Country-based pricing in PrestaShop: each customer sees theirs

Two people are looking at the same product in your shop. One is in Madrid and the other in Lisbon. Both see exactly the same price on screen and, when they reach the end of the checkout, the amount changes for one of them. That is the one who does not finish the order.

Your shop shows one price, and it is not everybody's

Until a visitor tells it where they are from, PrestaShop has to decide which rules to price with, and it uses the country you have set as the default. That is reasonable, there is nothing else it could do. But it means every visitor sees one particular country's price, even when they are somewhere else.

The day that visitor types their delivery address, the shop finally knows where they are and recalculates. And that is where the surprise turns up, at the worst possible moment: on the payment step.

And it is not only about tax. If you sell in several markets, your price for France may well not be your price for Portugal or the Canary Islands, because costs, competition and shipping are not the same. All of that is lost if the shop shows a single price to everyone.

A price without a country is, for somebody, the wrong price.

What a country selector changes

On arrival, the visitor is asked which country they are in. They are not left guessing: the one their connection suggests is offered, with its flag, and they confirm it or pick another.

From that moment the shop shows them their price: in their currency, with the taxes that apply to them, and with the rate you decided for that market. The price on the listing, on the product page, in the basket and at payment is the same number from start to finish.

They are asked once. The choice is remembered and the selector stays at the top, always within reach, in case anyone wants to change it.

Why it has to be the only selector

This is the part we get asked about most. If, on top of the country, you leave a loose currency selector and a loose language selector, the visitor can end up with one country's currency, another one's price and a third one's language. And the person handling that support query afterwards is you.

That is why the country choice is the single door: the country sets everything else. On this very site we removed the loose selectors from the top bar for exactly that reason.

One thing it does not do: translate

Worth saying plainly, because it is the most common confusion. This does not translate your shop or invent languages you do not have. If your shop is in several languages, each one lives at its own web address, as it should so that Google finds them all; what the selector does is take each visitor to theirs and give them their country's price.

If you sell abroad and you are not sure that part is set up properly, it is the first thing we look at, because it is where most traffic is lost without anyone noticing.

Try it right here

It is running on this site. At the top of the page, next to the search box, you will see the selector with the flag and the currency. Open it, change the country and have a look around the catalogue: you will see prices change exactly as a customer from that country would see them.

Where the suggested country comes from

From one of two places, and both are fine: a database on the server itself that turns the visitor's connection into a country, or the country your site's front-end service already hands you, if you use one.

What is reliable in both cases is the country. City or region through this route get it wrong often enough that you should not base decisions on them. And either way it is there to suggest: the visitor always has the final word.

It is not on sale yet

We are still polishing it before putting it in the catalogue, so there is no buy button for now. It is coming soon.

If you need it already, write to us: we will install it and leave it configured with your countries, your currencies and your rates, and when the catalogue version comes out you will have it just the same.

I want it for my shop