Indie iOS stack
Subscription consumer app stack
The paywall-first stack for a habit, health, or journaling app that lives on recurring revenue.
Most solo iOS apps that make money do it with a subscription, and the fastest way to lose the plot is to hand-roll StoreKit receipts and paywall logic yourself. This stack keeps the money layer boring and reliable so you can spend your energy on the app itself.
It starts free or near-free and only grows a bill where the bill is attached to revenue: subscriptions, paywall tests, and the analytics that tell you whether either is working. Everything else stays on a free tier until the app earns its way off it.
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The stack
What we’d run, and why
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RevenueCat
RevenueCat owns receipt validation, entitlements, and cross-store revenue reporting so you never touch raw StoreKit receipts. It is the safe default the moment an app has a subscription.
Alternatives
Superwall
Superwall lets you design and A/B test paywalls remotely without shipping an App Store update for every price or layout change. It drives presentation while RevenueCat settles the purchase.
Alternatives
Supabase
Supabase gives you Postgres, auth, storage, and edge functions with data you can export, which matters when your subscription state needs a server-side source of truth.
TelemetryDeck
TelemetryDeck is privacy-first and Swift-native, so you get activation and retention signals without a consent banner or a heavy SDK weighing down launch.
Sentry
Sentry surfaces crashes and errors with symbolicated stack traces before a one-star review does. Release health tracking tells you fast if a build is regressing.
Alternatives
fastlane
fastlane scripts the repetitive TestFlight and App Store chores — screenshots, metadata, signing — without adding another paid SaaS to the stack.
Compatibility notes
How these tools fit together
RevenueCat is the source of truth for entitlements
Forward RevenueCat webhooks into a Supabase edge function so your database mirrors subscription state. Gate premium features on RevenueCat's entitlement, not on a flag you set yourself, and Supabase stays a read-only mirror for server-side checks.
Wire Superwall's purchase handler to RevenueCat
Superwall presents and tests the paywall, but let RevenueCat complete the purchase and report the entitlement. If both tools try to own the transaction they will disagree about who is subscribed.
Line up TelemetryDeck with RevenueCat using a shared id
TelemetryDeck sees behavior and RevenueCat sees revenue. Send a shared, hashed app-instance id to both so you can join activation events to trial starts and conversions without shipping any PII.
Symbolicate Sentry crashes from your fastlane lane
Add a dSYM upload step to the same fastlane lane that ships the build, so every TestFlight and App Store release arrives in Sentry already symbolicated.
When to upgrade
Move Superwall and RevenueCat onto paid tiers only once paywall traffic is large enough to make an A/B test conclusive.
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