Promoting a paid app with a free version [Updated]

A demo version of an application help users get a very good feeling of it and eventually help boost sales. According to the App Store Review guidelines:

"2.9 - Apps that are "beta", "demo", "trial", or "test" versions will be rejected"

As you can see, Apple doesn't provide a way for developers to create demo version of their apps on the App Store. All application needs to be fully functional. So as a developer of a paid application, what are your options? Here is what I've done.

First, I decided to take a look at two things on the App Store: Free apps and lite apps. Free apps mostly are mainly full featured but with ads. I don't like this idea because I hate ads in application and also I want users to pay for my apps once and for all.

How lite versions differ from paid versions? For games, the trick is to reduce the levels to a minimum just enough to give the user the idea of the game. So, for a 40 levels paid game, the lite version would include 5 levels only. Then via in-app purchase, the user would buy the full version and get all the remaining levels. For a productivity application, things get a little bit more complicated. How do you limit a productivity application in order to provide a great user experience but still entice the users to buy the whole thing?

I found two examples of lite version of a productivity application: HomeBudget Lite and Awesome Note Lite.

Reading the application's description, the trend is very clear: setting a limit to the number of records the application will support is the way to go. This is what I decided to do in order to create a free version of Ultimate Password Manager. I wanted to create a new application with a minimum of effort (I'm lazy). The following limitations where implemented:

• Limit the number of safe entries to 5
• Limit the number of password generation batches to 50
• Remove the data encryption.

By giving the user the ability to enter up to 5 password safe entries, the user will have more than enough to get the feeling of the application usage pattern. Otherwise upping the limit of entries could affect the sales of the paid version. Next, the application includes a password generation feature. By default, each time the user hit the Generate passwords, 5 passwords are generated. I decided to impose a limit of 50 batches of generated passwords; enough to give the user a good idea of the password generator. Besides this limit, the user will still be able to generate new password from within the password safe when the passwords are to be renewed. Finally, I decided to remove the data encryption for two reasons: I don't want the users to keep the free version for a long time in place of buying the full version. The second reason is in order to sell applications with encryption techniques, the developer needs to register the application with the US government which takes between 30-60 days (see my blog posts of this subject: Building iPhone Apps: Submitting iOS app with encryption - part 1). I didn't want to go through all of this once again. 

So, my free version of Ultimate Password Manager has been submitted to Apple for review. Let's see how things plays out. Stay tuned.

Update #1: Ultimate Password Manager Free 3.0 is now live on the App Store (iTunes Link). Go try it! In the next few days, I'll write about the effect of this free version on the sales of the paid one.