Ask HN: Charge in Euro or Dollars for an online service? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Charge in Euro or Dollars for an online service?

7 pointsjontro4 comments

We are running an online service (http://decor-fb.com/) and are currently charging our customers in Euro.

Users subscribe with a monthly plan and we are using facebook payments.

Our customers are from all over the world, our top countries for already paying customers are Brazil and Italy.

We are considering changing our plans to charge in dollars instead.

I wonder have any of you have experience in charging in both USD and Euro and if the wrong currency this is a deal breaker for potential customers.

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Only 45% of Europeans use euros (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurozone), so even for some of your European customers the euro is a foreign currency. If, on top of that, you have a lot of customers from outside Europe, I would say go with USD.

Having said that, I don't think you charging in EUR would be a dealbreaker.

Thanks. I wonder if there are studies in conversion rates when using different currencies...

I wouldn't be surprised if it impacts it a bit. While I wouldn't mind paying in Euros, my currency is USD. When I see prices in Euros, my first thought is "that's not actually that much, it's actually more expensive." Then I catch myself and go and covert the price to figure out how much it actually is.

I have an aversion to fees though, and while I wouldn't mind buying the SaaS, I then have to remember which of my credit cards charge foreign exchange fees and how much they are, and then add that to the price of the service I'm buying.

So I guess it depends on how logical your customers are, where they would stop in that thought process, or if they would care if your prices were 3.5% higher to them.

EDIT: Also, on pricing I think maybe you should consider getting rid of the 0.99 cents on there. There's a bunch of logic in pricing, but I think in general $X.99 is what people expect to see, whole numbers is premium (think upscale restaurants), $X.95 is a bit better than $X.99, and then if you have an odd amount like $X.82 they would think it's discounted.

Thanks for the feedback! We are now trying out USD with the .95 price point instead to see if there is any difference in conversion rates.

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