Paddle initially started as a marketplace for all types of digital content, and we've slowly transitioned into this toolkit for developers, offering payments, trials etc...
What you see at Paddle.com is reminiscent of our consumer-facing marketplace days, and we're close to pushing out a new homepage (this week).
One thing we're not trying to be, is a marketplace in a similar fashion to the MAS, we're trying to be the technology layer that empowers developers to not need a marketplace, own their customer, and take back some of the control that they typically give up by relying so heavily on a marketplace.
I do completely agree with you that the current homepage being what it is, and what we actually do being located at https://www.paddle.com/sell is confusing for potential customers who might want to work with us.
This is changing this week. :)
I have two questions for you:
1) Who is the vendor of record? This is relevant to handling VAT and it means either you have to do it or the business selling the software.
2) I couldn't find any information on what countries are supported, payment methods for receiving royalties, etc.
Thanks.
1). Paddle is the vendor/merchant of record. We handle all of the VAT/ sales tax liability on your behalf. Payouts you receive from us are a royalty payment, exactly as they are from Apple/ the MAS. (This is particularly relevant as of Jan 1st 2015 when the EU VAT regulations change, and become super complicated for indie devs).
2). We support most countries (all countries, with the exception of North Korea, Cuba etc.), allow payments from customers via Credit/Debit Card (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) and PayPal. Support payouts to merchants via PayPal, Local Wire (32 countries - List: http://padl.to/1qoAWNN) or International Wire (everywhere else).
Paddle itself looks awesome though :)
But I agree. Non-retina bugs me too. Not for much longer!
(And thanks for the kind words.) :)
Once integrated with our SDK, developers are free to distribute their apps wherever, be it their own website/ to their own audience, or via download portals like MacUpdate.
A couple of examples of apps using Paddle: * http://www.tunabellysoftware.com/tgpro/ * http://marked2app.com/
In most cases (from talking to developers) the distribution/ audience aspect isn't the #1 reason developers go down the MAS route. Lots of developers have their own audiences, or use sites like MacUpdate (or traditional marketing methods).
That said, we are working on functionality to help users discover applications. We currently have around 400k users (customers on the buy side) who have active accounts with us, and we're testing ways of recommending content to those users, in order to provide developers with that extra exposure/ sales volume on our platform. — Currently we're testing this via email receipts (for opted-in merchants) and via our web-based "locker" (where users who have purchased content can access their downloads/ license codes).
We've got a lot of work to do on the discovery side of things, and there are a lot of interesting things that we can do at scale, but discovery isn't our primary focus at the moment (building a great platform/ SDK for developers, and providing the foundation is our current focus).
Just tried going through the checkout. Clicked on Buy Now. Entered an email, clicked Continue, got to the country/zip screen, entered ZIP, clicked Continue and got back to the "Checkout as a guest" screen. It looped. Just FYI.
(edit) Tried with marked2app.com - same thing. The checkout form gets stuck in a loop.
The lack of trial versions aside (which is still a huge problem), one of the primary issues with the MAS is the flat-out exclusion of certain categories of application. For example, system utilities are almost totally banned from the MAS, and the system tools/ utilities that are currently available in the Mac App Store tend to just be slimmed down versions of their non-MAS counterparts with lots of functionality removed.
I speak to hundreds of OS X developers every week, and the sentiment around the MAS is gradually changing. Typically we're hearing developers just referring to the MAS as a marketing channel these days, due to the restrictions enforced on them.
We see a lot of data around MAS vs. Non-MAS sales, and reasons for developers switching, so if anyone has any questions about this space, I'd be happy to answer.