Why does CloudatCost charge in US currency for a Candian Company?
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Awesome thanks Scott.
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No problem!
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Hey Guys!
Thanks for all your patience. I have been really busy and unfortunately have not had the time to log in to MangoLassi in a little while. As you all know, I love being a part of this community and now that things have settled down a little bit for me, I will be back in here actively answering any questions you may have.
The question about the currency is a great one and one that we get asked many times. There are a few factors which impacted our decision:
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The US Dollar is seen as an international currency (more so than the Canadian Dollar). This means that as people are looking for our product around the world, It is easy for them to convert. Our Datacenter is in Canada, but we have a lot of customers from other countries. US is our major market, and majority of our sales come from the US market.
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Easier to compare products. When comparing our servers with others, you will find that a lot will have US pricing, even if they offer datacenters around the world. If you were to compare our server to theirs and ours was 30% more expensive at a quick glance (because the conversion rate wasn't factored in), we would be seen as not competitive.
in short, because majority of our business is done in USD and to provide ease in competitive pricing, the USD currency is most efficient for everybody to use.
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What about offering a special portal for Canadian customers? Lots of customers are wary of doing business with a company that crosses into the US because of draconian US laws and a reckless government. Already in another community someone thought you were American and were not going to look into you further because they are in the EU and the EU avoids anything hosted in the US by standard practice. We were able to explain that you are purely Canadian and they are here now investigating your services. But I think that US currency only sends a dangerous message (even as an American company we normally host outside of the US) if there isn't a lot of clarity around there being no American association. Europeans don't care about American currency but they do about American hosting. But for Canadians it makes an unnecessary hurtle.
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Makes sense but ya definitely a shame.
I'm debating jumping in feet first and picking up 2 or 3 servers but I know if I wait until the dollar bounces back that I can turn the server about 20% (on top of coupons) cheaper for myself.
Not looking for business here just me and I need to stretch out my geek budget lol.
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@Sparkum said:
Makes sense but ya definitely a shame.
I'm debating jumping in feet first and picking up 2 or 3 servers but I know if I wait until the dollar bounces back that I can turn the server about 20% (on top of coupons) cheaper for myself.
Not looking for business here just me and I need to stretch out my geek budget lol.
Yeah I did that when we first heard about C@C a month or so ago...
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@scottalanmiller said:
Already in another community someone thought you were American and were not going to look into you further because they are in the EU and the EU avoids anything hosted in the US by standard practice
Sounds like me
In the cloutatcost.com site, the only reference I can find to Canada is this line in the terms and conditions
"19.3 Governing Law. This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of Ontario and the laws of Canada applicable therein, without reference to its principles of conflict of laws, and the parties shall attorn to the jurisdiction of the Courts of Ontario for all matters arising under this Agreement."
Currency issues aside, I think it would be worth promoting the non-US hosting as a feature, lot of guys in Europe will swarm you as most hosting providers are in the US only.
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Yeah, that was you
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Currency issues aside, I think it would be worth promoting the non-US hosting as a feature, lot of guys in Europe will swarm you as most hosting providers are in the US only.
With our membership in 5eyes spying group I doubt anyone will consider us much different.
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@MattSpeller said:
With our membership in 5eyes spying group I doubt anyone will consider us much different.
That's very true. To most of the world, Canada is right in there with the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@MattSpeller said:
With our membership in 5eyes spying group I doubt anyone will consider us much different.
That's very true. To most of the world, Canada is right in there with the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
How do they make sure they aren't getting NSA modified routers though (both end users and datacenter). That would kinda make where the rest of your data is relevant. Could also be why we are seeing a lot more hacking incidents if the NSA modified them, I'm sure they don't care about anything except their own access, and their code could easily bring unknown vulnerabilities (not to mention it's illegal both the spying and modifying of closed source code).
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@scottalanmiller said:
That's very true. To most of the world, Canada is right in there with the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
But the US has by far the most impact and reach to intrude, especially given something like the below.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/24/irish_government_sides_with_microsoft_over_us_cops_cloud_data_snatch/@thecreativeone91 said:
How do they make sure they aren't getting NSA modified routers though (both end users and datacenter). That would kinda make where the rest of your data is relevant.
We all know that everyone is trying, China, US, Russia, it's all the same, everyone is trying to get ahead. We all know in the UK that the NSA/GCHQ are looking at the data, along with other nations governments, I just hope that the crime gangs don't discover this network and begin using it to drop crypto ransom onto all our networks at once, I fear them more than the NSA, which might be blissful ignorance on my part.
How do you make a network secure against the biggest spy agencies in the world?
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Our adult entertainment division is legally based out of the Netherlands and we still charge USD for everything, because even so most of our customers are from the US or are familiar with the currency.
