Payouts are often the last thing anyone wants to deal with — until they’re the reason you’re losing top contractors, damaging trust, or spending weekends fixing spreadsheet errors.
And in an age where contract work powers everything, from data labeling to telehealth, creator platforms to global research, getting payments right isn’t just an ops detail. It’s the difference between scaling smoothly and falling apart.
We asked our customers: What made you switch to Dots?
Here’s what they told us:
1) “We needed to stop doing this manually.”
Before switching to Dots, many teams were spending hours every week reconciling spreadsheets, chasing down invoices, or triple-checking data across tools. The manual load wasn’t just inefficient, it was a source of risk and preventing actual company growth.
"Being able to use the payout request feature and leveraging the Dots API makes my job so much easier, because I'm now approving payouts as opposed to manually paying out each instructor. We've gone from dealing with 5 or 10 lessons in a day to now 50 or 100 lessons, and that time used to add up pretty significantly."
- Zach Schmid, formerly Head of Operations at TeachMe.To, Used by 1M+ students and 10K+ coaches
"Dots created a standard simple process for payouts and has really helped us save time, which is so huge in startup business. Time spent on payouts changed from around 30 minutes a day to 10 minutes a day. So now it’s just about an hour each week."
- Patrick Johnson, Co-founder of Vantage Sports, Creating income opportunities for all student athletes
"Earlier, it required a lot of time and energy to manually manage payments, largely on phones by relying on one or two different people, making the process tedious and time-consuming. I had to dedicate at least three to 6 hours a week just to process the day to day payments to drivers. After implementing Dots, it's a 1 hour a week thing. Dots for us has been phenomenal."
- Daniel Willson, former Director of Logistics Operations and Strategy at Table22, Powers restaurant subscription programs in 60+ cities, helping merchants increase monthly profits by over 100%
2) “We needed faster contractor payouts.”
When payouts are delayed, you’re not just sending money late. You’re risking the very foundation of your business: your workers. Late payments invite high churn, lower trust, and stalled momentum. Dots customers told us that speed wasn’t a nice-to-have, it was the reason they stayed competitive.
"Since implementing Dots, just about everything – time, speed, user interface – is better. At every turn, we were disappointed with Stripe’s performance, especially regarding speed. It was so slow for us that mailing a physical paper check to the customer was faster than the time it took for them to payout on their ACH transactions."
- Ryan Glossop, Co-CTO at Forward Forestry (acq. by Cambium), Largest network of arborists and tree care companies selling logs in the U.S
"It definitely saves us 50% of our time compared to working with Stripe, and I know our pros would agree that Dots is significantly easier to use and leverage than Stripe. We've reduced the average time for payouts by about 50%. And the amount of time it takes to get the payout to the pro by at least 50%. The biggest win there is just being able to payout quickly via a platform like Venmo, which means payments are received by our instructors within a few minutes."
- Zach Schmid, formerly Head of Operations at TeachMe.To, Used by 1M+ students and 10K+ coaches
3) “We didn’t realize how broken our old system was.”
Sometimes the biggest friction goes unnoticed, until it’s gone. Several teams told us they didn’t switch because of one major incident… but because their old system was slowing them down in a hundred small, painful ways.
"Customization is incredibly useful, the fact that we could build our experience from the ground up. It makes us seem more professional and way better than most comedy shows – which still are stuck using checks, cash, or simple Venmo/Paypal payments. We love Dots so much we're trying to add it to more stuff! They're incredibly responsive and add requested features quickly."
- Brett Kushner, Chief Operating Officer at Don't Tell Comedy, Global comedy platform with 2.1M+ YouTube subscribers and shows in 200+ cities
"Within an hour of setup, we were live. One thing that was important for us was making it seamless for the creators. Moving that onboarding flow to after a payment has been sent was a game changer. All in all, it was a seamless transition and our support requests have gone down a lot already."
- Clayton Rannard, Co-founder at Collabstr, Largest influencer marketplace with 250,000+ global influencers
Get Started with Dots Today
These are just a few of the reasons teams are switching, but the best reason might be yours. If you’re ready to upgrade how you move money and pay contractors, marketplace sellers, e-sports participants, and more, let’s talk.