Paddle vs Productive

Pick Paddle if your revenue comes from digital products sold online, especially to customers in many countries. The pain it removes is tax. VAT, sales tax and local rules differ by country, and registering in each one is a job in itself. As merchant of record, Paddle is the legal seller and remits the tax.

You also get a localised checkout, subscription management, invoicing and fraud protection, and the pay-as-you-go rate has no monthly fee.

Customers see Paddle on their statements, and you depend on its rules and account review. If you want to be the seller of record yourself, look at a payment processor instead.

Pick Productive if you run an agency, consultancy or IT services firm and sell time. The pain it removes is finding out too late that a project burned through its budget, or that two people are booked on the same week.

It covers resource planning, Gantt-based project management, time tracking, budgets, invoicing, expenses and revenue forecasting. It also connects to accounting tools and to Slack and HubSpot rather than replacing them.

It is priced per user, and the amount depends on team size and plan. Start with the trial and a real project. Skip it if you only need a task tracker, or if you sell a product rather than projects.