How Paddle helped n8n focus on what matters: customers and growth

n8n is a next-generation open workflow automation tool that can be used by anyone to automate their own tasks. 

It was developed by Jan Oberhauser, a programmer who spent nearly a decade working as a compositing artist in the movie industry. He noticed a big gap in the industry. 

The push for growth

In a few short years, n8n added over 130 integrations to its solution, formed a community of over 16,000 people, and grew its team significantly. This is when it realized it needed to spend less time on operational complexities and more time on achieving scalable growth.

“The important thing for us was growing our business, and that meant having an unwavering focus on the value we were providing to our customers,” says Hilary Torn, n8n’s then Head of Growth. “We didn’t want to get involved in managing every little payment that came through, or dealing with sales tax – back office processes that can get very distracting. That’s why we sought a merchant of record so we could offload our payments, tax and subscriptions and that could support our growth.”

Moving forwards with Paddle

Paddle’s merchant of record model was the perfect fit, and allowed n8n to offload the build of its payments stack. As a result, it could focus on crafting its product and winning customers, rather than on the mechanics of capturing payments or sales tax compliance. 

“We were very lucky to find Paddle at the start,” Hilary says. “It paid off. It's running in the background while we push for growth.”

Jan agrees: “Paddle is a hands-off solution,” he says. “Right from the off we didn’t need to worry about anything – not even sales tax regulations.”

Focusing on customers, not payments

Paddle has not only supported n8n in managing its payments infrastructure and sales tax, it’s also played an active role in helping it grow in new territories. 

“Our biggest win and gain using Paddle is that we can simply focus on what matters for our customers,” Jan says. “We don't have to worry about so many things. Payments are actually quite complex, especially if you talk about taxes worldwide. Thanks to Paddle, we were able to launch literally everywhere in the world without having to worry about global restrictions. Without Paddle that would have been almost impossible.”

“Paddle has taken out all of this back admin work that we would have had to do with other payment processors,” Hilary adds. “It's made a real difference that we can really focus on what matters, which is our core product and our community and making sure we're serving our customers the way they deserve to be served.”

Assisting in the search for new customers

Paddle is also helping n8n to understand where its customers are coming from. “We have a more technical audience and they tend not to want to be tracked, so they use ad blockers,” says Hilary. “That means it can be a struggle for us to find out what promotions are working. However, with the couponing system, we can immediately see where a customer has come from. It’s invaluable.” 

With this, n8n can find more of their ideal customers. “Having these coupon codes, along with data of what our trial conversion rate is, what our churn is, and how we can price intelligently, is invaluable,” Hilary says. 

Stats that speak for themselves

By offloading back office processes to Paddle, n8n has achieved a 8% net revenue retention uplift in a single year. What’s more, it achieved 87% monthly recurring revenue growth in just nine months. 

And this is just the start. “Our vision is to become the default automation tool of choice, for any business,” Jan says. “I’m very optimistic that we will make that happen, not least because – with tools like Paddle – we can double down and focus on what matters.”