Selling digital products globally in 2025 should be easy, but between VAT, sales tax, and compliance laws, it’s not.
If you’ve ever tried to sell a course, ebook, or SaaS subscription, you know the pain: you either become a part-time tax lawyer, ignore it all and pray you won’t have problems, or you hand it all over to a Merchant of Record (MoR) and sleep peacefully.
For reference, a Merchant of Record (MoR) is a service that handles payment processing, taxes, and compliance on your behalf — so you can focus on selling.
I’ve used Gumroad before (although, they only became a real MoR recently ), but due to their current pricing strategy (a whopping 10% + 50¢ fee), I went shopping for a better alternative to sell Master Ruby Web APIs and Modular Rails, ideally one that didn’t feel like 2013.
To give you some additional context, the goal is to sell books and courses aimed at developers (programming, freelancing, etc.) so nothing crazy.
I ended up trying three MoRs: Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, and Dodo Payments.
Here’s how that went.
Attempt #1: Lemon Squeezy
Pricing: 5% + 50¢
Following my research, which mostly involved reading through Reddit conversations, I landed on Lemon Squeezy as my first choice. I noticed the banner stating that they had just been acquired by Stripe, but didn’t think much of it.
Lemon Squeezy has a slick interface, good developer docs, and strong indie buzz.
I went through the initial setup, providing my business details and everything they asked for. It went well, at first. And then, it broke down.
The company registration ID I entered was constantly being rejected as non-valid, even though it is exactly what a Thai business ID looks like (and yes, they support Thai-based businesses).
So I got stuck with the same error repeating over and over: “We couldn't verify the account information”. This happened on September 1st.
So I reached out to support, and they got back to me the following day.
I understand that you are facing issues with the verification of the account. I am sorry for the hassle you have faced. For your help, I am escalating the case to the dedicated team to address your issue. We'll be in touch as soon as possible regarding the update.
They followed up and requested our company’s affidavit, which I promptly provided.
Apologies for the delay in response. I have received the Company Affidavit document and forwarded it to our team to review. I would request that you please await the response from their end.
I then didn’t hear anything back for a while. So I reached out again on September 15, and this was their reply:
I have already passed this request to our dedicated team to support, and they are working on the same. They'll be in contact with you as soon as possible to help answer your question.
After that, nothing, and it’s October 21st as I’m writing this. So I gave up and tried signing up for Paddle. It couldn’t be worse, right?
Maybe they’re great once you’re inside the system, but my experience never got that far.
If you’re launching soon and can’t wait indefinitely, that’s a problem. I’ll give them one thing though: when you send them an inquiry, they reply pretty fast.
Attempt #2: Paddle
Pricing: 5% + 50¢
Next stop: Paddle, another veteran of the MoR world.
They’ve been around for years, powering a lot of well-known SaaS products.
Onboarding started smoothly. On September 24, I signed up, uploaded my documents, got verified, and then — ding! — an email arrived a couple days later:
“We’ve approved your domain.”
Nice, that was fast!
Except… I couldn’t do anything, and I noticed a new email asking for more details about the business. No problems, I provided everything they asked for and waited.
Then, on October 2nd, I finally got a reply.
We previously emailed stating that you had successfully completed the domain review stage of account verification. However, now that you've reached the final stage of onboarding, my team is seeking more information regarding your domain.
From there, it became a slow-moving scavenger hunt, with a new request every few days to which I promptly replied each time:
- October 2nd: "Can we review the courses and books you plan to sell?" Eh, sure (I sent them the books only).
- October 6th: "We need the full courses with videos, etc." I sent them the full courses.
- October 11th: "Could you please provide me with the pricing for the courses?” It’s becoming a bit much, but okay. I sent them the pricing details. Then I wondered - are they going to ask these details every time I want to add a product?
- October 14th: "Could you please share the URL link to the pricing page with me? If the page is not yet available, you could share a screenshot of it. Thank you.”
… at that point, I was getting tired of the back and forth and stopped replying, tired of the inquisition. I understand they need to do their KYC, or KYP in this case, but this felt amateurish. Why not ask for everything up front, or clarify the approval requirements on their site?
It felt like dealing with a different person every round, no checklist, no clarity, just vibes.
By the time that last request came in, I’d already given up.
Attempt #3: Dodo Payments
Pricing: 4% + 40¢
Finally, I tried Dodo Payments, a newer player I’d seen mentioned by a couple of people on Reddit. Those people also shared that the Dodo approval process was smoother and faster than Lemon and Paddle, which appear to be notorious for taking forever to approve new accounts.
I was surprised to see it was actually cheaper than the other two, probably because they’re still new.
I went ahead and signed up, explained I wanted to sell the two Devmystify Ruby books/courses (Master Ruby Web APIs and Modular Rails), and waited. This was on October 15th.
The first email I got back:
“Unfortunately, we can’t support consulting services.”
Which… wasn’t what I was selling. I was a bit frustrated at that point. While our business’s main revenue comes from software consulting, I had clearly stated that we were planning to use Dodo to sell books and courses about programming.
I replied, a bit abruptly (for which I’m sorry), clarifying that we wanted to sell digital courses and books, not consulting.
Did you actually read the details of the application I provided? I don’t need you to sell consulting services. I would have used Dodo to sell books and courses on our developer-focused platform, Devmystify.
Honestly, I didn’t expect much after my past two experiences, and thought it was over. I was getting resolved to using Gumroad and eating their 10% fee.
But then — surprise — they replied the next day.
May I know how the courses are being taken on your website? Are those pre-recorded, or are any kind of live classes and workshops also included?
I quickly replied, excited, and included the full courses for their reference:
Sure thing! They’re all pre-recorded, no live class or workshop included. Here is a link containing the two full courses I’m planning to re-launch with Dodo:
And just four hours later, my account was approved (that was on October 16th).
You should be receiving an email soon with respect to the status of your verification.
Dodo Payments: Congratulations! Live Mode enabled
Wow, I was impressed. Dodo Payments' support was:
- Fast: ✅
- Clear: ✅
- Human: ✅
It started rocky, but it ended as the best experience of the three.
Where Things Stand
We’re nearly fully set up with Dodo Payments, integrating it to sell the Devmystify courses.
Their API is modern, their documentation is decent, and their support actually answers emails.
We’ll even be writing a tutorial soon on integrating Dodo Payments for selling digital products, and hopefully, SaaS later on, once we get started on the ideas I’ve had in my head for the past few years.
So far, it’s been smooth sailing, something I can’t say for the others.
As a final note, I want to share one more alternative. I recently heard about another option on the Dreams of Code Youtube channel : https://polar.sh/ . They're currently offering early member pricing at 4% + 40c and I think it could be an interesting alternative to Dodo (but I’m not switching unless things go terribly wrong with Dodo).
Final Thoughts
If you’re exploring MoRs in 2025, here’s how I’d rank them based on real-world experience:
| Platform | Experience | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Dodo Payments | Rough start, fast resolution | Winner for responsiveness |
| Paddle | Smooth start, chaotic approval | Feels corporate and messy, not creator-friendly |
| Lemon Squeezy | Stuck onboarding, no updates | Promising, but unreliable support, seems to be a mess since the acquisition by Stripe |
| Gumroad | Simple, but simply too expensive with their 10% cut |
If you want to launch quickly and keep control, Dodo Payments feels like the future.
Lemon Squeezy is massive, Paddle has infrastructure, but neither matched Dodo’s mix of clarity, support, and speed. To be fair, our business is located in Thailand, so we may not have seemed that important to them. But we have a legit business here, and all the documents they requested were provided.
The Real Lesson
In 2025, the difference between platforms isn’t in the features or dashboards; it’s in how they treat you when something goes wrong. Are you talking to an AI, or to actual humans? Are they respecting your time or wasting it?
And in that test, Dodo Payments passed for me. I’ll give another update on how things are going with Dodo Payments in a few months.