Offer subscriptions to groups and organizations

Highlight

Apple introduced subscriptions for groups and organizations, allowing developers to sell multi-seat subscriptions through both in-app purchases and Apple Business Manager or Apple School Manager, with support for tiered volume pricing.

Core Ideas

In the past, a user who wanted to buy subscriptions for team members had to purchase them account by account. A club that wanted to buy fitness app subscriptions for its members also had to ask each person to sign up individually. That was cumbersome for small teams, companies, schools, and other collective purchasing scenarios.

Apple now offers two solutions:

Volume Purchasing: Businesses or schools can buy subscriptions in bulk through Apple Business Manager or Apple School Manager. They can assign seats with the device management services they already use, following the same workflow they use to distribute apps. This is suitable for medium and large organizations that need centralized identity management.

Group Purchases: Users can buy multiple seats directly in your app, then share invitation links with others. This is suitable for small teams, friend groups, clubs, and similar scenarios. Apple provides a ready-made seat management system, and developers can also use their own invitation flow.

Both features are enabled by default for auto-renewable subscriptions that use StoreKit 2. If your subscription has Family Sharing enabled, group subscriptions are disabled by default, and you can decide how to configure them.

Details

Availability Configuration (00:43)

In App Store Connect, you can control whether a subscription is available through group channels:

By default, subscriptions are available through both in-app purchase and Apple Business/School Manager
You can make a subscription available only in Apple School Manager to offer exclusive pricing for education institutions
You can turn off group sales completely and keep only individual subscriptions

Tiered Pricing (01:53)

Apple added Volume Pricing configuration with support for up to five price tiers. Each tier can define a seat-count threshold and corresponding price.

Example configuration:

1-20 seats: $19.99 per seat per month
21-40 seats: $13.99 per seat per month
41 or more seats: $10.99 per seat per month

When buying 50 seats, the average cost per seat is about 20% lower than the base price. The discount can encourage customers to cover more people and consolidate purchasing.

These settings are completed directly in App Store Connect and require no code changes.

Purchase Flow (03:02)

Volume Purchasing: Apple Business/School Manager displays your subscription and handles the purchase. You only need to make sure the subscription is available to organizations.

Group Purchases: You need to build in-app UI that triggers the StoreKit 2 purchase flow. In the promotional flow, emphasize the value of group purchases, collect the number of seats the user wants, and pass that value to the purchase request.

Seat Management (04:08)

Seats from Volume Purchasing are assigned by the organization through device management services, just as they distribute apps today.

Group Purchases generate invitation links that purchasers can share with members. Apple’s default seat management system includes:

Generating invitation links
Tracking member acceptance and assignment
Managing the seat lifecycle, such as cancellation

If you already have your own invitation and member management system, you can integrate it through new App Store Server API endpoints. The new APIs also provide group information queries, allowing you to get all groups a customer has joined and all members of a group.

Technical Requirements (06:24)

StoreKit 2 is required
New App Store Server API endpoints are used for custom integrations

Key Takeaways

Add a group purchase entry point in your app Add a “buy multiple seats” option to the subscription page so small teams, clubs, and friend groups can complete multi-person subscriptions directly in the app without going through the more complex Apple Business Manager workflow. StoreKit 2 has native support for group purchases; you only need to collect the seat count in the UI and pass it to the standard purchase request. Entry point: StoreKit 2 Product.purchase() plus group purchase configuration.
Configure a tiered pricing strategy Set up to five price tiers in App Store Connect, with lower unit prices for larger purchases. For example, 1-20 seats at $19.99 per month, 21-40 seats at $13.99 per month, and 41 or more seats at $10.99 per month. For 50 seats, the average cost is about 20% lower than buying individually. Tiered discounts can encourage customers to expand purchase size and consolidate subscriptions. Entry point: App Store Connect -> Subscriptions -> Volume Pricing.
Offer a dedicated channel for education institutions Make specific subscriptions available only in Apple School Manager and set education discount pricing. Schools already have centralized device management and identity systems, and purchasing through ABM/ASM is the standard workflow. This channel can help you reach the education market without affecting public channel pricing. Entry point: choose “available only in Apple School Manager” in App Store Connect availability settings.
Integrate a custom seat management system If you already have an invitation and member management system, connect it to Apple’s seat management through the new App Store Server API endpoints. This lets you preserve your existing user management flow while gaining group subscription revenue and Apple’s billing handling. Entry point: App Store Server API group information query endpoints.
Separate Family Sharing and group subscription configuration Review your existing subscription configuration and decide whether to enable group purchases for Family Sharing users. Family Sharing and group subscriptions are mutually exclusive by default, so choose based on product positioning: personal productivity tools fit group subscriptions, while family entertainment content fits Family Sharing. Entry point: review and adjust the subscription’s “Family Sharing” setting in App Store Connect.

What’s new in StoreKit — Latest updates in StoreKit 2
App Store Connect basics — Getting started with App Store Connect configuration
Design principles for subscriptions — Design principles for subscription products