Used For

• +**Manual tax filing in 47 countries is consuming your weekends** → Paddle calculates, collects, and files everything automatically across 100+ jurisdictions
• +**Your subscription billing is held together with Zapier and prayer** → Built-in dunning, prorations, seat-based billing, and trial management without extra integrations
• +**Failed payments are bleeding 10% of your revenue** → Automated retry logic and multiple payment methods recover customers you'd otherwise lose
• +Merchant of Record setup means Paddle takes legal liability - you invoice them, they handle customer disputes and compliance headaches
• +One dashboard for global revenue breakdown by country and product instead of reconciling 4 different vendor reports

Best For

• >Your EU sales are breaking because VAT compliance makes your head spin
• >You're duct-taping together Stripe, TaxJar, and Chargebee while your accountant threatens to quit
• >Small SaaS team that wants to sell globally without hiring a tax expert

Not For

• -Teams over 200 people who need custom billing flows - you'll hit Paddle's flexibility walls fast
• -Anyone selling physical products or complex B2B contracts - this is built for digital subscriptions only
• -Solo founders doing under $5K/month - the 5% + $0.50 per transaction adds up when Stripe would be cheaper

Pairs With

• *Stripe (what you'll migrate from when international tax compliance gets overwhelming)
• *HubSpot (to manage leads before they hit Paddle's checkout)
• *Webhooks (to grant product access after Paddle confirms payment)
• *QuickBooks (though Paddle handles most accounting automatically)
• *Zapier (to connect Paddle events to the rest of your tool stack)
• *Analytics tools like Mixpanel (since Paddle's dashboard is good but not everything)

The Catch

• !You're not actually the merchant anymore - Paddle owns the customer relationship and you get paid 30-60 days later
• !That 5% transaction fee hits different when you're doing volume - no negotiation until you're enterprise scale
• !Less customizable than Stripe once you outgrow the standard SaaS billing box

Bottom Line

Takes the tax nightmare out of selling software globally, but you're trading flexibility for simplicity.