Kellen
The new myPlan unlimited options from Verizon are live and available starting today. After first announcing them earlier in the week as the type of plan that lets customers “get exactly what you want” and to “only pay for what you need,” we now know all of the details for each. We told you that we’d dive further in to help you decide if you should switch to Unlimited Plus or Unlimited Welcome, so let’s do that.
Should you switch to Verizon’s new myPlan options? I think the answer to that is pretty simple, but we can still lay it all out.
Verizon MyPlan: Unlimited Welcome vs. Unlimited Plus
With Verizon’s new myPlan options, you now only have two choices of unlimited plans. Gone are the days of 4 or 5 or 6 different plans, in are Unlimited Welcome and Unlimited Plus, because simplicity is a big part of the sell. To get started, below is a myPlan plan breakdown.
Unlimited Welcome
- Price: $65/line single lines; $30/line for 4 lines (w/ autopay)
- 5G Data: Unlimited 5G nationwide
- Premium 5G: Not included
- Mobile hotspot: Not included
- Connected device discount: Not included
- Home internet add-on: $40/mo
- Price guarantee: Not included
Unlimited Plus
- Price: $80/line single lines; $45/line for 4 lines (w/autopay)
- 5G Data: Unlimited 5G nationwide
- Premium 5G Data: Unlimited 5G Ultra Wideband
- Mobile hotspot: 30GB
- Connected device discount: Up to 50% off
- Home internet add-on: $25/mo
- Price guarantee: 3 years
In summary, a single line on Unlimited Welcome would cost you $65 per month with autopay. That gets you access to Verizon’s regular 5G network, that is often as slow as their old LTE network. You do not get access to their premium 5G Ultra Wideband network nor do you get hotspot data. Your price would also not be guaranteed and Verizon could seemingly change it in a couple of months.
A single line on Unlimited Plus would cost you $80 per month with autopay. You get access to both 5G and 5G Ultra Wideband networks in an unlimited capacity. You also get 30GB in hotspot data to use, a discount on connected device plans (like a smartwatch), a discount on Verizon’s home internet service, and a price lock for 3 years.
Verizon myPlan Perks
Since those plans mostly sound like old school unlimited plans from years ago, you might be wondering where the sales pitch is and that initial talk about getting and paying for only what you want. Well, Verizon has unbundled previously-included perks and will now let you pick and choose what you need. However, they will now charge you $10 per perk, but keep in mind that you can add or remove perks at any time and you aren’t locked into any of them if you don’t want to be.
At the moment, Verizon is offering the following perks to myPlan plans for $10/mo each:
- Disney+ Bundle
- 100GB Mobile Hotspot
- Walmart+ Membership
- Apple One
- Apple Music Family
- Smartwatch Data & Safety
- 3 TravelPass days
- +play Monthly Credit
- 2TB Cloud Storage
That list isn’t very large, so Verizon has already had to commit to adding new perks in the future. At this time, we don’t know what those will be.
Now, if we price in some perks, everything remains pretty straight forward. If you had the Unlimited Welcome plan ($65/mo) and added the Disney+ Bundle ($10) and 100GB Mobile Hotspot ($10), your bill would then jump to $85/mo as long as autopay is active. If you chose the Unlimited Plus plan ($80/mo) and Disney+ ($10) and Apple Music Family ($10) and Walmart+ ($10), your monthly bill would then jump to $110/mo.
Easy to understand, right?
Should you switch to Verizon myPlan options?
Here’s the thing – if you are new to Verizon, these are essentially your only 5G unlimited plan options where you would be able to add the best smartphones with discounts or on payment plans. If you don’t like either or think they are too expensive, you could instead choose from their prepaid offerings, which aren’t bad and might be a far better deal than these new myPlan plans. That would mostly require you to bring your own phone, though.
What if you have an older Verizon unlimited plan, like Get More, Play More, Do More, or 5G Start? I see no reason why you would switch to these new plans. The old plans include many of the perks that Verizon now wants you to pay an extra $10/mo for.
The most expensive Get More unlimited plan includes unlimited premium 5G access, 50GB hotspot, 50% off connected devices, 1 TravelPass each month, Apple Music, the Disney+ Bundle, Apple Arcade or Google Play Pass, and 600GB of Verizon cloud storage. It costs $90/mo.
For comparison, the new Unlimited Plus plan starts at $80/mo, would then jump to $90/mo if you added just the Disney+ Bundle. You would then have to pay $10.99 for Apple Music, $5 for Apple Arcade, and $6 for the cloud storage to match the rest of the features. This new Unlimited Plus also only has 30GB of hotspot data vs. Get More’s 50GB. To setup a plan on the level of Get More, we’re at least $22 more per month with less hotspot. And that’s just Get More, the most expensive plan from Verizon’s old lineup.
For those on Play More, you pay $80/mo and that includes Disney+ and Apple Arcade, as well as 25GB hotspot. Unlimited Plus would force you to pay $10/mo extra for Disney+, jumping the price to $90/mo. It doesn’t include Apple Arcade or Google Play Pass, which would now cost you $5.
You get the idea. In no way are the new myPlan Unlimited Welcome or Unlimited Plus plans better than the previous set of plans. In almost every possible way, they are more expensive or you just get less. There’s just no getting around that. While Verizon wants to sell you on the idea that you get to customize each plan to your liking, what they really did was strip previously-included features to now charge you for them.
Stick with your current plan for as long as you can.
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