One of our clients’ store has products which vary in price based on their area.
Previously we have used an app that managed this decently, but now they are expanding to another country, and that plugin can’t handle other currencies and tax rates correctly.
We have looked for alternative apps as well, but have not found any that works with other currencies and tax rates.
I’m therefore asking you for recommendations. Is there any app (or native solution) that can solve our issue?
What we are looking for is a way that we can have a base price on the product, and add X amount per square meter.
Hi @Hannnes ,
there isn’t really a perfect app that handles area-based pricing (like m²) + multi-currency + taxes all together. Most of the calculator apps (like the ones you tried) only change the price on the product page, but at checkout Shopify still uses its own pricing logic, which is why things start breaking when you expand to other countries.
But if you need it to be 100% accurate across currencies and taxes, a custom solution is the more reliable route
Sansbetter detail Shopify Plus may be needed in these situations for specific shopify functions features, or pricing lists etc .
Generally you need custom to make one-off products and then sync inventory on the backend
Be clear.
Which is it, area == region of world, or area == measurement of the product.
Or the ambiguity is because product pricing is based on both , before taxes etc , if both you probably need a custom solution or you just plain have to keep digging and trying apps.
Just make a form letter of the req’s and get the support contact addresses on the app pages in the app store from a bunch of shortlisted apps.
For regions of the world there’s markets.
For measurement based products there’s now 2k variants per product either make the measures as literal options in specific steps, or a singular option with combined measurements, or use the quantity-is-the-measurement approach and or combo with bundles.
If the current apps have apis there can be a process that way with custom middleware or automation apps with mechanic, even possibly shopify-flow.
There’s also apps like mechanic to create custom draft orders with custom line orders etc.
Thanks for your advice. We might need to build a custom solution like you say.
When I said area I meant the physical measurements of the product.
The price also varies depending on the country/market though, but that it based on the conversion rate and tax rate.
If it has to be down to the 1mm then that next workaround on that is tons of separate products for each range of combos e.g. product A == 1mmx1mm to 2000mx2000m, product B == 2001mx2001m …
Not counting other options like colors
If the inventory is limited that can work, for tons of products that can hit 50k product throttling threshold with just a few dozen products and having to work with the 1k daily product throttle ; or have Plus plan for increased limits.
And shopify Plus may be more sane to get access to combined listings if going such a route.
A bundles approach would be similar but there would just be a slimmer set of by-the-measure-products.
Calle them custom-measure|custom-fit or some such wording .
And the variants of those measurement product can be bundled with only the main products of a certain type.
They have quite a lot of products. Different colors are separate products, so that wouldn’t affect the variants.
I will have to check with the client if they would be open to only offering certain intervals online; perhaps the most common ones. And then refer to the contact form for more special measurements.
In any case we would probably have to build some custom tooling to manage the variants.
Hannnes - the reason those apps break across markets is worth naming. Options Price Calculator, Easify and similar don’t set a real variant price; they apply a storefront-side override or attach a hidden fee item. Shopify Markets only localises actual variant prices (via catalogs/price lists) and applies tax rules to them. Anything living outside the variant price falls out of that system the moment you add a second country. It’s not a bug in those apps, it’s the layer they operate on.
Two routes that survive it:
1. Quantise to bands. 100-1200 mm x 100-2000 mm in 100 mm steps is 12 x 20 = 240 variants - well inside the 2,048 limit. You can present it as a slider that snaps, so it doesn’t feel like a dropdown. Currency and tax then work natively, because it’s just a price.
2. Cart Transform function. One base variant, width/height as line item properties, a Shopify Function computes the real price server-side. Keeps 1 mm granularity, but needs a dev and a custom app you maintain.
Route 1 is boring and bulletproof. For genuine one-offs, a draft-order quote flow beats both.
I’m building something in this space - happy to share notes if useful.
We’ve worked with a few merchants selling area-based products, and in our experience the pricing calculation itself is usually the easy part. The bigger challenge tends to be how those calculated prices interact with Shopify Markets, local currencies, and country-specific tax rules.
If you’re already testing Easify Custom Product Options, it can handle dimension inputs and price adjustments based on customer selections. However, when expanding internationally, I’d recommend verifying how the calculated option prices are displayed and converted across your Markets configuration, since currency conversion and tax calculations are ultimately managed through Shopify’s pricing and tax system rather than the product options layer alone.
Out of curiosity, is the issue you’re running into primarily related to currency conversion, tax calculation, or both? That might help narrow down whether the limitation is coming from the pricing app itself or from the way Shopify Markets is configured.
If you need to calculate the price based on a customer’s custom dimensions or area, you can look at the Product Option feature in Inkybay – Product Personalizer. It allows you to create a custom free-size option where customers can enter measurements such as length and width instead of selecting only predefined sizes.
You can set pricing based on the custom size and add additional pricing to the product according to your requirements. You can also create options for different measurement units such as cm, inch, or ft, and display the fields directly on the product page. This can be useful for products where the final price depends on the customer’s required area.
Inkybay also supports dropdowns, swatches, radio buttons, checkboxes, and other product options, with customer selections automatically captured in the order details. Since you’re expanding into another country, I’d recommend testing the pricing and currency/tax behavior with your specific setup during the 21-day free trial before switching over.
