I am seeking clarity and assistance regarding 3.1.3(F) - Free Stand-alone Apps, and specifically what we can and cannot do regarding call-to-actions, and links to contact us style pages.
Our organization provides a 3rd-party profitability consultative service to the hospitality industry.
We've built a free iOS Application that is distributed from the app store, which acts as an inventory-gathering tool. The application is not a "product", and alone, is simply an efficient counting & weighing tool. It is part of a larger process, which occurs on another platform.
The inventory data gathered from the app is sent to a web-based system to be further refined, and reviewed. Other metrics are added to it which produce reports or empower our consultants with suggestions on operations, which is communicated in person or via email.
Access to both this free application and web systems are controlled externally via our organization, by email login.
We charge a fee for the completed process, but it's not a subscription, and it's not for access to the application, website, or a combination of the two. It varies based on services rendered at the time in which it occurs.
Those fees are not listed anywhere as the consultant negotiates that fee.
Thus, can we, on the login page, provide a link to a sign-up page if the individual who downloaded the free app has not been provided access? Or, some sort of call-to-action that redirects someone without access, to a page to request more info?
In Reference
3.1.3(f) Free Stand-alone Apps: Free apps acting as a stand-alone companion to a paid web-based tool (eg. VOIP, Cloud Storage, Email Services, Web Hosting) do not need to use in-app purchase, provided there is no purchasing inside the app, or calls to action for purchase outside of the app.
