Seeing that you are and have always been allowed to sell a subscription outside of the App Store and still distribute within the store, you don’t need an enterprise certificate to do that as long as your app meets the guidelines.
Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Spotify, DirectvNOW, Sling, and quite a few other apps don’t allow in app subscriptions. There are others that you can subscribe to inside or out of the app.
It's technically allowed but not easy unless most of your business is outside of the app.
App store guidelines ban having a link in your app to an external subscription website. They also ban "calls to action" that encourage customers to purchase non in-app purchases
All of my “business” for each of those products is within the app. There has never been a ban about requiring subscriptions outside of the app, you can’t have a link to an outside website that is true.
The only reason they get away with that is because you're willing to sign up and pay at an external website that you can find on your own. Most apps would lose most of their customers at the "now go find our website and how to pay without any help" step.
> So in other words, Apple is providing a valuable service and the 30% is a customer acquisition cost?
According to what Rebelgecko said, it sounds like the only reason Apple's service has any value at all is that they artificially restrict any possible competing payment methods on their devices.
Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Spotify, DirectvNOW, Sling, and quite a few other apps don’t allow in app subscriptions. There are others that you can subscribe to inside or out of the app.