What you need to know
- As developer Sean Harding found out the hard way, you can't transfer apps and be part of the Apple Small Business Program.
- Transferring apps means you will not be elegible for a reduced App Store cut to going to Apple.
Apple's documentation has the answers but Apple itself doesn't seem to.
Here's a quick public service announcement specific to developers – if you transfer your apps to another App Store Connect account, you can't then apply to be aprt of the Small Business Program.
That's somethign developer Sean Harding just found out.
See, Apple's Small Business Program entitles successful applicants to pay Apple 15% of their App Store revenue, rather than the usual 30%. To be eligible, developers must be earning less than $1,000,000 per year. That covers the vast majority of developers, but there's an important point here – apps can't be transferred to another App Store Connect account because the account won't then be able to apply to be part of the same program.
The reasons are obvious – Apple doesn't want people moving apps around accounts to make it look like they're earning less money. It's also something that Apple makes clear in its support documentation.
Emphasis mine.
App transfers are not allowed while participating in the program. If you initiate an app transfer after December 31, 2020, or accept a transfer of an app that was initiated after December 31, 2020, you will no longer be eligible to participate in the program.
That's all pretty clear. But unfortunately Harding made the mistake of reaching out to Apple developer support. And they caused chaos.
You can read the full thread on Twitter, but the short version is that Harding wanted to create a new developer account so he could "get more serious" about his business before moving his existing apps over to it. He was already worried about the potential consequences, so he asked Apple if the transfer would prevent him from joining the Small Business Program.
Apple was less than helpful. Thrice.
The second response also did not answer the right question. So I wrote again. The third response said, "Since, you are not enrolled into the small business program yet, You are able to transfer the application and then submit your enrollment."
— Sean Harding (@sharding) March 10, 2021
Cool. So Harding completed the transfer and applied for the program. By this point we can all guess what happened next.
The denial I got said, "we found that you transferred an app to another account or accepted an app transfer after January 1, 2021, which makes you ineligible to participate in the program..." 🤬
— Sean Harding (@sharding) March 10, 2021
And so concludes today's tale of woe. This could all have been avoided with a web search, but it shouldn't have gotten this far when Apple developer support became involved. And the fact someone at Apple doesn't seem to know the rules does suggest it shouldn't expect developers to know them, either.
So here we are. Harding is stuck with apps that will lose 30% of their revenue instead of 15%.
If anyone reading this is part of Apple developer relations, please do the right thing – get in touch.
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