You built a desktop app — macOS, Windows, Linux, native or Tauri/Electron — and you want to sell it directly instead of handing 15–30% to Apple or Microsoft. Selling outside the stores means you keep the margin and own the customer relationship. It also means the plumbing the stores quietly handled is now yours: distribution, payments, licensing, updates, support.
Here's the whole path, in roughly the order you'll hit it — with the licensing part (the one most people underestimate) covered properly.
Why sell outside the app stores
Margin. You keep 85–100% instead of giving up the store's cut.
Control. Your own pricing, trials, upgrades, and refund policy — no review gatekeeping, no waiting on approval to ship a fix.
