Set app pricing and availability

The Pricing and availability page of the app submission process lets you determine how much your app will cost, whether you'll offer a free trial, and how, when, and where it will be available to customers. Here, we'll walk through the options on this page and what you should consider when entering this information.

Base price

The first item on this page lets you select a base price for your app. You can choose to offer it for free, or you can select one of the available price tiers. Specifying a base price is required in order to submit your app.

For more info, see Define pricing and market selection.

Free trial

Many developers choose to allow customers to try out their app for free using the trial functionality provided by the Store. By default, an app will not be available as a free trial, but if you'd like to offer one, select a value from the Free trial dropdown.

Choose Trial never expires to let customers access your app for free indefinitely. You'll want to encourage them to purchase the full version, so make sure to add code to exclude or limit features in the trial version.

You also have the option to select a time-limited trial of 1 day, 7 days, 15 days, or 30 days. You can still limit features during the trial period, or you can let customers access the full functionality during that period of time.

Note Time-limited trials are not shown to customers on Windows Phone 8.1 and earlier.

Markets and custom prices

By default, your app will be listed in all possible markets at its base price. You can change these settings to include or exclude specific markets, and change the app's price in any market in which you offer it, in the Markets and custom prices section. For more info, see Define pricing and market selection.

Sale pricing

If you want to offer your app at a reduced price for a limited period of time, you can create and schedule a sale. For more info, see Put apps and IAPs on sale.

Distribution and visibility

The Distribution and visibility section allows you to set restrictions on how your app can be discovered and acquired.

The default setting is Make this app available in the Store. This means that your app will be listed in the Store for customers to find via the app's direct link and/or by other methods, including searching, browsing, and inclusion in curated lists.

If you want to hide your app in the Store but still make it available to certain people, select one of the following options to limit your app's availability. Note that customers on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 won't be able to get the app at all if you choose any of these options.

• Hide this app and prevent acquisition. Customers with a promotional code can still download it on Windows 10 devices: No customers can find your app in the Store via searching or browsing, but you can generate promotional codes to distribute to specific people on Windows 10. They can use the link and code to get your app for free, even though you aren't offering it to any other customers
• Hide this app in the Store. Customers with a direct link to the app’s listing can still download it, except on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1: No customers can find your app in the Store via searching or browsing, but any customer with the direct link to your app's listing can download your app on devices running Windows 10 or Windows Phone 8.1 and earlier.
• Hide this app and make it available only to the people you specify below, who can download this app on Windows Phone 8.x devices. A promotional code may be used to download this app on Windows 10 devices: No customers can find your app in the Store via searching or browsing, and only the Windows Phone 8.x customers whose email addresses (associated with their Microsoft accounts) that you enter in the box (separated by semicolons) can download your app by using the direct link to its listing. You can also generate promotional codes to distribute to specific people on Windows 10. This option is often used for beta testing on Windows Phone 8.1 and earlier. Note that this option can only be selected if you have never previously published the app with the Distribution and visibility option set to Anyone can find your app in the Store.

Note To completely stop offering an app to new customers, click Make app unavailable from the App overview page. After you confirm that you want to make the app unavailable, within a few hours it will no longer be visible in the Store, and no new customers will be able to get it via any method. This action will override any of the options you have chosen here: it won't be available to new customers at all. To make it available to new customers again, you can click Make app available from the App overview page at any time. For more info, see Removing an app from the Store.

Windows 10 device families

By default, we make new acquisitions of your app available to every type of Windows 10 device that can run it. (If your package won't run on a certain device type, we won't offer it for download to that type of device.)

We recommend leaving all boxes checked here unless you have a specific reason to limit the types of Windows 10 devices which can acquire your app. For example, you may have created Windows Universal packages, but you know that you still need to test some issues with the app on mobile devices. To prevent new customers from downloading the app on Windows 10 mobile devices, you can uncheck the Mobile checkbox here. Then if you later decide you're ready to offer it to customers on Windows 10 mobile devices, you can create a new submission with the Mobile box checked.

Important To completely prevent a certain Windows 10 device family from getting your app, you need to update the TargetDeviceFamily element in your appx manifest to target only the device family that you want to support (i.e., Windows.Mobile or Windows.Desktop), rather than leaving it as the Windows.Universal value (for the universal device family) that Microsoft Visual Studio includes in the appx manifest by default.

Note that the selections you make in this section will apply to all of your app’s packages, regardless of the OS version they target (Windows 10, Windows 8.x, Windows Phone 8.x, etc.). However, they affect availability only for customers who are using Windows 10 devices (and not Windows 8.x or Windows Phone 8.x devices).

It's also important to be aware that selections you make here apply to new acquisitions only. Anyone who already has your app can continue to use it and will get any updates you submit, even if you remove that device family here. This applies even to customers who acquired your app before upgrading to Windows 10. For example, if you have a published app with Windows Phone 8.1 packages, and you later add a Windows 10 (UWP) package to the same app that targets the universal device family, Windows 10 mobile customers who had your Windows Phone 8.1 package will be offered an update to this Windows 10 (UWP) package, even if you've unchecked the box for Mobile (since this is not a new acquisition, but an update). However, if you don't provide any Windows 10 (UWP) package that targets the universal or mobile device family, your Windows 10 mobile customers will remain on the Windows Phone 8.1 package.

For more info about device families, see Guide to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps and TargetDeviceFamily.

Note You'll also see a checkbox where you can indicate whether you want to allow Microsoft to make the app available to future Windows 10 device families. We recommend keeping this box checked so that your app can be available to more potential customers as new device families are introduced.

Organizational licensing

By default, your app may be offered to organizations to purchase in volume. You can indicate whether and how your app can be offered in this section.

For more info, see Organizational licensing options.

Publish date

You can indicate when your app (or update) will be published by choosing an option in the Publish date section.

• Choose Publish this submission as soon as it passes certification to make this submission available in the Store as soon as possible.
• Choose Publish this submission manually if you don't want your submission to be published until you indicate that it should be. You can do this from the certification status page by clicking Publish now, or by selecting a specific date as described below.
• Choose No sooner than [date] to ensure that the submission is not published until a certain date. With this option, your submission will be released as soon as possible on or after the date you specify. The date must be at least 24 hours in the future. Along with the date, you can also specify the time at which the submission should begin to be published.

  Note Delays during certification or publishing could cause the actual release date to be later than the date you request. The Windows Store cannot guarantee that your app (or update) will be available on a specific date.

You can also change the release date after submitting your app, as long as it hasn’t entered the Publish step yet.