000 users but I don't see any partial roll out feature and I'm afraid to send the next version to all users at the same time.
I don't think it's documented anywhere. And I was wrong!
Documentation link: Control how fast your app reaches users.
In CWS lingo this is called "Controlled Rollout".
If you don’t see the max deploy percentage control, it may be because of the following:
You have less than 10,000 users. Currently the “controlled rollout” feature is only available for items with at least 10,000 users.
You need to upload a newer (higher) version of a package to use the “controlled rollout” feature. We can’t apply a controlled rollout to an already published package, because it may have already reached 100% of users.
It should show on the Edit page after you upload a new version that's not published yet. Here's a mention of it and how it should look:
Also, I've never actually tried using it.
Update: In the new Webstore Dashboard it's called "Partial Rollout" and has the same 10k users requirement.
Is it possible to receive email notification for new comments on the Support page of a Chrome extension in the webstore?
On the support page of a Chrome extension I can add a new question, suggestion or bug report but I don't receive any notification about responses.
I had the same problem. I have several apps in the Chrome Web Store and I found it tedious to be constantly checking. I found an extension that claimed to have this functionality, though I found it periodically lost my list of extensions and wasn't able to actually fetch reviews consistently. You can try the extension here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/my-extensions/igejgfmbjjjjplnnlgnbejpkpdajkblm?hl=en. It is also open source, so it could be improved.
I ended up writing some of my own scripts to periodically check and send me an email when there is a new review or support request. I made it available to use as a hosted service (currently free, though I plan on asking for a little money to defray the hosting costs as well as some coffee money). Check out the hosted service at https://www.chromebeat.com. It has a full list of the Chrome webstore apps and extensions and can send you notifications on a new support issue or review. Right now it only checks hourly and sends on the hour.
Also, when you respond to a support request, the user who reported it doesn't get any kind of notification. The best way around that I've found is to actually message that person's Google+ profile, either by adding them to a circle (e.g. App users) posting publicly and mentioning them in the post, or for some users it's possible to message directly with hangouts.
[update: Oct 2015. It's now possible to "Reply" to reviews in the web store, so that's probably the best way to respond to user reviews directly]
As far as I know, there is no such option. You will have to periodically check it.
Which makes using the built-in Feedback quite useless - you're better off using something like a public bug tracker as your "Support" link and disabling Feedback.
Existing feature request: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=295837
As of 2015-03-23, it is untriaged.
No, that has not been implemented, even approaching a decade later.
New Solution:
The two options in the current answer are no longer working, so I made a small utility app to solve this problem.
You can submit your extension's id and your email address and Webstore Watch will notify you within 1 minute of a new support request.
https://gmanicus.github.io/WebstoreWatch/
Let me know if this goes down or if you experience problems. I can't guarantee 100% reliability, but I will do my best to maintain it.
As a Hungarian software developer, up to this day it is not possible to sell apps on Google Play, because Hungary is not on the merchant list, therefore only free apps are allowed to upload from Hungary.
Is it possible and legal to upload the free trial version of my app to Google Play, and when the trial expires, through an intentional and unequivocal notification / window redirect the user to my own website, where she / he, after the payment process, can get the full version?
I'm also planning to put the link of the full version app to the Google Play app description section.
You can post a free trial version of your app in Google Play and when the trial expires then they will be required to download a license file from your website.
This file will only remove the trail and let user use the app. You can add a notification when after 7 or so days of trial to purchase license. when they press okay then they would be directed to your website and download the license apk file after they pay.
And then after you post an updated version of your app in Google play. They will be able to update too and they will not loose their full version of the app.
Please make sure that you describe your app correctly in google play, and state that your app is free only for some days. and do not post a link to a full version app in your description if you are planning to host it on your website.
You can also integrate in-app purchase with the help of Paypal. This documentation teaches you how to do it.
You should get legal advice from a lawyer but I would say this is against the Google Play terms.
https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreement.html
3.3 You may also choose to distribute Products for free. If the Product is free, you will not be charged a Transaction Fee. You may not collect future charges from users for copies of the Products that those users were initially allowed to download for free. This is not intended to prevent distribution of free trial versions of the Product with an "upsell" option to obtain the full version of the Product: Such free trials for Products are encouraged. However, if you want to collect fees after the free trial expires, you must collect all fees for the full version of the Product through the Payment Processor on the Market. In this Agreement, "free" means there are no charges or fees of any kind for use of the Product. All fees received by Developers for Products distributed via the Market must be processed by the Market's Payment Processor.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer
Updating would be a problem then.
Or you could put the paid version for free and block some of the paid components, then you could enable the paid component if the user has paid, you need to make a web service for that.
I am not sure,I think even in-app purchases are supposed to be through Play Store