A better way to run AppointmentGuru on your mobile device

To install AppointmentGuru on your mobile device

On iOS:

1. Open app.appointmentguru.co in Safari
2. Open the sidebar of the app and click the "launch now as web app" button
3. Click the share button
4. Scroll down and click add to home screen
5. Open the app from the icon on your home screen

On Android:

1. Open app.appointmentguru.co in your mobile web browser
2. Android will prompt you to install the app.
3. Click yes
4. Open the app from your home screen

Why we are moving away from the app stores

We have our issues with the app stores (in particular Apple's iStore, and we are not alone), however, at the end of the day, we would not take this decision if it did not benefit you, our customers.

We have found that distributing our mobile app as a mobile web app is a far superior experience for both us and our customers. Indeed all our customers who have switched have mentioned how the web app experience is superior.

A better product for you

The technology that powers mobile web apps has come a long way. In our move towards distribution as a PWA (Progressive Web App), we have found the following improvements and advantages:

• Web apps are actually easier to install than mobile app, and they update themselves automatically - so you always have the latest version of the app running
• The same code that runs our desktop app will now also be powering your mobile app. This means that we can focus on a single code-base and:
  • We can focus our development and provide a cleaner and more robust experience for you
  • Updates will land on your mobile app immediately
  • We can justify putting more effort into device specific functionality
• Much of the functionality that used to be only available to apps is now available to web apps on mobile. Things such as: sharing, contacts, access to the file system, biometrics, notifications etc are now available to web apps
  • We look forward to taking advantage of this functionality to offer you a truly great experience on mobile
• We do not have to rely on (and wait for) a random Apple employee to approve our updates in order to be able to ship code to our own app.

More control over our release cycle

As you may have noticed, our mobile apps tend to lag our web app when it comes to releases. This is because shipping to the app stores is quite a labourous process. Once you install our app as a mobile web app you will always have the latest verion of AppointmentGuru

Apple

The biggest issue with pushing to the app stores is Apple's inconsistent approval process. Typically it takes days for them to review a release, and often they block our releases for random reasons.

Not having control over our ability to release updates to our own app is an issue for us.

The straw that has broken the camel's back is that we are currently unable to push an update to our mobile app until we implement their in-app payments. On Apple's behest, we have previously removed any links in our app to other payment methods. Not satisfied with this, they are now requiring us to implement their in-app payments before we will be able to make any updates to our own app.

To be clear, Apple imposes the following on apps in the app store:

1. You may not link to alternative ways to pay/subscribe to your app.
2. The only allowed method for accepting payments in a mobile app is using Apple in-app purchases.
3. If you accept payments anywhere else - you must implement their in-app purchase solution on your mobile app.
4. Apple takes a 30% cut for running the credit card payment (that's more than 10x what were pay for Peach Payments - who runs our card processing).
5. We, the company, may not communicate with our clients that there are better ways to pay (via any method - not just within the app) - Apple may concede on this following legal action by developers in the US.

This is problematic for some obvious reasons:

1. Apple is essentially holding us hostage unless we implement functionality that will likely be of little use to us or our customers.
2. Apple's in-app payments are notoriously expensive (they charge a whopping 30% on each payment - compared to the 3% industry standard. At those rates we would likely make a loss on many of our subscriptions).
3. Not being able to release updates to our app is a security and stability risk for our company.

As such, we encourage you to download our mobile web app and enjoy the best mobile experience with AppointmentGuru.

Our app will remain in the app store in the short term, but we will no longer be shipping updates to the app store and our app will be removed from the Apple App Store within a few months