Subscription Management with Purchasely Firebase Extension

Purchasely launches its Firebase Extension that empowers new mobile apps to deploy In-App Subscriptions in less than 24 hours and without any backend resources. 

Building and launching fast a mobile app: a real challenge for small startups and one people businesses

Building an App and monetizing it via In-App Purchases requires a lot of effort and technical knowledge which keep complexifying over time as Operating Systems and Tech Stacks evolve and develop.

This is why over the last few years new tools, cloud solutions, and languages have emerged to make App development and management more accessible for starters. Firebase, backed by Google, is one of them.

Firebase has developed a reliable and easy to integrate SDK which offers a wide range of features and modules to make App development and analysis easy. It is trusted by many developers and companies worldwide.

A large number of apps actively use Firebase every month, created by businesses of all sizes, from startups to global enterprises. Firebase is providing a fully managed infrastructure, with a streamlined experience, that lets apps publishers focus on what matters most. 

Firebase Authentication, Firestore Database, and Purchasely Firebase Extension

A challenge our Customers often bring back to Purchasely is the management of Users' database, authentication, and content rights, which all relate to connecting Purchasely Events to App Backend.

On top of that, if your App is set to be accessible to everyone without requiring a login, managing Anonymous Users ID, can quickly become a complex topic, requiring managing tokens and hand-off data.

Authentication and Firestore Database modules, provided by Firebase solve these pain points for you.

These backend challenges are now solved, some hurdles remain to be able to implement full In-App Management, such as developing Functions to interpret Webhooks and maintain your User's purchases Firestore collections, and managing Custom claims if your business requires you to.

Luckily, Firebase recently decided to enable 3rd party extensions. Firebase Extensions are pre-packaged bundles of code that will save you and your business time by deploying functionalities to your app quickly.

Purchasely is launching a Firebase Extension that accelerates the deployment of In-App Purchases and Subscriptions

To enable it and unlock the potential of Firebase Authentication and Firestore Database:

• Integrate the Firebase SDK within your App
• Install Purchasely Firebase extension (Github)

The Purchasely Firebase Extension consists of code that you can deploy automatically in your Firebase console and SDK, to unlock additional features.

We also have created a Demo Application, so you can run an example. Check it out here:

• iOS Purchasely Firebase Extension Demo App
• Android Purchasely Firebase Extension Demo App

The goal of Purchasely Firebase Extension is to keep track of your mobile users' In-App Purchases & Subscriptions easily & seamlessly with Purchasely via Firebase Authentication & Firebase Firestore.

This Extension stores your In-App Purchases & Subscriptions using Cloud Firestore and adds Custom Claims for your users' subscriptions using Firebase Authentication for convenient access control in your application.

How to install Purchasely Firebase Extension?

• Go to Purchasely GitHub and Open Purchasely Firebase Extension
• Use this link to develop the Read Me
• Launch the Firebase Extension Wizard
• This opens the Firebase Console
• Choose the Project you would like to connect Purchasely to and follow the steps described in our step-by-step documentation

 ➡️ Firebase Extension provided by Purchasely: a step-by-step guide ⬅️

Bim, a Digital Gym app, is accelerating its monetization with Purchasely Firebase Extension

Bim is a Digital Gym app born during the 1st global lockdown. It enables sharing exercise sessions with friends and professional coaches. The 4 main features of Bim are:

• Create a group with friends
• Chat with them
• Schedule your training together
• Video call with professional coaches

After launching its app, the Bim team was looking for a solution to quickly launch paid business models to monetize its community of coaches. Now, professional coaches can make money with their members by selling Monthly and Yearly Subscriptions:

• Create their own gym
• Upload fitness videos or record them directly from the app
• Schedule individual or group sessions with their members

The Purchasely Firebase Extension gives Bim superpower

As Bim's infrastructure is based on Firebase, Purchasely was a natural choice due to our Firebase Extension.

In less than 24 hours, the technical stack of Bim was ready to deploy In-App Purchases. The Bim team selected Purchasely among the list of Extensions available in Firebase and entered less than 10 parameters to activate the Extension.

The beauty of the Purchasely Firebase Extension is its immediate capacity to store in Firestore the huge volume of subscribers and event data without any required backend development.

For each subscriber and each purchase, the Bim team may access the highest level of data granularity. Check the screen below of Bim's Firebase database. It gives you a flavor of the type of transactional data that you may access, thanks to Purchasely Firebase Extension in a few clicks when your app is selling subscriptions. 

Benjamin Plessis, CTO of Bim app, says:

"The Firebase Extension offered by Purchasely is incredibly simple. With one day of research and 15 minutes of configuration in the Firebase console, our Firebase-based infrastructure was ready to use to monetize Bim through subscription. Combined with the ease and speed of integration of its SDKs, Purchasely provides a turnkey solution that is ideal for mobile application projects and startups.

Not having to develop their proprietary backend is a huge opportunity for start-up companies, and the Purchasely Firebase Extension enables ultra-fast monetization of mobile applications.

On top of that, Purchasely's no-code Paywall Builder allows us to display a stylish Offer Screen. The user interface is so intuitive. "

Weetee is also using Purchasely Firebase Extension

Another user of Purchasely Firebase Extension is Weetee, an app that wants to build reliable long-term memories.

Founded by Ali Abbas, who believes that cultivating memory makes life better and that overabundance of information impacts our brain capacity, Weetee aims to facilitate learning by combining a daily and continuous learning experience based on repetition, and a growing and contributing community.

Ali Abbas, Founder of Weetee, highlights:

" We use Purchasely to facilitate the management of our in-app purchases and their tracking. The simple integration of the Firebase Extension provided by Purchasely has allowed us to move quickly in managing our subscriptions. This time saving allowed us to focus on the main features to be delivered to users. We can confidently leave the management of purchases to the Purchasely specialists."

Romain Salles, CTO & co-founder of Purchasely, underlines:

"Both examples of Bim and Weetee apps show that Purchasely is successfully following the path to fulfilling its mission regarding Subscription: to lower the barriers to entry for any kind of mobile services (from side projects to startups & rising stars) and to empower everyone to reach the state-of-the-art maturity of Global Subscription Apps.

With Purchasely-as-a-Backend (our backend API enabling access management to the premium features in the app) or our Firebase Extension, any technical team may benefit from our highly scalable and reliable infrastructure and launch Subscriptions in the blink of an eye."