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Cyril
Cyril

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Pricing page and currencies

Prakash Natarajan wrote an interesting post on IndieHacker on June 20 (Experimenting with /pricing?), where he mentions the issue for non-USD people to have a clear understanding of their cost.

It's true that if you aren't aware of the currency value between USD and the one in your (non-USD) country, you need to do a quick Google search, which isn't ideal and can break your potential user from signing up.

Now, Prakash suggests a simple script that checks the user's country based on his IP, and converts the amount into the local currency, removing the barrier.

But offering your service in multiple currencies can have a big drawback in the future: Imagine the relation between USD and EUR is at 0.7. Your user subscribes in EUR for 7 EUR instead of 10 USD.
A few months later, the relation between USD and EUR changed and is now close to 1. That user will still pay 7 EUR whereas a new user will pay 10 EUR per month.

To avoid this, you can adjust their monthly billing according to the currency value, which is not great for your end user that will never know if they'll pay 7 or 10 EUR.

Having the local currency displayed is a great idea as it can help your user make the decision faster. But instead of changing the currency, and offering multiple currencies, a good alternative would be to show the price in your unique currency (USD for instance), and show the price in their local currency next to it, either as a tooltip, or well-integrated in the design.

That way, your user will know the price is in USD, but will also quickly know how much it will exactly cost for them if they subscribe that day.

What do you think? Those who offer multiple currencies, are you facing this often? Do you consider the variation between the currencies an issue?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

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