Unlimited talk and text for just $10 a month. Data for $15 a GB or less. Deals like this are crazy scary and popping up more and more. In fact, a recent jaunt through the FreedomPop website showed that many users could get away with their simple freemium plan that features 200 minutes of talk, 500 text messages and 500MB of data. Roll into their forums and get a few hundred more MB of data per month pretty easily. All in all, you can get an extra GB of data for free from friends and family, so you are looking at a pretty decent plan for most users for free. That doesn’t take into account what’s missing from the bigger picture though, added services.
First up, if you like it when people leave you messages, guess what, that’s $2.49 a month. Want to use your device as a Wi-Fi hot spot? That’s another $3.99. Want to get picture messages from friends? There’s another $1.99. And of course there’s the issue of if you want the calls to roll over to the voice network instead of having to depend on a strong data signal for calls, that’s another $3.99. So, if you are looking at having it all, you can just snag the Phone Premier package and get it all for $9.99. So for unlimited talk, text and all that data, plus all the goodies, you are looking at a bill of about $21 a month. That’s just about $250 a year, or about $400 cheaper than Verizon’s new Small plan. Keep in mind you will also need a Verizon compatible phone for $20-30 a month, which will add another $250-400 a year to that bill. That brings the savings more into the neighborhood of the $800 range.
The question becomes, how many of those services do you actually use? For the longest time, all of us have wanted to put a message on our voicemail that reads, “Thanks for calling, I can’t talk, send me a text.” We hate checking messages and can usually find an App that will do a better job for us anyways. That said, if you don’t want voice mail, cross that off the list. If you aren’t thinking you need a Wi-Fi hotspot from your phone, you can cut that $4 off there too. MMS messaging is so last year, everyone knows that Facebook’s Messenger program does a much better job now anyways and you have more friends to share things with online anyways, right? There’s another $2. Now, that said, if you aren’t a heavy talker, chop that $10 off and start using more of the alternate methods of messaging, like Facebook again. It saves you cash and you can do it over even the slowest public Wi-Fi connections.
Right there we have virtually doubled your savings. With the free service plan from FreedomPop, you can easily cut a full $800-1000 a year off your cellular bill and not struggle with the lack of services. Another great part of the FreedomPop program is that you can bring your own devices to it. If it is a qualifying Sprint phone, you can get it activated and use it on the free plan for just $19.99. This means a shiny new phone can set you back a few hundred bucks and be free for the next two years or longer.
If you don’t use many of the value added services, you need to check out the options at the FreedomPop website today.
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