A few months ago I chose Stripe for Picmal because it handled payments, licences, and affiliates in one dashboard.

Then I started losing sales. Two problems:

  • The checkout would randomly fail. Other developers told me they saw conversion jump just by switching to Stripe.
  • Every licence is welded to a customer and a purchase. Fine for direct sales, useless for a reseller like TheAppSquad that buys a batch of keys upfront and sells them separately.

So I went looking. I talked to the founder of Creem, emailed Polar, and spent a few late nights comparing everything I could find.

A distinction that matters first

Most licence tools work in one of two ways:

Purchase-linked licences — created after someone buys, permanently tied to that customer. This is how most platforms work by default.

Standalone licences — generated on their own, not attached to any purchase. You hand them out however you want. This is the only model that works with resellers.

If you’re only selling directly, you’ll never care about this difference. The moment you try to work with a distributor, it’s the only thing that matters.

The tools

Stripe

The default choice for indie developers. Payments, licences, affiliates, VAT handled as Merchant of Record. You sign up and you’re selling in an afternoon.

The checkout is the weak spot. It breaks often enough that you notice it in your revenue. And licences are always purchase-linked, so resellers are out of the question.

Best if you want to ship fast and only sell directly.

Creem

I talked to the founder directly. Similar model to Stripe, cheaper fees, and the checkout actually works. If I were starting fresh with direct sales only, I’d pick this over Stripe without hesitating.

Polar.sh

Developer-focused, open-source friendly, clean UI. I liked it. But licences are purchase-linked, and when I asked, they confirmed they have no plans to change that. Dead end for my reseller problem.

LicenseSeat

This one is different. It’s purely a licence generator, paid monthly. You create keys whenever you want, not tied to any purchase. Exactly what the reseller case needs.

It plugs into Stripe, so you’re not rebuilding your payment flow from scratch. If you need to hand 500 licence keys to a distributor and let them worry about selling, this is the only tool on this list that does it cleanly.

Amore

Built by Lucas, who I know personally. He’s focused on the pain of distributing Mac apps outside the App Store, and it shows.

Amore wraps Sparkle (the standard macOS update framework) in a UI that doesn’t make you want to close your laptop. Drag your app in, write release notes, hit publish. It builds the DMG, handles signing, supports beta channels and phased rollouts. There’s a CLI too, so you can wire it into CI/CD.

Payments and licences are on the roadmap, built on Stripe. Not there yet, but worth watching if you want distribution and licensing under one roof.

Keygen.sh

The enterprise-grade option. Floating licences, node-locked, offline validation, complex entitlement models. If you’re selling to teams or businesses with compliance requirements, this handles it. You can self-host too.

For a single indie app, it’s like renting a warehouse to store a suitcase.

Nobody solves the reseller case in one place yet. For direct sales, Creem is a clear upgrade over Stripe. For standalone licences, LicenseSeat is your only real option. And Amore is the one I’m watching for a future where distribution, updates, and licensing live in the same tool.