Tracfone Quietly Ups Data Amounts on All Unlimited Cards
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In a move likely aimed to make their unlimited talk/text plans more attractive and competitive, Tracfone increased the data for each of their cards.
These updates come at about the same time as Verizon Rebranding and Relaunching Total Wireless as Total by Verizon. And we can't help but think it is part of a broader effort by Tracfone's new owner, Verizon, to restructure plans and encourage more customers to move to unlimited options.
While the unlimited plans give great benefits for the price, they are also more expensive than most of Tracfone's other airtime cards. And Tracfone has a strong base of very price-conscious, and savvy, customers.
Here's the breakdown of the new data amounts for Tracfone unlimited cards.
Tracfone Unlimited Plans
These are Tracfone's current unlimited plan options:
$15 - unlimited talk/text - 30 service days - no data (no change)
$20 - unlimited talk/text - 30 service days - 2GB Data (increased from 1GB)
$25 - unlimited talk/text - 30 service days - 3GB Data (increased from 2GB)
$30 - unlimited talk/text - 30 service days - 4GB Data (increased from 3GB)
$40 - unlimited talk/text - 30 service days - 8GB Data (no change)
$199 - unlimited talk/text - 365 service days - 24GB Data (increased from 12GB)
As you can see, not all of the plans benefited from the data increase, with the $15 and $40 plans seeing no change.
The $199 plan saw the biggest increase, doubling the amount of data to 24GB, making it a much more interesting option. With a full year of service, this plan comes out to just $16.59 per month and an average of 2 GB data per month.
All of the other cards saw 1GB additional data added, which makes them a little more reasonable and practical.
Are Tracfone's Unlimited Plans a Good Deal?
That all depends on how much talk, text and data you use.
The best unlimited option from Tracfone is the $199/1 Year plan that comes with 24GB data. For those willing to buy a whole year of service in advance, you'll save $40 over the $20 plan which gives the same amount of data over 12 months.
Here's the deal with Tracfone unlimited plans: If you are using more than 2GB data per month, you may want to look for alternative service providers.
We outlined several great alternatives to Tracfone in a recent post that all generally provide more data (or unlimited data) for $20-40.
Mint Mobile, for example, offers a $180 plan that comes with 1 year of service, unlimited talk/text, and 4GB/mo of data. That's just $15/mo, however, it is on T-Mobile's network.
Visible, owned by Verizon, offers a $25/mo unlimited talk/text/data plan (when you're in a party of 4+).
One feature Tracfone does offer, that we don't see many places elsewhere, is unlimited data carryover. If you only use 1GB data in one month, the remaining amount will carryover to the next month, just like their other airtime cards.
As all long-term Tracfone users know, the best part of it is you get to choose what prepaid options to buy based on how much you use, and anything you don't use, gets carried over to the next month. But this also means you have to keep track of how much airtime or data you are using, and how many service days you have left. And sometimes an unlimited option just makes life a little easier.
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If you're shopping for a smartphone, be sure to check out our List of the Best Tracfone Smartphones, which includes some of best current smartphones available from Tracfone. And for cost-conscious people, we just published the Best Tracfone Smartphones under $100 list.
You can also Bring Your Own Phone to Tracfone, including devices like the Moto G Stylus, iPhone, and more
See our Latest list of Deals and Discounts on Tracfone cell phones, but be careful, you might find a deal too good to pass up!
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