Stripe or Paddle? Which Payment Provider do you use?
Hi everyone,
So I'm in the process of choosing how I will charge my user subscriptions.
I've been looking to Paddle or Stripe.
I know that they are operate differently. Paddle operates as a Merchant of Record and Stripe as a Payment Gateway.
If you are using one of this, which one would you recommend to a solo indie hacker?
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Stripe is not available in my country so I didn't have much choice.
But I'm super happy with Paddle. Integration was just a couple of hours, and they have great support.
There's also the added benefit of handling taxes and being merchant of record.
I really like what paddle offers, but i just dont like their terms.
Would you consider moving to Stripe?
Could you tell about their fees? Its not very clear.
Do your customers pay with others payments like paypal or Apple Pay instead off just credit card?
Like I said moving to stripe is not an option for me because they're not available in my country. I would try them if I could.
Paddle charge 5% + 0.3 cents. The reason they charge more is that they do more for you.
I actually don't know how my customers pay, I don't really check that.
What on their terms bothered you?
(i) to market, promote, advertise, sell and facilitate access to the Product directly to Buyers; and
(ii) to access the Product to provide demonstrations to prospective Buyers, so long as such means of access is at all times under Paddle's control and not left with the prospective Buyer."
Well, I don't think there's anything too monstrous in these terms.
I'm very interested in Paddle and I'm already talking to them.
Let's see what they say.
Thank you very much for the help!
I hadn't heard of Paddle. Will have to check them out...
As an EU resident I’d go with Paddle as they handle tax.
Popular alternatives for Paddle are: Gumroad and Lemonsqueezy
Hey @rikschennink what do you think of paddle support?
I can't comment on that as I use Gumroad (because I didn't have a customer portal from the start), but a friend of mine isn't a fan. Lemonsqueezy is quite new but promising.
I actually didn't know about Paddle until I saw this post. We used Stripe in our previous product.
How do you currently handle tax submissions using Stripe? Manually filling? Or using an accountant?
I am using Paddle because Stripe is not available in my country. Stripe has better documentation so if you can use Stripe, definitely use Stripe.
The only thing I really I'm worried about Paddle is their legal agreement. It as some hard clauses.
Can you elaborate?
For example, they can terminate with you, any time without notice, with immediately effect .
Among others.
Stripe can do that too...any service provider can terminate you.
They also say, that they can set our product pricing.
Sounds similar to Paypal (which no one wants to use).
Stripe has by far the best developer experience IMHO.
But in my latest project in my former comp we had to use Klarna – a payment provider in the EU – instead. Due to some legal reasons.