Stripe, Memberstack, Outseta, Clerk, RevenueCat, Lemon Squeezy or Paddle: Which One Do You Need?

Adding payments to a business can sound simple.

You want someone to click a button, enter their card details and pay you.

Sometimes it really is that simple.

But sometimes the customer also needs an account. They may need to log in, access paid content, manage a subscription or use an app after paying.

This is where the choice of platform becomes important.

The best place to start is not with a list of tools. It is with two questions:

What are you selling?

What needs to happen after someone pays?

Once those answers are clear, choosing the right setup becomes much easier.

Start with Stripe

Stripe is a payment platform. It gives businesses several different ways to accept and manage payments.

You do not always need to build a large online shop or install several different systems.

Stripe may already give you everything you need.

Stripe Payment Links

A Stripe Payment Link is a payment page you can create and share.

You can place the link:

On your website
In an email
In a WhatsApp message
On social media
Inside a proposal or document

The customer opens the link, enters their payment information and pays.

This can be a simple option when you are selling a consultation, fixed service, event ticket, digital product or other straightforward offer.

You do not need to build the payment page yourself.

It can also work for recurring payments, so a Payment Link is not limited to one-time purchases.

Stripe Checkout

Stripe Checkout is also a ready-made payment page.

The main difference is that Checkout is normally connected more closely to your website or application.

For example, the customer could choose a product on your website, click the checkout button and then be sent to a Stripe-hosted payment page.

Once the payment is completed, your website can continue with the next step.

Checkout gives you more room to connect the payment to your own website process, but some development work may be needed depending on what you are building.

Stripe Billing

Stripe Billing is used when customers pay regularly.

This could include:

Monthly subscriptions
Annual plans
Free trials followed by a paid plan
Different subscription levels
Charges based on how much someone uses a service

Stripe Billing helps manage when the customer should be charged and whether their subscription is still active.

For some businesses, Stripe Checkout and Stripe Billing are enough.

The business may already have a website, customer database or app that handles everything else.

When Stripe may not be enough on its own

Stripe can collect and manage the payment.

But collecting money may only be one part of what you need.

After paying, the customer may need to:

Create an account
Log in
Open protected pages
Access a course or resource library
Use paid features inside an app
Add other team members
Manage their membership
Use the same subscription on their phone and website

You can build these parts yourself and connect them to Stripe.

You can also use another platform that has already built much of this for you.

This is where tools such as Memberstack, Outseta, Clerk and RevenueCat become useful.

Memberstack

Memberstack is useful when you want to add accounts and paid access to a website.

It can let visitors:

Sign up
Log in
Pay for a plan
Access protected pages or features
Manage their account

Stripe processes the payments, while Memberstack helps connect the customer’s plan to what they can access on the website.

This could be useful for a membership website, paid directory, resource library or lightweight online service.

Memberstack is closely associated with Webflow, but it can also work with other websites and custom-built sites.

The simple way to think about it is:

Stripe collects the payment. Memberstack helps manage the member and what they can open.

Outseta

Outseta covers more of the business around the customer.

It can provide:

Customer accounts
Membership plans
Payments through Stripe
Customer records
Email communication
Customer support tools

This may suit a small membership business or software company that does not want to connect several separate platforms.

Instead of choosing one tool for login, another for payments, another for email and another for customer support, Outseta tries to bring those areas together.

That can make the setup simpler.

It also means more of the business will depend on one platform, so it is worth checking whether its way of working suits you before building around it.

The simple way to think about Outseta is:

It handles much of the customer side of a membership or small software business in one place.

Clerk

Clerk is mainly built for websites and apps where user accounts are an important part of the product.

It can handle things such as:

Signing up and logging in
Individual user accounts
Company or team accounts
Different plans
Different levels of access
Account and subscription screens

Clerk is more likely to be used in an app than on a simple brochure website.

For example, an app may need to know which company a person belongs to, whether they are an administrator and which paid features they are allowed to use.

Clerk now has its own billing features and uses Stripe to process the payments. However, Clerk Billing and Stripe Billing are separate products. Plans created in Clerk are managed through Clerk rather than being ordinary Stripe Billing subscriptions.

The simple way to think about Clerk is:

It manages the people using an app, their accounts and the access connected to their plan.

RevenueCat

RevenueCat becomes useful when you sell subscriptions through mobile apps.

Selling through an iPhone app is different from selling through an Android app. Selling through a website can also involve a different payment system.

A customer may subscribe through:

Apple
Google Play
Your website

Your product still needs to recognise that all three customers have paid and should receive access.

RevenueCat helps bring these subscriptions together so your app can determine whether the customer should have access, regardless of where they purchased. Its own web billing product uses Stripe for payment processing, and it can also track existing Stripe purchases.

For a normal website membership, RevenueCat may be unnecessary.

For a product available on iPhone, Android and the web, it can solve an important problem.

The simple way to think about RevenueCat is:

It helps subscriptions bought in different places work together inside the same app.

Lemon Squeezy

Lemon Squeezy is different from Memberstack, Outseta, Clerk and RevenueCat.

It does not simply add customer accounts around Stripe.

Lemon Squeezy can become the official seller of your digital product for the transaction.

This is known as being the Merchant of Record.

In simple terms, Lemon Squeezy receives the customer’s payment and takes care of more of the responsibilities connected to the sale. This can include collecting and handling sales taxes in different countries.

You then receive a payout from Lemon Squeezy after its charges and any relevant deductions.

This can be useful when selling:

Software
Digital downloads
Online tools
Digital subscriptions
Other supported digital products

The benefit is that you have less international sales-tax administration to manage yourself.

The trade-off is that you normally pay more for each transaction than you would with a basic payment processor.

The simple way to think about Lemon Squeezy is:

It sells the digital product to the customer for you and sends your share to you.

Paddle

Paddle also operates as a Merchant of Record.

Like Lemon Squeezy, it can take responsibility for payments, sales-tax handling and other parts of selling digital products internationally.

Paddle is mainly positioned towards software companies and digital product businesses.

It can handle:

One-time software purchases
Subscriptions
International payments
Billing
Sales-tax collection and remittance
Customer payment issues and chargebacks

Paddle may be useful for a software business that wants to sell internationally without building and managing every part of the payment and tax setup itself.

The simple way to think about Paddle is:

It provides the payment and billing system while taking on more of the legal responsibility for the sale.

How do you choose?

You do not need the platform with the longest feature list.

You need the simplest platform that handles what your business actually requires.

Here is a basic starting point.

You only need to collect a simple payment

Start by looking at Stripe Payment Links.

You need a checkout connected to your website

Look at Stripe Checkout.

You need monthly or annual payments

Look at Stripe Billing.

Customers need accounts and protected website content

Look at Memberstack.

You want membership, payments, customer records, email and support together

Look at Outseta.

You are building an app with user accounts, teams or different access levels

Look at Clerk.

You sell subscriptions through mobile apps and the web

Look at RevenueCat.

You sell digital products internationally and want another company to handle more of the payment and sales-tax responsibility

Look at Lemon Squeezy or Paddle.

Keep the first version responsible

It can be tempting to choose a platform that promises to handle everything.

But every additional platform brings another subscription, another system to learn and another part of the business to maintain.

Sometimes a Stripe Payment Link is enough.

Sometimes a membership platform will save you weeks of work.

Sometimes paying more for Lemon Squeezy or Paddle may be worthwhile because of the work they take off your hands.

The responsible choice is not always the cheapest option or the most powerful option.

It is the one that fits what you are selling now without creating more complexity than your business needs.

Start with the payment.

Then look at what must happen after it.

That is usually where the right solution becomes clear.