Paddle vs lemonsqueezy

[bobo_mcpherson]

We are based in U.S and currently at around $550 MRR.

We have been using Stripe but it comes with a headache of registering and filing sales tax especially as we have customers in around 10 countries.

so based on the suggestions from tbis community we are looking to switch to either paddle or lemonsqueezy.

1. Which one do you prefer and why (especially if you U.S based)
2. How easy is the migration, especially about managing existing customers monthly and annual subscription?

So far we are inclined towards lemonsqueezy because of their affiliate network and email marketing inbuilt capabilities, but haven’t decided yet hence asking for insights here.

Also, in general, any cons of going with MOR other than their branding on subscription/invoices?

Thank you

 

[imrightyourleft]

@bobo_mcpherson Ha, fancy seeing you again!

I personally chose to go with Paddle. The overall product feels much more refined, and they've had multiple years to clean up and improve the small details. As an engineer, I also appreciated their API, which felt similar to stripe in parts.
Lemonsqueezy seems to be very marketing focused, with a fancy UI but what felt like an "organically" grown API, rather than one that has been thought out and planned. Any errors outside of the API are also super unhelpful (just a request id that you don't know anything about) so hard to debug. Ended up finding multiple bugs just setting up a basic demo, which felt like a disappointing buyer experience.

I would imagine this ends up being an argument being engineering vs product teams, of who needs to work with it more. My personal take is that I'd rather have solid APIs with the option to update the UI later, rather than APIs that risk changing but a shiny UI. Ultimately the APIs will provision the product, after all...

 

[imrightyourleft]

Oh, and lemonsqueezy seems to do all their internal transactions in USD, so if you're a non-USD seller, you can end up with multiple sets if exchange fees on a single transaction...!

 

[christianflies]

@bobo_mcpherson Paddle sucks

 

[fishinmagician]

@christianflies Why do you think so what do you use?

 

[christianflies]

@fishinmagician In one app I have started with paddle and it was a nightmare to manage anything product related (prices, promos etc), some random downtimes or specific browser bugs breaking the checkout flow (maybe it is better now), I moved to stripe a while ago and imo its a superior and way more dev friendly solution. So far I'm using Stripe in 3 SaaS products (2 more are being built) and I can't imagine going back to Paddle.

 

[claysmomma]

@christianflies How about the invoices and everything related to taxes, VAT, etc. Surely you can't just rely on Stripe right?

 

[tylervan]

@christianflies I am also interested to know how you manage VAT filling and remittance with Stripe.

 

[christianflies]

@tylervan Our accounting handles that, we provide all the required stripe reports and they handle VAT. Yep, that's a minus but it compensated by the DX of Stripe

 

[tylervan]

@christianflies Fair enough, you got the USA and 27 European countries covered. How about the U.K. and about 100 other countries where you are required to pay taxes?

See, the problem with paying taxes globally is that it is not something that can be managed internally. You can be right for a certain % of your sales but you can’t be sure that you are 100% correct.

 

[michaelson]

@bobo_mcpherson I use FastSpring. Happy except the fees could be abit lower.