Is there a reason why Patreon doesn't just pull out of the App Store? Whenever I got Patreon rewards, I'd just get them in an email notification and the link there took me to the website. Worked great without having to download an app.
Sources seem to be pretty consistent in saying that on average, native app users are significantly more profitable for companies than web users. While I'm sure that's partially because the most dedicated users of a given service are the most likely to install the native app, an app does afford more opportunity to collect data about the user and to attempt to grab the user's attention.
As a user, I strongly prefer websites for this sort of thing. I'll pay attention when it suits me, not when the service wants me to. It does explain why Patreon wants to have an app though.
Patreon has been pushing an app-based approach for awhile now; every email I get from them has callouts to open the notification in their app.
I don't know why they badly want this - presumably for more user tracking, or because studies show that people engage more, or whatever - but pulling out of the app store would be at odds with this desire to push everyone into their app.
My assumption would be that if you have a company's app installed it allows them to spam you with marketing notifications for different things. Much harder to do when you can only use emails, because too many emails can get you put into spam.
The 30% fee is steep, but conversion rates using in-app purchase are astronomical compared to regular webpages with a credit card form. Everyone hates it (developers, I mean), but it works very well.
In case anyone wants to know why this is: it's because
1) I don't have to enter credit card information
2) Apple allows me to cancel subscriptions in a central location as soon as I sign up
If your service forces me to auto-renew my subscription, I'm probably not gonna buy it.
