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Ask HN: Should I switch from Chargebee to Paddle for my SaaS?
Hi all.
At the moment I am using Chargebee for my SaaS, the product is excellent but it requires me to have accounts with Stripe and PayPal and, more importantly, handle everything myself including VAT, which I hate (I'm in the EU).
I know that Paddle, as a merchant of record, handles tax and several other things, and I like the idea of receiving just one reverse invoice per month which would make accounting easier too.
The problem is that since I launched a few months ago I already collected some 10s of subscriptions, mostly on the free plan but some are paid so the customers have provided payment details now stored either in Stripe or PayPal depending on what they chose.
So the main question is, is there a way to migrate from Chargebee to Paddle without asking my users to resubscribe with the new system? That would be pretty bad and I would very much prefer avoiding it. Has anyone here done this kind of migration?
Thanks!
- stevenkkim 6y agoHave you tried contacting Paddle about this? https://paddle.com/migrate https://paddle.com/migrate
- SkyLinx 6y agoJust left a message in their chat, thanks. Also looking forward to see how quickly they respond.
- seanwilson 6y ago> I know that Paddle, as a merchant of record, handles tax and several other things, and I like the idea of receiving just one reverse invoice per month which would make accounting easier too. For what it's worth, I've been using Paddle for a few years for a paid Chrome extension (https://www.checkbot.io/ https://www.checkbot.io/) and it's been that simple for me. I put through the Paddle payments as my income on tax returns and I'm done for admin. Chargebee does seem to have a lot more customer/subscription management features though so I would check Paddle has everything you need there. Fastspring and Gumroad are worth looking at too as they handle VAT as well.
- polishdude20 6y agoWe switched to paddle after a week of stripe and realizing we'd have to do taxes ourself. When I asked stripe how we can handle taxes they just told me to use another Saas to do the tax calculating for me. Sure paddle takes away like %10-20 from each payment for their service but it really saves stressing over taxes and other things.
- seanwilson 6y ago> When I asked stripe how we can handle taxes they just told me to use another Saas to do the tax calculating for me. Do you know if most people actually do this? I feel like they don't because I hear about Stripe a lot but never how people handle tax. > Sure paddle takes away like %10-20 from each payment for their service but it really saves stressing over taxes and other things. Just to clarify for others, but it used to be 5% + $0.50 for Paddle fees and Paddle take out the country specific tax (which they don't have a choice in) before sending anything to you, leaving you the rest. So payments from e.g. the US to the UK you won't lose anything extra to tax but from EU countries to the UK the VAT ranges from about 15% to 25% depending on the country (and these tax rules are always changing, but Paddle deal with this for you).
- polishdude20 6y agoNot sure if most people do it. I feel like they don't just due to the complexity?
- seanwilson 6y agoIt's tax though. They'll get in trouble eventually surely? Having to clean up a tax mess after it's been going on for years (over multiple countries too) is one of my worst nightmares but I feel most people aren't this cautious haha.
- polishdude20 6y agoI'm guessing enough people slip through the cracks :/
- colesantiago 6y agoHow have you been managing VAT currently with Chargebee? Is this built in with them?
- SkyLinx 6y agoSo Chargebee allows you to configure VAT rates and whether to include VAT in the prices or add it to the invoice amount. However that's just for the collection so you still need to file and pay the VAT yourself. I am still in the beginning, so at the moment I just charge the Finnish VAT regardless of the country the customer is based in (I live in Finland) and pay that VAT to Finland only. Once I reach 10K in yearly EU sales I am supposed to either register an office in each country where I do business to file and pay taxes there, which is crazy at a tiny scale like mine, or register for VAT "MOSS" which allows me to collect tax in the different rates depending on the countries, but still only pay the collected tax to Finland. But what if they decline my MOSS registration for some reason? Then I am screwed I guess. But generally speaking I hate to deal with tax and I would very much prefer Paddle handled all of that for me.
- seanwilson 6y ago> Once I reach 10K in yearly EU sales I am supposed to either register an office in each country where I do business to file and pay taxes there, which is crazy at a tiny scale like mine, or register for VAT "MOSS" which allows me to collect tax in the different rates depending on the countries, but still only pay the collected tax to Finland. Sounds accurate to me. This only covers the EU as well and not other countries (assuming you want to sell worldwide), and the rules are always changing too (I'm in the UK and Brexit just happened!).
- SkyLinx 6y agoYeah I haven't even looked into other countries yet! So it's a mess for an indie hacker like me. I am a team of one and I don't really have the resources to keep myself compliant and up to date with this stuff...
- going_to_800 6y agoThe only problem with services like Paddle is that your customers are not your own anymore technically. The customer will belong now to Paddle and if something happens with Paddle or your account, you'll lose all of them. PS: We're using Paddle for a few years and we're a bit concerned by this.
- seanwilson 6y agoYou at least get the email address of your customers (unlike say when Google deprecated payments recently with the Chrome Web Store, so it would have been much harder to retain existing customers). How does this compare to something like Stripe? How would Stripe help you keep them if something happened to Stripe?
- SkyLinx 6y agoI think it's the same thing with any provider. As long as you have users in your own database, you can just ask them to resubscribe when you switch provider. Not sure if some users would cancel because of this inconvenience.
- going_to_800 6y agoStripe is a payment processor, you have a direct relationship with the customer, on the invoice is written your company details. With Paddle, on the invoice you'll see Paddle company details, all your customers pay Paddle, not your company. You won't have any legal or fiscal relationship with the customer.
- seanwilson 6y ago> You won't have any legal or fiscal relationship with the customer. What does that practically mean when running a SaaS though? If Paddle was going away, you for sure have access to your customer email addresses to ask them to resubscribe and Paddle might help you migrate the payment details to another payment provider. How is the situation any easier or better with Stripe? The Paddle invoice at least has your product/company name + website link on it, along with Paddle's details. It doesn't feel any different to buying e.g. Android, iOS or Steam products to me - I don't see why customers would care who is legally receiving the payment as long as they get their product.
- skrish 6y agoKrish, founder of Chargebee here. I read your feedback in the comments about EU VAT and understand your preference to not handle this yourself. Thank you for the detailed note. I would love to explore how we can improve our offering to bring the best of both worlds even if it is not possible immediately. My email id is krish at Chargebee. Thanks.
- SkyLinx 6y agoHi Krish! So to be clear I absolutely love Chargebee! It's rich of features, very flexible and support is always friendly and ready to help. It's probably the best experience I've had in a while with any SaaS. The problem is that I don't want to handle VAT :( Are there any plans to do something so that Chargebee can act as a MoR as well? That would be super awesome!