Queen Charlotte.
Photo: /Liam Daniel/Netflix
Update, Tuesday, January 23: As part of of latest Netflix’s latest quarterly earnings report, the streamer announced that it will look to “retire” its Basic plan sooner than later for those who are still grandfathered in. Basic-plan subscribers in Canada and the U.K. will be the first to lose access to their coveted subscription tier in Q2 of this year. The streamer will continue to phase out the Basic plan for the tier’s remaining subscribers in additional countries making up the company’s ad markets, so don’t be surprised if United States subscribers find themselves scrambling later this year. Netflix’s overall goal here seems clear: They want you all to resubscribe to their Ads plan to help goose the company’s ad revenue — or, if you have the extra cash, upgrade to the premium tier.
Original story from July 19 follows.
Netflix has tightened its price options ahead of its second-quarter earnings report this week, unceremoniously killing off its cheapest ad-free subscription, Netflix Basic. Going forward, new users in the United States and the United Kingdom won’t be able to sign up for the $9.99 per month (or £6.99 per month) plan. Basic offered users ad-free 720p video and a single video stream, as opposed to the 1080p video and two streams available on the Standard plan. Users already signed up for Basic will be grandfathered in, Netflix says, and can “remain on this plan until you change plans or cancel your account.” For everyone else, these are the revised subscription options, per the company’s help page:
• Standard With Ads: $6.99/month
• Standard: $15.49/month (extra member slots can be added for $7.99 each/month)
• Premium: $19.99/month (extra member slots can be added for $7.99 each/month)
Ending the Basic tier is in part a move to encourage sign-ups to Standard With Ads, the ad-supported tier that launched late last year and which was both competitively priced and nets the company, it has said, more profits per customer. The ax fell on Basic less than a month after Netflix did the same exact thing in Canada and less than 24 hours before Netflix’s second-quarter earnings call today. Netflix overall seems to have had a strong Q2: Its crackdown on password sharing led to a wave of new sign-ups, and analysts see its international content pipeline as relatively insulated from the two strikes that all but shut down the major Hollywood studios this summer.