No one likes paying more money for the same services. Netflix’s ad-supported tiers represented a way to escape the constant price hikes by putting up with ads, and they’ve been around for over a year for users in several countries. With ad-supported plans being a thing, Netflix discontinued its Basic ad-free tier for new users. Now, though, Netflix wants to get rid of it completely.
In its latest earnings call, Netflix confirmed that it plans to completely retire the Basic plan. Previously, the plan was taken away for new or rejoining users, giving users the option to either get Standard with Ads (a $6.99/month value) or go all the way up to Standard if you wanted no ads with your plan ($15.49/month). Still, if you happened to be on the Basic plan, Netflix wouldn’t be taking it away from you if you were still paying for it, promising users that they’ll still be on Basic until either the plan was changed or the subscription was cancelled. Netflix even recently increased the price of the Basic tier for these grandfathered users, going up to $11.99 a month. It looks like the company is reversing course now, and wants users on Basic to move to a different plan.
As for when you can expect this change to happen, Netflix says that it’s looking to retire the plan first in Canada and the UK starting in Q2, and going to its other “ads countries” over the following months. If you’re currently a Basic user, there’s three options that would be left for you going from here—you can go down to the ad-supported plan, fork up an extra $3.50 per month for the Standard ad-free tier (until Netflix inevitably increases the price for that again, because it seems to be doing it every few months by now), or just cancel your Netflix subscription completely.
It’s dissapointing that Netflix still thinks the Basic plan is not profitable enough even after a price hike. This might be a good time to reevaluate your Netflix usage, though, and consider switching to other streaming services (or just put that money towards Blu-ray media that you can own forever).
