I've always avoided non-App Store distribution to keep things simpler. It's a nightmare to manage many different licensing schemes.
Now I don't have to have any backend. Everything is done via the built-in, robust App Store mechanism that just works.
I hope Apple will figure something out in the future. And I think they will since they want to increase their "Services" revenue as hardware sales decline. Making stuff easier for business customers seems like a low-hanging fruit.
It's not confusing. They show up next to each other when you search. One is "free" showing "GET" and offering usually ad supported + IAP. The other is paid, with a special logo, saying life time purchase, no ads, or etc. You can link to each other and talk about the other.
I'm not at work so I can't readily pull up a list of the apps we can and do buy employees thanks to having a paid version available, but there are quite a few, and they win out over more popular apps that have only IAP.
I think the regular, unsophisticated user might still be confused. I already envision questions like: "Should I buy a lifetime license in the free version or the paid pro app?". There are also additional hurdles like, for example, reviews being divided between 2 separate apps. I don't know, maybe it's worth it, but I am hesitant. I want to keep the whole experience of Paper simple, and this just adds complexity. I would prefer to wait for Apple to solve this at some point in the future.
I've always avoided non-App Store distribution to keep things simpler. It's a nightmare to manage many different licensing schemes.
Now I don't have to have any backend. Everything is done via the built-in, robust App Store mechanism that just works.
I hope Apple will figure something out in the future. And I think they will since they want to increase their "Services" revenue as hardware sales decline. Making stuff easier for business customers seems like a low-hanging fruit.