Paddle is fundamentally different to Stripe. As you said they a merchant of record. Your customers purchase via Paddle, manage the subscription etc via them. Disputes would be via them too. Something to bear in mind.
Sure, the model is different, but that still doesn't make signing up to an impossible promise with unbounded liability when you inevitably break it a good idea.
What happens if Paddle are faced with a customer who is getting snotty about a bug and threatening litigation in an expensive jurisdiction? Paddle apparently have the right under their terms to settle that dispute on whatever terms they wish and then pass the entire cost on to the developers. There doesn't appear to be anything requiring those terms to be reasonable nor anything close to what the developer themselves would have had to offer in their own home jurisdiction or if they'd been selling directly to the customer on reasonable terms. As far as we could see, Paddle don't even have to notify the developer that any of this is happening, they can just send the bill at the end.
If anyone from Paddle is reading this and would like to explain publicly why that isn't an existential threat to every SaaS business using their service and what their terms actually mean, that would be very interesting to read. Maybe something like the above scenario would never actually happen. As I mentioned before, I've heard nothing but positive comments about Paddle from various people I know who actually use it. But in that case, there's no need for such one-sided terms, and it's better for everyone if the legal documents say what you really mean instead.
I've been happy with them so far, although I only have a few customers. The backend dashboard feels a little MVP but everything works well. The checkout flow is also hosted so you just embed that into your app which is nice.
Silhouette|4 years ago
What happens if Paddle are faced with a customer who is getting snotty about a bug and threatening litigation in an expensive jurisdiction? Paddle apparently have the right under their terms to settle that dispute on whatever terms they wish and then pass the entire cost on to the developers. There doesn't appear to be anything requiring those terms to be reasonable nor anything close to what the developer themselves would have had to offer in their own home jurisdiction or if they'd been selling directly to the customer on reasonable terms. As far as we could see, Paddle don't even have to notify the developer that any of this is happening, they can just send the bill at the end.
If anyone from Paddle is reading this and would like to explain publicly why that isn't an existential threat to every SaaS business using their service and what their terms actually mean, that would be very interesting to read. Maybe something like the above scenario would never actually happen. As I mentioned before, I've heard nothing but positive comments about Paddle from various people I know who actually use it. But in that case, there's no need for such one-sided terms, and it's better for everyone if the legal documents say what you really mean instead.
nikon|4 years ago
camkego|4 years ago