🧵 Superwall had on off-the-record* meeting with someone very high up at Apple yesterday to ask questions about what is and isn't allowed on the App Store. We asked for rules on
→ App2Web
→ Transaction Abandon
→ Free Trial Toggles
→ A/B Testing Paywalls in General
Here's everything we learned...
* Guidelines are intentionally subjective and ultimately up to the reviewer to interpret (more on this in my last post). The only way Apple takes an official stance on a guideline is by updating them.
Some topics may never enter the official guidelines... that doesn't mean they're allowed.
There's a whole layer of internal policy behind the guidelines that isn't written down anywhere and subject to change.
The text you read is just the tip of the iceberg. That's what this thread is about. 👇
Next week is WWDC. Big week for iOS.
We're hosting Tim Cookout at Superwall House — June 10, San Jose. BBQ evening with the whole Superwall team.
Building apps $$$k+ MRR? RSVP → https://t.co/npgMr7fu9P
More ad-hoc events dropping through the week. Stay tuned!
During WWDC 2026, I'd love to see you at....
Our Tim Cook[out]! Wednesday evening.
Free food, good chats, etc etc. Register here:
https://t.co/mzuWEbLYSd
Introducing https://t.co/kNu9kwqOpa (beta)
→ Fully hosted agentic platform
→ Your own persisted machine (like OpenClaw)
→ Integrated w/ Superwall, Slack & Github
→ Search and install 1000s of skills
→ Run Automations (just tell it to do smtn daily)
→ Query Superwall's database (ask any data question)
Use it to
→ Analyze complicated experiments
→ Pull your repo from Github and add SW for you
→ Send your team daily reports on slack
→ Build dashboards & share with your team
Available for free for a limited time
Bring your paywall to booth 407. We'll tell you what's wrong with it.
@jakemor, @BriansAngles, @l_akinyem1, @volhasa, and Anna are at @mauvegas_, May 19-21 — all week. Book a slot, and we'll review your monetization live: paywalls, web funnels, subscriptions, pricing.
Plus a demo of Superwall Agent. Plus limited edition merch and some m-a-g-i-c.
Additionally, we're hosting three side events:
→ Consumer Apps Happy Hour, May 19, 7:30 PM → https://t.co/c3y7tkf8eR
→ Cabana Cocktail Hour, May 20, 3:30 PM → https://t.co/TmD73VfmAZ
→ App Founders Dinner, May 20, 8:30 PM → https://t.co/g7uXUGRoXx
Sounds good? Let's meet.
Michal Parizek (@parezem) is a legend in the industry and we've been very lucky to welcome him to the @superwall fam - here's a little gift from him to stay organized in your paywall testing: https://t.co/G8OU9SYyWh
London, here I come ✈️
The @Superwall team is headed to the @BusinessofApps London conference.
Come find @parezem@yusuftor@volhasa and me at booth 13 to talk paywalls and monetization growth.
Or stop by my talk at 2 pm in the Revenue & Retention Zone.
See you soon!
Announcing Superwall Agents – a taste of what's to come 😝. @Superwall is launching an agentic platform to help you run your entire app business with agents.
💻 Your own persisted machine in the cloud
🍎 Provisioned access to App Store Connect
🔑 Direct access to our analytics db with RLS
⚡️ Full Superwall API
🦾 Plus whatever you want, its YOUR machine
Analyze data, build charts, dashboards, submit PRs, build paywalls, automate marketing, do whatever you like.
We're working on partnerships with @postbridge_ to automate marketing, @appfigures for market intelligence and @pixelcutai for generating assets.
We're open sourcing the skills powering these capabilities while giving you a secure and persisted environment to manage your apps in the cloud.
Welcome to the future. Retweet for early access next week.
🧵 More shots below 👇
Hey Connor! This made it to prod for a number of reasons- most importantly because the rules from Apple weren’t clear on this to begin with and multiple big customers said they’d build this on their own after the Epic vs Apple court ruling.
We didn’t know if it was allowed for sure so we feature flagged it, and only gave it to apps who asked for it + warned them they are in uncharted territory.
You also need to remember - every single app who submit an update to app review highlighting their new checkout experience in review notes, all got approved. It isn’t as black and white as you make it seem, and I think that’s why Apple let them back on.
Lastly, we don’t enable you to do anything you can’t do on your own. While I deeply recognize the responsibility to guide customers towards compliant tactics, I just don’t believe it to be our duty to dictate what risk level you operate your business at.
Not to mention Stripe checkout in-app is allowed for a whole category of customers offering reader apps, financial services, in-person services or physical goods. We plan on continuing to support these customers in the coming weeks.
Until then, to protect customers (since this is literally the only instance of Apple taking a public stance on this) we remotely disabled every app from using embedded checkout and had them all redirect to external safari instead.
We’ll add the feature back for people with a warning that only some are allowed to use it. That’s on them.
Here’s the email we sent out -
——
Hi there,
On March 1st, we disallowed new paywalls from using Stripe Embedded Checkout due to ambiguity in Apple's guidelines. While apps using it were getting approved (even when calling attention to it in Review Notes), we decided to err on the side of caution.
Unfortunately, recent enforcement trends indicate increased scrutiny and risk. Our goal is to keep your apps safe and compliant, without putting your business at risk. Based on these developments, we've made the decision to fully disable Embedded Checkout effective immediately.
All paywalls in production using Embedded Checkout now redirect to External Checkout in Safari, which aligns best with Apple's recommended approach for third-party payments.
We understand this may impact conversion or user experience. We recommend monitoring your metrics closely, and our team is available to help you optimize your checkout flow under this model.
If you are not using Embedded Checkout, no action is required.
We'll continue to monitor Apple's guidance and will update you if new compliant options become available.
Please reach out with any questions, we're here to help!
probably one of the craziest things i ever made. I spent around 40+ hours designing 4 different versions of a monopoly board with all our biggest customers on it. I made 4 versions so each customer gets a board with their app on it. every single element is branded and drawn by hand in figma. no ai, just elbow grease and love.
thanks for being a part of our journey :)
the $300k MRR in 45 days story is here- @dillionverma finally revealed what app this is and did a deep dive into the strategy
story is pretty wild, he took a 100k personal loan, hired 85 creators, and ONE TikTok format is driving the whole thing