Guide to Subscription

Running Free Trials and Discounts for MommyMode

This is your guide to creating and sending free-trial or discount codes yourself, directly from the App Store and Google Play, without needing a developer.

The short version: the app already recognizes any subscription, however it started. Whether someone pays full price, redeems a free-trial code, or redeems a discount code, the app checks with the App Store or Play Store, sees they have Whole Village (or whichever plan), and unlocks it. Creating and sending codes is a job you do entirely inside App Store Connect and Google Play Console. No new app version is needed.

Your first offer: 100 families, 30 days free on Whole Village

You will create this as two separate offers (one for Apple, one for Google), because each store has its own code system. Both stores will generate 100 unique, one-time-use codes. Each code works for one person, on one account.

Use the monthly Whole Village product for this offer (not yearly). That way, after the free 30 days, it renews at $29.99/month automatically, which matches “renews at the regular price unless they cancel.” If you used the yearly product, the free period would be followed by a $299.99/year charge instead, which is probably not what you want for a trial.

Part 1: Apple (App Store Connect)

Go to App Store Connect and sign in.
Open My Apps and select MommyMode.
Go to the Monetization (or Features, depending on which layout you see) tab, then Subscriptions.
Open the subscription group, then click on mommymode_whole_village_monthly.
Find the Offer Codes section and click Create Offer Code (Apple used to call these “Promotional Offers” for codes; look for the option that generates a list of redeemable codes, not the “Introductory Offer” option, which applies to everyone automatically and can’t be limited to 100 people).
Fill in:
- Reference Name: something like “100 Families Launch Trial” (only you see this)
- Code Type: choose the option for one-time-use, individual codes (not a single code shared by everyone)
- Number of Codes: 100
- Offer Duration: 1 month free
- Eligibility: New subscribers (unless you want to include people who already canceled a past subscription, which is a separate eligibility option)
Save and submit. Apple usually approves offer codes within a few hours (much faster than a full app review).
Once approved, Apple gives you:
- A downloadable list of 100 unique codes, AND
- A unique redemption link for each code (looks like https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=...&code=...)
Send the links, not just the bare codes, when you can. On an iPhone, tapping the link opens the App Store and redeems in one tap. A bare code requires the person to go to Settings > their name > Subscriptions > Redeem Code (or the App Store app itself) and type it in manually, which more people give up on.

Part 2: Google (Play Console)

Go to Play Console and sign in.
Select the MommyMode app.
Go to Monetize > Products > Subscriptions.
Click on mommymode_whole_village_monthly.
Go to the Offers tab and click Create new offer.
Fill in:
- Offer ID: something like launch-trial-30day (internal, not shown to users)
- Offer eligibility: New customer acquisition
- Redemption type / eligibility: choose the option restricted to a promo code (not “no code required” and not “developer determined” — you want the version that only activates for someone who enters a code)
- Phases: add one phase, Free, duration 30 days. After that phase ends, it automatically drops to the base plan’s regular price ($29.99/month) — you don’t need to add a second phase for that, it’s automatic.
Save and activate the offer.
Go to Monetize > Promotions (or, in some Play Console versions, back into the offer itself) and generate 100 one-time-use promo codes attached to this offer.
Google gives you a list of codes and a redemption link for each (https://play.google.com/redeem?code=... style). Same advice as Apple: send the link when possible, it’s a smoother experience than typing a bare code.

After the 30 days

Both stores handle the “renews at regular price unless they cancel” part automatically. You do not need to do anything else. If a family cancels during their free 30 days, they simply won’t be charged. If they don’t cancel, both stores charge them the regular $29.99/month price and MommyMode keeps their Whole Village access active.

Testing a code before you send 100 of them out

I’d recommend testing one code on each platform before sending the batch, just to see the redemption experience yourself and confirm the app shows Whole Village access. I can’t do this test myself. It requires your own App Store Connect and Play Console accounts and either a real phone or a “sandbox” test account, which only account owners can set up. Here is how to do it yourself (or walk Rajib through doing it on a test device, if you’d rather not do this part personally):

On iPhone (Apple):

Generate 1 offer code the same way as above (or reuse one of the 100 before sending the rest out).
Open the redemption link on an iPhone, or enter the code manually in Settings > your name > Subscriptions > Redeem Code.
Confirm the App Store shows “Redeemed” and the free period.
Open MommyMode. It should show Whole Village access within a few seconds. If it doesn’t right away, go to More > Subscription > Restore Purchases inside the app, this forces it to re-check with the App Store immediately.

On Android (Google):

Same idea: generate 1 code, redeem it using the link or by entering it in the Play Store app’s Redeem code screen (under your Google account, Payments & subscriptions).
Open MommyMode and confirm Whole Village access shows up. Use More > Subscription > Restore Purchases if it doesn’t appear immediately.

If a test code doesn’t unlock the plan within a minute or two even after Restore Purchases, stop and let me know before sending the real 100 out. That would be the one sign something server-side needs a look. But given a real paying customer is already active on iOS today, the underlying pipeline is proven to work. I’d expect this to just work.

Running future offers yourself

Once you’ve done it once, it’s the same process every time:

Free trial (like this one): create an Offer Code (Apple) / Offer with a free phase (Google) on whichever plan you want to promote, restricted to promo codes, generate however many codes you need.
Discount (e.g. “50% off your first 3 months”): same screens, except instead of a free phase/duration, you set a discounted price or percentage off for a set number of billing periods.
A sale for everyone, no code needed: on the Offer’s eligibility setting, choose “no code required” instead of “promo code” (Google), or use Apple’s “Introductory Offer” instead of “Offer Codes.” This applies automatically to any new subscriber without you sending anything out. Use this for a public sale; use codes when you want to control exactly who gets it.

You can do all of this for Organized, Shared Load, or Whole Village, on either monthly or yearly, any time, entirely from these two dashboards. None of it needs a new app version or a developer, as long as you’re running the offer on one of these three existing plans:

Plan	Monthly product ID	Yearly product ID
Organized	`mommymode_organized_monthly`	`mommymode_organized_yearly`
Shared Load	`mommymode_shared_load_monthly`	`mommymode_shared_load_yearly`
Whole Village	`mommymode_whole_village_monthly`	`mommymode_whole_village_yearly`

The only time you’d need a developer again is if you wanted to introduce a brand new plan tier that doesn’t exist yet (a 4th plan, or a special one-off product not in the table above). Discounts, trials, and sales on these three existing plans are entirely yours to run.

Where to track redemptions

Both App Store Connect and Play Console show you, per offer, how many codes have been redeemed and by whom (at a device/purchase level, not by name, since Apple and Google don’t share customer names with you directly). If you want to track which specific family used which code, keep your own spreadsheet mapping code to family when you send them out. Since you said you’ll handle choosing families, sending codes, and tracking yourself, this part is entirely in your hands and doesn’t touch the app at all.