From today, Amazon is finally allowing customers interested in its Prime features to subscribe on a monthly basis. For $8.99 per month, users can now buy Amazon Prime Video on a month-by-month plan. A monthly plan including Prime Video, 2-day shipping and more is also available for $10.99 per month.
However, whilst these new offerings are attractive and accessible to more people, they do not represent a good deal. In fact, subscribing to Amazon’s new monthly options is significantly more expensive …
Subscribing to Amazon Prime Video for 12 months on a yearly plan would cost $107.88, about $8 more than signing up to the typical year of Prime for $99. Moreover, the monthly video subscription only includes video whereas the yearly bundle includes all the perks of Prime, such as express shipping.
Similarly, buying the new monthly Amazon Prime option at $10.99 for a year costs $131.88 for twelve months. Again, this is substantially more than the $99 yearly bundle, although it also packs the Amazon Prime Video service, music streaming and other features of the yearly plan — unlike the Prime Video monthly plan.
If you are looking for the best value (and cheapest) plan over an extended period, it’s obvious the monthly plans are not the answer. However, they do offer some convenience and may be useful for some people. For example, customers may want to subscribe to Prime for express shipping for Black Friday and the holiday season only. In these cases, it makes sense to commit to a month-by-month plan.
The $10.99 monthly shipping option is just like the ‘deal’ Sprint started offering two weeks ago — there are not financial benefits to doing so. Currently, Amazon is advertising the $99/year option as a 25% prepayment discount. If you want Prime, it’s definitely the best deal for the time being.
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