heychristian

Our site is being updated this week with a new design (focusing on our dev tools). — There will be plenty of retina goodness there.

But I agree. Non-retina bugs me too. Not for much longer!

(And thanks for the kind words.) :)

Sure! We worked with Macaw to power their pre-order sales, and did several thousand pre-orders of their application prior to the launch. It was Macaw's intention for the duration of the pre-order to use Paddle's SDKs on Mac and Windows to distribute their application (provide trial version, license codes etc...)

A few weeks before the pre-order ended the Macaw guys decided, that users having an account with Macaw would be a better way for users to license the application (to be fair to them, they've made the product registration/ activation process really nice).

Unfortunately, we weren't given much notice of the switch away from Paddle, and the process of giving access to pre-order customers wasn't handled in the best way. Which resulted in some pre-order customers not getting their copies of the application until a few days after the launch. -- We weren't actually powering the app, or their licensing at this point, but given more notice of the switch/ their launch, we could have assisted in getting the pre-order customers copies to them more seamlessly.

That said, and although Macaw aren't a customer of ours anymore (and haven't been since the pre-order), they seem to be killing it, have made a truly stellar product, and we wish them all the best! :)

Also, any service where it isn't viable to give 30% of their revenue to Apple, Spotify for example (who have to give 70% of their revenue to record companies).

Not that Apple would want Spotify in the store anyway, with it being an iTunes competitor.

We're providing the equivalent functionality of payments, in-app purchases and updates to developers. As well as allowing them to use/ develop trial functionality, allowing them to distribute outside the MAS more effectively.

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).

Thanks for the feedback. I completely agree.

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. :)

We don't operate like a marketplace, so there's no way to 'browse' whats on sale at Paddle. We act as a platform under the apps, powering payments, trials etc...

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/

Thanks for the kind words. In response to your questions:

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).

I'm the CEO of Paddle (https://www.paddle.com/sell), we're essentially trying to solve this exact problem for OS X developers, by providing App Store functionality, and more, for those selling outside the MAS (IAPs, Analytics, Payments, Trials, Activations/ Licensing).

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.

https://www.paddle.com/sell for the developer solution.

FD: I work at Paddle, and would be happy to answer any questions. It's exactly these types of headaches we're trying to solve for developers.