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Purchase apps for Intune

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There are a variety of apps that you can use with Microsoft Intune. Some apps are free for the members of your organization to use, while other apps require either a license and/or an account for each user to use the app. For instance, Microsoft Outlook requires both a license and an account to use the app. Within Microsoft Intune admin center, you can select store apps and freely add them to Intune. Based on the supported integration with Intune, you can then configure these apps so that the members of your organization can easily set them up and use them based on your unique company requirements. Also, you can add app protection policies for each app to protect your company's data on various levels.

Note

Many of the apps available from Intune are free to add to Intune and assign to members of your organization. Apps that you must purchase to add to Intune are available through a volume purchase program. For app licensing information, see Understand app licenses used in Intune.

Apps available for purchase

Whether an app is freely available or you must purchase the app, you must follow similar processes to obtain the app.

Common types of apps to purchase and/or add:

Individual store apps

Intune integrates directly with the different supported platform stores. Within Intune, you can find and select free store apps for Windows, iOS, and Android. Intune displays the available store apps directly in Intune. When adding an app to Intune, you can select each app by platform and choose the users and devices that will receive the app.

Important

Intune only shows free store apps. Store apps that require a payment method will not be displayed as an available store app from within Intune unless you have a license for the app.

Note

Intune does support specific macOS application types, such as Microsoft 365 Apps, Microsoft Edge, version 77 and later, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Web link", Line-of-business app, and macOS app (DMG) .

For more information about store apps, see Purchase store apps for Intune.

Volume purchased apps

The Apple stores give you the ability to purchase multiple licenses for an app (or book) that you want to distribute to the members of your organization. Buying licenses in bulk can help you reduce the administrative overhead of tracking multiple purchased copies of apps. Microsoft Intune helps you manage apps and books that you purchased through such a program. You import license information from the store vendor, and track how many licenses you've used. This process helps to ensure that you don't install more copies of the app than you own.

Note

You can use Intune policies to block end-users from accessing the app store on their devices. You can also remove purchase restriction by allowing end-users to add new accounts to their device. Doing so will enable end-users to be able to purchase store apps for their personal use.

the iOS/iPadOS device platforms have a method to purchase apps for your organization in bulk:

Note

Managed Google Play only supports free apps.

Microsoft Store for Business will be retired in the first quarter of 2023. However, you can still leverage the connection to Store for Business and Education from your UEM solution to deploy apps to managed Windows 11 devices until they are retired in 2023.

For more information about volume purchased apps, see Purchase apps in volume for Intune.

Partner productivity apps

There are several Intune partner productivity apps that support Intune configuration and protection. These apps are available from various sources and often provide support for both iOS/iPadOS and Android devices. For apps that require you to purchase a license, subscription, or account for each user to use the app, you'll need to work directly with the app vendor.

Areas of support include the following settings:

Partner UEM apps

In addition to standard store apps that can be managed, you can add specific partner UEM apps to Intune. These apps are also available in either the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. However, these apps are capable of supporting advanced app protection policy and app configuration policy settings. You may need to work directly with the app vendor to purchase a license, subscription, or account for each user to use the related app.

In-app purchases

Many apps offer core functionality for free, however there are those apps that provide more capabilities that you can purchase from within the app. Purchasing additional app functionality within an app is called "in-app purchases".

iOS in-app purchase settings

You can choose to block in-app purchases specifically for iOS devices using device restriction settings. To force users to enter the Apple ID password for each in-app or ITunes purchase, you can set Require iTunes Store password for all purchases to Yes. However, the default is Not configured. Intune doesn't change or update this setting. By default, the OS might allow purchases without prompting for a password every time. To block in-app purchases from the Apple store, set Block in-app purchases to Yes. When set to Not configured (default), Intune doesn't change or update this setting. By default, the OS might allow store purchases within a running app.

Android in-app purchase settings

On Android devices, you can allow access to all apps in Google Play store by allowing users to add new accounts to the device. However, doing so enables end users not only to have the ability to conduct in-app purchases from the Google Play store using personal accounts, but purchase apps as well.

Verify purchased apps in Intune

You can verify the apps that you've purchased to use with Intune by checking details within Intune. You can manage app store tokens, view app store connectors, and monitor app licenses from Intune. For more information, see Manage app licenses used in Intune.