Why Ordering Software Shouldn't Be Priced by FX

The easiest way to price software for a hundred countries is to pick a US dollar figure and let the exchange rate do the rest. It is also the way to ask an Indian restaurant to pay a US price, which is what most ordering platforms quietly do. Devfood does not, and this is the method we use instead — written down so a buyer in Pune, São Paulo or Cebu can check the working.

The mistake, stated plainly

Take a US plan, multiply by the day’s exchange rate, round, and publish. The number that comes out is a fact about currency markets. It is not a fact about what a restaurant in that country pays for anything else — rent, staff, a point-of-sale system — and a software price that ignores all of those is not a price, it is an arithmetic result.

The obvious correction is to scale by income statistics instead. That fails too, and Brazil is the warning case: it is an upper-middle-income country by any World Bank table, and its restaurants pay for ordering software at roughly the level Indian restaurants do. An income multiplier would have priced Brazil like Poland. The market did not agree.

The method: anchor to the local category leader

The question that actually predicts what a restaurant will pay is what does the leading local product charge for a comparable stack? Every published Devfood row is set against that, and we record the evidence beside the number so a row can be re-derived rather than re-argued.

Markets sit in one of four bands. Each band is a multiplier on the US ladder — the US price for one to three locations is $79 per location, then $69 from the fourth site and $59 from the tenth — and the multipliers are ×1, ×0.55, ×0.35 and ×0.25:

Those are US-dollar equivalents. Where a market has enough local evidence to publish its own row, the pricing page quotes it in local currency; everywhere else, you are quoted in dollars at your band’s rate. Nine markets have a row today. A row is added when its band placement has local evidence, and not before — an unevidenced row is worse than an absent one.

Three markets, worked

India — band C. ₹2,100 a month for one to three locations, ₹1,800 from the fourth and ₹1,575 from the tenth. The anchor is Petpooja, the category leader, whose full POS-plus-ordering stack we recorded at ₹3,000–12,000 a month when the band was set. The whole Devfood ladder sits under the bottom of that range, with the native iOS and Android apps included. (Petpooja now lists its plans with pricing on request — checked 2 September 2026 — which is exactly why we keep the recorded figure and its date rather than a live link.)

Brazil — band C. R$149 a month for one to three locations, R$127 from the fourth and R$112 from the tenth. Goomer, the local leader, publishes its most expensive delivery plan at R$299.90 a month on monthly billing (goomer.com.br/planos, checked 2 September 2026). The whole Devfood ladder stays under it. Brazil lands in band C on that evidence, not on its income statistics.

Philippines — band D. ₱1,156 a month for one to three locations, ₱982 from the fourth and ₱867 from the tenth. The anchors recorded when the band was set were klikit’s entry plan at ₱1,499 and a rival’s ₱1,899 per outlet; klikit, like Petpooja, now quotes on request (checked 2 September 2026). The peso row is derived at a rate deliberately a little under the spot conversion, for the same reason the band exists at all.

The floor, and why the US price is $79 and not $49

There is one number the whole table is built around: no Devfood price is published below $15 a month for a location, in any band or tier. Below roughly that level the infrastructure and support behind an account stop being covered at any realistic volume, and a price that does not cover its own cost is a price that will be withdrawn later — which is worse for a customer than a slightly higher one that stays.

Band D at ten-plus locations lands exactly on that floor, and that is the constraint that sets the top of the table. A $49 US anchor would read as more aggressive, and it would put band D under cost. So the US price is $79, not because US restaurants can bear more, but because the Philippine ten-site operator has to be served at a price that survives.

What does not change between bands

The product. There is one plan, and the ladder changes the price, never the features. A Manila café on the band D row gets the same subscription a Toronto café does:

• Branded ordering on web, iOS and Android, with the native app build and store publishing included
• Unlimited orders with no commission and no per-order fee
• Multi-language storefronts, included — a language pack for sale in a multilingual market would have been backwards
• The loyalty wallet, vouchers, promotions, delivery zones, auto-dispatch and 75+ reports

The counter hardware — register, kitchen display, kiosk, loyalty tablet — is optional in every market and quoted separately, so the base price is the base price everywhere.

How to check a row yourself

Look up your market’s row on the pricing page. Then look up what the leading local product charges for its comparable plan, on that product’s own site rather than a review aggregator. If the Devfood row sits under it with the native apps included, the band is doing its job. If you think we have placed your market in the wrong band, tell us which local product you compared against — that is the evidence a row is built from, and it is the argument that moves one.

For the break-even that follows from the Indian row, see direct ordering math for an Indian restaurant.