Connect Paddle

Paddle acts as merchant of record: it takes the payment, handles tax, and tells your panel what happened. The panel needs three credentials to hold up its end.

The three credentials#

Credential	Used where	Stored how
API key	Server-side calls from the panel to Paddle	Encrypted at rest
Client-side token	The checkout overlay, in the visitor’s browser	Plain — it is public by design
Webhook secret	Verifying that an incoming webhook really came from Paddle	Encrypted at rest

Paste all three into Admin → Settings → Paddle. The two encrypted values show as dots once saved; leaving a field blank on a later save keeps the stored value rather than wiping it.

Sandbox versus live#

The Sandbox switch controls which Paddle environment the checkout overlay opens against. Sandbox and live are entirely separate systems with their own credentials, their own products, and their own price IDs — swapping environments means swapping every one of those, including the price IDs on your plans.

Keep sandbox on until you have completed a full test purchase end to end.

What you set up on Paddle’s side#

1. Create a product in Paddle for each product you sell.
2. Create a price under it for each plan — monthly, yearly, lifetime, whatever you offer.
3. Copy each price ID and paste it into the matching plan in the panel. This mapping is what lets an incoming webhook figure out what was bought. See Plans and Paddle prices.
4. Add a notification destination pointing at your webhook endpoint, and subscribe it to the events in Webhook events.
5. Copy the signing secret Paddle shows you into Settings.

Checkout#

The panel includes a checkout page per plan that opens Paddle’s overlay with the client-side token. A visitor who is not signed in gets an account created before the overlay opens, so the subsequent webhook can be attached to a real user. If the email already belongs to an account, they are asked to sign in instead of silently creating a duplicate.