How to Accept Payments Online If You Can’t Use Stripe?

Andrey Azimov
6 min readJun 16, 2018

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When I made a Mac app and Web app I was wondering if there is any easy way how I can sell them. I didn’t want to open a company in Singapore, Dubai or US. I just wanted to validate my idea quickly and see if users will pay for it.

Waiting when Stripe will be available in our countries 😢

But if you are living in one of the countries where Stripe is not supported it’s a big pain the ass :( I’m dreaming that someday I could use Stripe. I’m really jealous of people from US or Europe because they can use Stripe :D

Is there any good Stripe alternative?

I did some research and found two payment systems that could solve this problem: Gumroad and Paddle so let’s try to compare them side by side.

Gumroad vs Paddle

Gumroad has two options: free and paid ($10 / month) with lower fees. Paddle has only one free option.

It seems like reasonably fees but let’s see what will happen if we will sell a $5 product

In the real life you would pay $0.73–$0.75 from each transaction which is 14–15% OMG WAT??? Because you will pay $0.3–$0.5 and for small price products it’s a lot so please be aware of it. Gumroad also has a $10 monthly fee.

Calculate fees for your specific product

You can play around with this sheet and change a product price and monthly sales to compare Gumroad Free VS Gumroad Paid VS Paddle for your specific case

👉 Make a copy of sheet

Examples of checkout pages

Gumroad checkout page

Paddle checkout page

More info

  • Gumroad also supports recurring subscription payments. Read more here
  • Gumroad and Paddle support PayPal to charge your users (not only credit cards)
  • If can’t sell any product on Paddle. Please read this list what you can’t sell otherwise they can block your account
  • Paddle will charge 10% extra if they first payment wasn’t completed but they converted users with their auto email follow-ups. It’s called “Checkout recovery” — user opened email, clicked on the link and made a payment. But you can turn it off here is how
  • With Paddle if you have $99 on your account you can’t withdraw it because the minimum amount to withdraw is $100 so you need to wait or buy your own product to get ≥ $100.

VAT MOSS

Paddle and Gumroad, the are both handle VAT MOSS automatically and you can choose rather you will pay (include in the price) or a customer (added as extra to price).

Gumroad and Paddle serving all your clients and you have just 1 client — Gumroard or Paddle that are sending you money:

Client 1
\
Client 2 --- Gumroad (Paddle) --- You
/
Client N

Fees:

Gumroad:

  • Fee is 3.5% + $0.3
  • Can be withdraw only to PayPal (if you are outside US)
  • Withdraw once a Week.
  • Min withdraw is $10

Paddle:

  • Fee is 5% + $0.5
  • Can be withdraw only to Bank, Payoneer, PayPal
  • Withdraw once a Month.
  • Min withdraw is $100
  • Tip: Paddle will charge 10% extra if they first payment wasn’t completed but they converted users with their auto email follow-ups. It’s called “Checkout recovery” — user opened email, clicked on the link and made a payment. But seems like you can turn it off

Other

  • Both accept payments from PayPal (your users can pay with PayPal). Stripe is not support it.
  • Both have recurrent payments
  • Both have API
  • Seems like Gumroad is more fore Digital products (like apps, membership) and Paddle is more for SaaS. But it’s not limiting you to use it opposite.

Is it better than just PayPal?

If you want get donations or make some quick tests if user will pay you, you can create a PayPal link like this: https://www.paypal.me/andreyazimov/2usd

PayPal has lowest fee: 2.9% + $0.3 but there is no automation from the box. You will need to make all manually like sending downloads links.

You can try to make automation with Zapier but it’s only available in Premium accounts starting from $18.33 / month + PayPal has some variable that you can pass in url to identify each payments but I didn’t try this way.

Also you can create a subscription payments with PayPal without code and business account

  1. Login PayPal
  2. Seller preferences
  3. PayPal buttons -> Update
  4. Create new button
  5. Type -> Subscriptions
  6. Add the price, period etc.
  7. Save and get the embedded form code!
  8. Add the code your page

Example of page: https://www.sheet2site.com/pay/60/

Conclusion

  • Use Gumroad if you have a PayPal and you can withdraw money from it. This is my personal choice for selling macOS apps with one time payments for 2 years. Totally happy with it, except that I can withdraw only to PayPal. Good support via twitter.
  • Use Paddle if you don’t have PayPal just order Payoneer card which will allow you to get money from any country. After you can connect it to Paddle you can withdraw money whatever you country from. Paddle also is supporting wire transfer you you can send directly to your bank account. I’m using Paddle for my main SaaS https://www.sheet2site.com for almost a year now. Happy with it as well! Good support via email.
  • Use PayPal for super quick payments tests.

So what should you choose?

I would suggest to do the math and calculate how much it will total cost you for all solutions.

You can play around with different amount of transactions and prices.

Here is calculator spreadsheet for you: Make a copy

So you can make a decision consciously based on data.

Keep us updated which solution you will choose. I think a lot of people here have the same problem.

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Credits

Thank you guys for answering all of my questions and helped me to choose the payment system: Sergey Gerasim, Lukasz Oslizlo, Lisa Dziuba, Roma Sevastyanov, Vlasti, Bharathi3P

Also thanks to my patreons and who donated me for you support: Max Makarochkin, Lowen Flowen, Sindre Sorhus, Fyodor Ivanischev, Joel Runyon, Cam Adair and all others.

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