There’s been little for Europeans to celebrate since the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) forced Apple to allow third-party marketplaces for iPhone apps. While the launch of AltStore PAL has potential, Apple’s loosening of App Store restrictions to allow emulators took away the marketplace’s main selling point. But now, there’s another alternative app store launching that could really shake up the entire sector: MacPaw’s Setapp Mobile.
Setapp Mobile enters an invite-only beta today, and we’ve spent the past week giving it a good going over. The verdict? Setapp Mobile’s subscription-based approach opens up an exciting new way of using an iPhone, one where you can play with a range of apps without being stung by reduced features, ads, nags to upgrade, or spending money on something you may not even use. Well, if you live in the EU, of course.
The bigger question is whether Setapp Mobile will appeal to anyone beyond the power users and productivity nerds it’s clearly targeting.
Setapp began as a macOS platform, allowing users access to hundreds of curated apps. For $9.99 a month, Mac users can download and use popular productivity and utility software, including CleanShot X, Bartender, and Yoink. This model proved popular enough that MacPaw launched an iOS version in 2020.
The Setapp iOS store, though, has a huge drawback: actually getting the apps onto your phone is an awful experience. The process requires opening your Setapp account in a browser, going to your apps section, following a link that opens the iOS App Store, and installing said piece of software before returning to your account and activating it.
If that sounds tiresome, that’s because it is — and it’s a deliberate move by Apple. The Cupertino, California, giant wants a cut of every purchase, so it’s not in its financial interest to easily allow external developers to offer subscriptions to groups of apps inside the App Store.
This is what the new Setapp Mobile aims to solve in Europe. You subscribe to the marketplace and then you can download as many iPhone apps from it as you want with no in-app purchases or hidden fees. The current invite-only beta is free to anyone who signed up to the waitlist, while the full version will incur a subscription fee for a price that has yet to be announced.
In regards to Apple’s Core Technology Fee (CTF), the 50 euro cents that marketplace developers like MacPaw must pay Apple for each annual install of Setapp Mobile will be absorbed for now and then included in the Setapp Mobile subscription price in the future. Apple also charges app developers a 50 euro cents CTF for each annual app install over a million, but MacPaw believes that software on the platform is unlikely to reach this threshold.
Installing Setapp Mobile follows the same pattern as AltStore PAL: navigating through a dozen screen interactions that often feel repetitive. These pop-ups and warnings are designed to make the process daunting, but thankfully for inexperienced users, Setapp includes illustrated step-by-step instructions to make it a bit smoother.
Once you’ve passed this trial and have the marketplace installed, it’s plain sailing. The Setapp Mobile store displays the apps as a basic list with none of the category or recommendation tabs you can find on the macOS version of the store. Installing software is easy, but there are no bells and whistles to the experience.
In the version we tested, there were 13 apps available — Focused Work, CleanMyPhone, SideNotes, Itemlist, Taskheat, MonAI, Mindr, NeatNook, Subjects, BasicBeauty, Optika, Downie, and ClearVPN — all of them high-quality and feature-rich. MacPaw confirms there will be over 30 apps available when the open beta launches later in the summer.
Where Setapp Mobile differs from AltStore PAL is that these apps aren’t trying to push Apple’s boundaries. Of the 13 we tried, 12 are already available on the App Store. It’s only Downie — an app that lets you download videos from YouTube, Instagram, and the like — that isn’t.
Speaking with MacPaw, the company says that it wants to act as a curated marketplace with a focus on productivity, work, and optimization tools, not to function as a marketplace for apps you can’t necessarily find on Apple’s App Store. Hosting apps that operate outside of this remit — such as p*rn, gambling, game emulation, and torrenting software — is not in its immediate plans. MacPaw hasn’t ruled this path out entirely but makes it clear this isn’t its mission or primary focus.
As a macOS user of the Setapp platform, what I value most is its discovery mechanisms and money-saving potential. Once the platform hosts several apps you regularly use, it’s cheaper to pay for Setapp than to subscribe to them individually. After you’ve hit this inflection point, it’s a joy to try out and experiment with new apps. In many ways, it replicates the old-school App Store experience, whereby scanning for new releases feels like an adventure.
In its current state, Setapp Mobile doesn’t have this benefit — but that will change. The 13 apps in the closed beta we tested has already grown to 17 at launch. And they barely scratch the surface of the marketplace’s potential, with 30 said to be included in the upcoming open beta and around 50 available on the regular iOS version, there’s lots of potential here.
Pricing will be important to Setapp Mobile’s success, but MacPaw hasn’t settled on a subscription fee yet. Currently, the macOS version costs $9.99 a month, and its macOS and iOS bundle is $12.49. The platform could thrive if users find the new EU app marketplace to be a good value. And as more apps appear, the appeal of Setapp Mobile rises, and so does its attractiveness to developers.
While Setapp Mobile will probably remain comparatively niche in its current state, its model won’t. Customers are increasingly comfortable with subscriptions, and if high-profile developers can group together to provide both a valuable and reliable service outside of Apple’s ecosystem, then the public will follow. There’s no reason, for example, that a Steam-esque service backed by a big player couldn’t thrive on iOS, or that Setapp Mobile couldn’t grow to be that business for the 450 million people living within the EU.
However MacPaw chooses to proceed with its alternative app marketplace, its model could spark the dormant kindling of third-party app stores. From here, it’s in the hands of other developers to see if they adopt this approach or maybe try another one as more app marketplaces like Aptoide and the Epic Games Store prepare to launch in Europe.
