Apple recently announced that they were reducing their commission for app developers from 30% to 15% for businesses with less than $1M in annual revenue. What has been less discussed is that this change seems far more likely to be about online events, and taking a cut from struggling brick and mortar businesses adapting during a pandemic, than it is about app developers.
Apple has made it clear that they intend to subject traditional brick and mortar companies to their 15-30% tax on revenue when an event sale happens through an app, because an online event is considered “premium content”.
No matter the platform, whether it’s Facebook, one of our competitors, your own custom branded app powered by a platform, or anything else, Apple’s position is if a sale can happen in an app, then it MUST happen through their payment system, and they MUST get a 15% to 30% cut.
Fortunately for customers of Tula Software, we stopped trusting Apple years ago back when they stopped accepting branded applications under the same developer account. Since then we’ve invested heavily in ensuring that our customers, and their students, would always have an excellent experience in the browser, free from Apple’s grasp.
Most recently this philosophy was demonstrated with our update that allows our customers to host our website integration widgets on their own domain, along with the student url on their own domain.
Ultimately, our implementation will save our customers well over $1,000 per month when compared to the implementation of our competitors, who are seemingly going along with Apple’s program.
The beauty of our Livestream and on-demand options for our customers is that it’s all powered by the browser and we aren’t beholden to any particular platform. If zoom starts any shenanigans, our customers can seamlessly move to Google Meet. If they start doing anything fishy, they can move to Vimeo.
The reason our implementation is so different than all of our competitors is for the same reason we’ve always been different then our competitors: We always start with the question “what is best for Tula Yoga Studio?” and we go from there.
For almost a decade we have been writing about the importance of operating your business on your own domain and the dangers that marketplaces pose to your independent business.
Now, in the middle of a global pandemic with a quarter million Americans dead, as the worlds wealthiest company is coming to take a revenue cut from small business owners closed by their local governments, we see this reality more than ever.
Fortunately, you are not beholden to Apple thanks to the free and open internet, your domain name, the web browser, and Tula Software.
Do you own or run a class based business? Get in touch with our sales team to learn how you can avoid thousands of dollars a month in fees by switching to Tula Software!