How We Added Billing to SendRec with Creem

SendRec is open source and self-hostable. Anyone can run it on their own server with no limits. But we also run a hosted version at app.sendrec.eu , and that hosted version needs a way to pay for itself. We needed billing. Specifically, we needed subscription billing that works for an EU-based product, handles VAT correctly across 27 member states, and doesn't require us to become payment experts. We also needed it to be completely optional — self-hosted instances should work exactly as before, with no billing code in the way. Why Creem For an EU-native product, the payment processor matters. Most billing platforms are US companies that treat EU compliance as an afterthought. We wanted a merchant of record — a company that legally sells the product on our behalf, handles VAT collection and remittance, manages invoicing, and deals with disputes. Creem is based in Tallinn, Estonia. They're the merchant of record, which means SendRec never touches payment details. No PCI compliance burden