Setting your eSIM markup

Why one percentage across the catalogue fails

The default in every reseller panel is a single percentage markup applied to everything. It is the easiest rule to configure and it produces bad prices at both ends of a catalogue.

The reason is arithmetic. eSIM packages span a very wide range — well under a dollar for a small local bundle, tens of dollars for a large regional one. A single percentage that leaves enough cash on the cheap packages leaves an absurd amount on the expensive ones, and a percentage that looks sane on the expensive ones earns almost nothing on the cheap ones.

Look at the first row against a typical fixed card fee of around 30 cents. A 100% markup on a 70-cent package earns 70 cents gross, and the payment gateway takes a large share of it. On a small package, a percentage markup can leave you working for pennies.

Four methods, and when each one is right

Cost-plus percentage

Multiply the wholesale cost by a fixed factor. Simple, scales automatically when supplier prices change, and produces the distortions above. Fine as a starting point for a narrow catalogue where all the packages are priced similarly.

Fixed cash uplift

Add a flat amount to every package. This fixes the cheap end — every sale earns the same cash regardless of size — and breaks the expensive end, where a flat uplift becomes an invisible rounding error on a large package.

Percentage with a cash floor

Take the greater of a percentage markup and a minimum cash amount. This is the method most resellers should use: the floor protects small packages from the card fee, and the percentage keeps large packages competitive. It is one extra rule and it fixes both failure modes.

Anchor pricing

Set retail from what the market expects rather than from your cost, then check the margin is acceptable. This is what you graduate to once you know your destinations — and it requires the next section.

Whichever you pick, verify it against the smallest and largest packages you sell before publishing. Those two are where every pricing rule breaks, and nobody notices because nobody tests the extremes.

The ceiling your supplier already set

Here is the constraint that every pricing guide in this market skips, and it is the most important one.

Most large eSIM providers do not only sell wholesale. They also sell direct to travellers, at published retail prices, on well-marketed consumer apps. Your customer can find those prices in one search — and if you are reselling that provider’s packages, they may be looking at exactly the product you are selling them.

That is a real ceiling on your markup, and it is set by your own supplier. Pricing meaningfully above the source brand’s consumer price only works if you are adding something the customer values.

What legitimately buys you room above it

• Support in the customer’s own language, at the hours they actually travel.
• Curation — five packages that fit their trip instead of four hundred they have to sort through.
• Bundling with something else they were already buying from you.
• Trust you have already earned. A customer who booked a tour with you will buy the eSIM from you at a premium they would not pay a stranger.
• Being where the decision happens — inside a booking flow rather than in a search result.

What does not buy you room is a nicer storefront. If your only differentiation is design and your price is above the source brand’s own, the arithmetic will find you.

• What an order actually earns you →
• Who should not become a reseller →

Rounding, price points and the cheapest package problem

Once the method is right, a few presentation decisions are worth more than another point of margin.

• Round to sensible price points rather than publishing what the formula returned. $8.99 reads as a price; $8.43 reads as a machine.
• Round up, not down. Rounding a calculated price down gives away margin on every future sale to save the customer a few cents they will not notice.
• Be careful with a very cheap entry package. It anchors your whole catalogue as budget, attracts the least loyal customers, and earns the least after the card fee.
• Show fewer options. A destination page with four packages converts better than one with forty, and the four you choose are a pricing decision.
• Price the middle option to be the obvious choice. Most customers pick the middle of three, so decide which one that is rather than letting the catalogue decide.

The cheapest-package point is worth dwelling on. Resellers add a very small package to look competitive, and it disproportionately attracts customers who compare on price, cost the most support per dollar, and never return.

When to reprice

Prices are not a launch task. Two things move underneath yours, and neither announces itself.

1. Set a quarterly reminder to re-pull your supplier’s rates. Wholesale eSIM pricing moves, and a markup rule applied to a stale cost is a margin you think you have.
2. Reprice whenever your supplier changes a rate materially — down as well as up. A cost decrease you do not act on is either free margin or a lost price advantage, and you should choose which deliberately.
3. Check your top five destinations against the source brand’s consumer price at the same time. That ceiling moves too.
4. Revisit the cash floor whenever your payment fees change, since the floor exists to cover them.
5. After any change, re-run one small and one large package end to end and confirm the contribution is what you expected.

If your platform sources orders from more than one provider account, your cost per package can differ between them. Make sure the price you publish is based on the cost you will actually pay — a storefront priced off the cheaper provider while orders go to the dearer one publishes a margin you do not earn.

• How least-cost routing affects pricing →
• Catalogue and pricing in the panel →