Google Play Free Trial Period testing strategy

7
votes

We are introducing Google Play subscriptions that include a 30 day trial, and I'm looking for some advice on how to test this.

As described in more detail here, the trial period for a testing account only lasts 3 minutes. Moreover, if an account (either a test account or not) has once received the free trial, they won't receive the free trial again. That means that every time that we want to test the onboarding and signup flow, we need to create a new Google account (add it to the group of accounts with license testing access, make it part of the group of testers that can download the app, opt-in for the internal test release and sign the new account in on the respective phone). This is tedious.

However, as I tried to create a new Google account for another round of testing, Google told me that my phone number (which is mandatory verification step) has been used too many times, and so I can't create any more accounts with this number.

I find it hard to believe that this is the only/the best way to test free trials with Google Play, so I'm happy with any help that can be offered on how to best approach this.

1
androidgoogle-play
Any solution on that? – thodwris
Unfortunately not. We've had to buy about 20 SIM cards in order to be able to create new accounts... – saltandpepper
Thanx for the answer. I followed your steps (add it to the group of accounts with license testing access, make it part of the group of testers that can download the app, opt-in for the internal test release and sign the new account in on the respective phone) but I get the following error from GPay "the item you were attempting to purchase could not be found". Do you have any idea? – thodwris
There are a number of reasons why this can happen. Make sure to read online and follow the many check lists that are out there (e.g. stackoverflow.com/questions/23918190/…). In my personal experience the one step that often messes up my test flow is the step of opting in. When clicking on the opt-in link, make sure you're doing that with the right Google account. So for example, tap in the top right icon to check what account you're currently signed in to (in the browser you're opening the link with). – saltandpepper

1 Answers

0
votes

Umm, even if this is not a complete solution, it's rather an alternative to the main problem. It might be faster to just open another subscription from Google Play Console with free-trial enabled. You can subscribe to other free trials if the subscription ID is different from what you've activated the free trial with. That way you can use the same account but can activate free trial with different IDs.

You would also change the sku in the development section (remote or local, up to you.) It might take a while to get the information though, so I'd say open a bunch before start testing it next time.

The downside of this is, if anyone purchased a subscription, even if it's a test, it will not be possible to remove the test subscription, so be careful and be 100% sure to change your subscription IDs on production.