Selling FAQ

Not through your own checkout. Apple’s App Review Guideline 3.1.1 and Google Play’s Payments policy both require digital memberships and subscriptions used inside an app to be sold through their own in-app purchase. A membership is digital whether Paid Memberships Pro or WooCommerce sells it.

So by default your app stays out of it. Membership Levels lists your levels without prices and without Join, the shop leaves digital products out, and a cart holding one cannot check out. The setting is Global settings → Store in the builder. Once you save it, it applies to the iOS and Android apps alike; an app created before it covered Android applies it on iOS only until then.

That leaves three routes:

1. Sell on your website, and use the app to sign members in. The usual starting point, and not guaranteed. See paying on the website.
2. Sell through Apple and Google in-app purchase. Supported, and the stores take a commission. See in-app purchase.
3. Link to your own checkout, on the US App Store only. See the US storefront.

Many sites combine the first two. Selling digital products in your app covers each store setting in full.

Yes, and most membership apps start this way. Members join and pay through Paid Memberships Pro or WooCommerce on your website, then sign in to the app with the same account. The app reads the levels and roles they hold and opens the screens those give them.

It stays within the rules as long as the app itself does not sell. Inside the app that means no membership prices, no Join or Upgrade buttons, and no text or link that sends people to your website to pay. The default store setting already keeps prices and Join off Memberside’s own screens. Anything you write yourself is yours to check: a template screen, a restriction message, or a page of your site opened in the app.

Outside the app you can say what you like. Your website, your emails and your marketing can tell people to sign up on the website and sign in to the app. What you can say, and where has the detail.

This is not guaranteed. Under Guideline 3.1.3(b), Apple can ask an app whose memberships are sold on the web to offer them as in-app purchases as well, and some apps are asked exactly that in review. We cannot promise that an app is approved this way. If Apple asks, in-app purchase is the way through, and members who joined on your website keep their access.

Yes. You create the products in App Store Connect and Google Play Console, then map each one under Memberside → In-App Purchases on your site. Your site verifies every receipt with the store itself. Renewals, cancellations and refunds arrive from the store afterwards and update the member without anyone stepping in. The store takes its commission; Memberside takes nothing from it.

Today a store purchase can grant one of two things:

• A member role on your site, for as long as the purchase is active.
• A WooCommerce order for a product you choose, so your order emails and role rules run as they do for a purchase on the website.

Granting a Paid Memberships Pro level from an in-app purchase is not built yet. It is on the roadmap. Until it ships, a store purchase does not give a member a level, and the Membership Levels screen keeps listing your levels without prices or Join when you sell through the stores. The workaround is a role: have the purchase grant a role, and restrict screens to that role rather than to a level. Paid Memberships Pro does not see that purchase, so content it protects on your website stays closed to that member.

To sell, place a Buy Button or In App Products block on a template screen, or set Global settings → Store to Sell them through the App Store and Google Play so the shop sells its digital products. That option appears once your site has store credentials saved, your app’s identifier set, and at least one product mapped. Setting up in-app purchases walks through it.

On Apple’s US storefront, possibly. Since the 2025 ruling in Epic v. Apple, Apple’s guidelines let apps on the United States storefront show prices and include buttons or links to buy outside in-app purchase, and Apple currently takes no commission on those sales.

In Memberside the setting for this is Sell them anyway under Global settings → Store. Prices appear, and Join and checkout open your website’s own checkout inside the app, already signed in.

Read three limits before you choose it:

• It applies in every country the app is published in. The app cannot tell which storefront it was downloaded from, so outside the US the same screens break Guideline 3.1.1. It only fits an app you publish on the US storefront alone.
• It applies on Android too. Google Play’s payment rules are separate from Apple’s. Check them before you publish the Android app with this setting.
• The rules are still being contested in court, and they can change. Apple’s US wording describes buttons and links to buy elsewhere, while checkout here opens inside the app. Read the current guideline, and say what you sell in your notes for App Review, before you submit.

The builder and the listing checklist keep warning about this setting either way, because neither can see which storefronts you publish to.

Yes. The app handles each product by what it is, so one shop can do both.

• Physical goods, and services delivered in the real world, go through the cart and your own WooCommerce checkout inside the app, on iOS and Android. Apple and Google both expect those to be paid for outside their billing, so there is no store commission and no reason to change your prices.
• Digital products, such as memberships, subscriptions, courses and downloads, are left out of the shop by default. To sell them in the app, set Global settings → Store to Sell them through the App Store and Google Play. Each one then gets its own Buy or Subscribe button and goes through the store’s purchase sheet, once your site’s store credentials are set up and the product is mapped to a store product.

The two never mix. A digital product never enters the cart. A cart line added on your website that the app cannot sell is marked Not available in app, and checkout stays blocked until it is removed.

Your site decides which is which. A product counts as digital when it is virtual, downloadable, a subscription, or grants an Ultimate Member role. A virtual product that is really an in-person class counts as digital until you set it to Physical in the Memberside — App sales box on its edit screen.

Memberships sold through Paid Memberships Pro stay on your website under every store setting except the US-only one. Selling digital products in your app covers the rest.

For a digital product sold through in-app purchase, yes. Its in-app price is the one you set in App Store Connect and Google Play Console, separately from your WooCommerce price, and neither store requires the two to match. Many sites set the in-app price higher to cover the commission.

The commission is typically 15% for a business enrolled in each store’s small-business programme, which covers roughly the first US$1 million a year, and up to 30% otherwise. Both stores revise these terms, so check the current ones before you set a price.

Two things to know:

• Inside the app, you cannot say it is cheaper on your website. That points members to another way to pay, which the rules forbid.
• Your own records show your WooCommerce price. When a purchase is mapped to a WooCommerce product, the order it creates on your site carries that product’s price, not what the store charged.

Physical goods checked out on your website through the app pay no store commission, so their prices need no change.

Yes, outside the app. Your website, your emails, your social posts and the rest of your marketing are not part of App Review. They can carry prices, a sign-up link, and a line such as “Join on our website, then sign in to the app.”

Two places count as the app:

• The store listing. The description, screenshots and release notes on the App Store and Google Play are reviewed as part of the app. Keep prices and “subscribe on our website” out of them.
• Every screen in the app. No text about where to pay and no link to your sign-up page. That includes a “Don’t have an account? Join at yoursite.com” line on the sign-in screen.

A setup that stays inside both:

1. Let people create a free account in the app with Register or Default Register.
2. Keep paid memberships on your website.
3. Restrict the members-only screens to your Paid Memberships Pro levels, on each feature’s Restrictions tab.

What a free member sees on a restricted screen is your choice. By default its button is not shown to them at all. Turn on Keep the button visible to people who can’t open it and a tap either shows a lock with your message, or opens another feature you choose. An empty message reads “You do not have access to this.” Write it without prices and without pointing at your website: “This area is for members” is fine, “Join for $9 at yoursite.com” is not.

An app that creates accounts must also let members delete them from inside the app, under Guideline 5.1.1(v), so place Delete Account too.

Level restrictions are checked by the app, and not yet by your site: the data behind a level-restricted screen still answers a member without the level. Keep anything private behind Paid Memberships Pro’s own content restrictions as well. The Restrictions guide covers the rest.

A working sign-in for an account that holds an active membership. A reviewer cannot buy a membership to get past a lock, and an app they cannot get into is rejected. “We were unable to sign in” is one of the most common rejections for a community app.

1. Create a real member account on your site for the reviewer.
2. Give it the levels your restricted screens need under Memberships → Members, and any roles they need.
3. Open Prepare App Listing on your app’s page and enter the account under Store details, in Demo account username and Demo account password.

Memberside puts that account into the review information it exports for each store, and the generated notes for App Review mark which screens need it. The readiness checklist shows a blocker while screens need sign-in and no account is entered. It also warns you when a screen is restricted to a level or a role, so you can confirm the account holds it.