Here's my newly redesigned PayPal Fee Calculator. PPCalc, as I call it, is a free web-based tool that allows people to calculate what their PayPal fees would be to receive a certain amount or to reverse calculate their fees to determine what amount a person would have to send them for them to receive a certain amount after fees. This tool has actually been around a while. I originally wrote it back in May of 2005 as a way of learning HTML and Javascript for the first time. Back then it was very primative, crudely designed, and only supported a single fee rate. I've since improved it vastly and learned more about writing cleaner, more efficient HTML and Javascript code in the process.

To see how this calculator has changed over the years, here's a look back at my earlier versions.

Visit PPCalc version 1.0 (May 17, 2005)

This was my first version back in May of 2005. As you can see everything is aligned correctly, but the fee rate is not editable (only selectable) and the choice of currency is also not directly editable.

Download PPCalc (for Windows) version 1.0 (June 02, 2005)

In my next version I converted the calculator into a Visual Basic program. As you can see I tried to jazz up the logo a little bit, but for the most part people said the UI was too big and the text was hard to read.

Download PPCalc (for Windows) version 1.5 (July 15, 2005)

Some people didn't even want the normal calculator, all they wanted was the reverse portion of the calculator, so I made a stand-alone version of the reverse paypal calculator which you can see here. In both versions I included a long detailed help section, but which I later removed after many people told me the calculator is pretty much self-explanatory and doesn't need a help section.

Download PPCalc (for Windows) version 2.2 (November 14, 2005)

After reading many people's comments and advice I re-designed the calculator yet again, making the UI much smaller and more compact in version 2.0. This time, I spent a great deal of time really polishing the logo and added little copy buttons next to each of the textboxes. Also I made the currency field selectable for the first time and seperate from the country selection which I moved to the Options screen. This was also the first time in the calculator's history where you could type in what you wanted to receive in one currency and the calculator would tell you what somebody would have to send you in a second, different currency to receive that amount (accounting for all currency exchange rates, currency conversion fees, and paypal fees). I also included small links to Windows Notepad, Windows Calculator, and PayPal and eBay's website in this version.

I eventually decided to abandon the Windows-version of this calculator and instead just focus on the web-based version. I did this because I found no one was really downloading or using the Windows version, it was hard to get users to download updates, and it only worked on Windows-based systems. I also found people were hesitant to download it because they were afraid of spyware and viruses. So I went back to the web-based version and changed it to this...

Visit PPCalc version 2.0 (September 01, 2007)

Here you can see version 2.0 of the web-based version. I gave it a more rounded feel, incorporated the new logo and changed the font and color scheme slightly to make it easier to read. This version was lacking the currency conversion feature of the Windows-based version, but I think it was much better looking overall.

After sticking with that design for about a year, I eventually added a whole bunch of new features and came up with what you see below.

Visit PPCalc version 3.0 (October 06, 2008)

In this web-based version 3.0, you could choose both the source and destination country and currency of the payment independently of each other and have your PayPal fee rate loaded and displayed in an editable textbox. You could also choose your monthly sales volume (which changed based on your currency selection) and have your PayPal fee rate reflected with the change as well.

This version also supported currency conversion and allowed you to directly edit the currency exchange rates the calculator was using. I also included options for special circumstances such as PayPal's new digital goods rate, their personal account credit card rate, and their eCheck rate (which limits your maximum fee amount). Since the calculator was already sitting on a list of currency exchange rates I also decided to throw in a "currency convertor" tool to simply convert between two different currencies. This was also the first time I put an editable fee rate box on a web-based version.

Overall though I was displeased with this layout because I thought it took up took much space on the screen and didn't clearly give people what they wanted. I thought it was too "busy" and had too many advanced options all over the place, which 99% of my visitors didn't even want or need. So I redesigned it once again into this...

Visit PPCalc version 4.0 (January 26, 2009)

With this new re-design I decided to go for a more simplistic approach. I opted for a centered, fixed-width design, with large fonts and text boxes so that people could easily see and enter their amounts. I also completely eliminated the Calculate and Clear buttons, because both are unneccassary if you can have your fees calculated "on-the-fly" as you type. Also, rather than including built-in fee rates, where you would select your source country, destination country, and monthly sales volume from a drop-down list and the calculator would tell you your fee rate, I decided it would be easier just to include a large editable textbox that included the default fee rate for each country and a "help me decide" link that leads to PayPal's fee page. That way people can easily find their fee rate on the official PayPal.com fees page if they don't know.

To accomodate people from other countries I placed flag icons underneath the editable fee rate box. If you click on one of these flag icons the default fee rate for that country is loaded into the calculator. So for example, if you are from Australia, all you have to do is click on the Australia flag and your default fee rate of 2.4% + $0.30 AUD is loaded into the calculator. If you have amounts already entered in, the new fee rate is instantly reflected in them as well. From a usability perspective I think this is a lot easier than having to open and sift through a drop-down list of 100+ countries trying to find the country you're looking for.

This time I also chose to put links to PayPal.com, eBay.com, and the PayPal fees page in the top-right corner of the page so people could easily jump to those places after using the calculator instead of having to scroll down.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or ideas for the calculator I would love to hear them. Just leave a comment on this page or e-mail me directly and let me know!