We go over all its features and perks
Whether you’ve ordered from Amazon before or not, you’ve probably heard of Amazon Prime. Amazon’s paid subscription pays a crucial role in keeping customers from shifting to other competitors. For many buyers the ability to get your items in two days for free or even the next day for just a few bucks is what keeps them loyal to Amazon.
If that was everything Amazon Prime offered, it wouldn’t be worth the money that Amazon’s asking for the subscription. However, Amazon Prime isn’t all about fast delivery. It comes with a number of different benefits, including entertainment perks, product deals, and exclusive discounts.
Table of Contents
Let’s break down what exactly you get with Amazon Prime and whether it’s worth the cost.
What Is Amazon Prime?
Amazon Prime is a paid subscription from Amazon that gives users certain benefits. The benefits include a variety of fast delivery options, as well as entertainment content like streaming music and video.
How Much Does It Cost?
The cost of Amazon Prime varies depending on what plan you choose.
First of all, every 12 months you can start a free 30-day trial of Amazon. That way you can see for yourself if you find the benefits that Prime offers are worth the price you’ll have to pay later.
Just remember that Amazon keeps your credit card information when you first sign up. So if you don’t want to buy the subscription but forget to manually cancel it, Amazon will start charging you once your free trial expires.
Amazon Prime subscription comes in the following tiers:
- Prime Video is $8.99 per month. This subscription is limited to the entertainment sector and includes unlimited video and music streaming services, unlimited reading, and photo storage.
- Prime monthly is $12.99 per month. You still get the full benefits of the subscription, but spread out your payments instead. However, this plan will cost you about $37 more than Prime annual.
- Prime annual is $119 per year. For those who want to enjoy the full benefits of Prime and pay less.
- If you’re a student and have access to a university email, you can get a special Prime Student plan. It’s $6.49 per month after an original six-months free trial.
You can also share Amazon Prime benefits with friends and family via Amazon Household making it an even better deal.
How To Get Amazon Prime
To join Amazon Prime, follow the steps.
- Open Amazon on your computer or smartphone.
- Sign in if you already have a registered Amazon account, or create a new Amazon account.
- Select Your Account from the menu and click Prime > See More Plans.
- Choose one of the special offers, or click See More Plans to view all Amazon Prime subscription options. Pick one and click Start Your 30-day Free Trial.
Once you fill in your payment details and confirm your membership, you become an Amazon Prime user.
What Do You Get With Amazon Prime?
On top of the 2-day free shipping, Amazon Prime comes with a few dozen other perks that can be generally divided into three groups. Let’s take a look at those perks so you can decide if Amazon Prime is worth it.
The Delivery & Shipping Perks
Aside from the 2-day free shipping and the same-day delivery on selected items, Amazon Prime users get access to Prime Now. The feature allows you to receive the items as soon as an hour after you order them. In some cities, that includes groceries too.
A good way to assess whether the shipping benefits alone of Amazon Prime are worth the money for you is to see if you spend more than $119 in shipping per year.
The Entertainment Perks
Amazon Prime includes a selection of entertainment benefits. The main ones here are Prime Video and Prime Music. Compared to other streaming services, Prime is cheaper than the standard Netflix or Hulu plan. At the same time, Prime Music won’t cost you as much as the Spotify Premium subscription.
It all comes down to whether you find the selection of video and audio content that Amazon Prime offers wide enough to forsake the other services and fully migrate to Prime. If the answer is yes, then you’ll save quite a lot of money on entertainment in the long run by getting Prime membership.
Prime Reading is another service that you get with Prime. It allows for free unlimited use of over a thousand books, magazines, and other content. A full-price book on Kindle is about $10 on average. If you’re a heavy reader and tend to buy and read at least one book per month, Amazon Prime can potentially save you over $100 a year.
For gamers, Amazon offers to take your streaming addiction to the next level with Twitch Prime. The benefits include viewing Twitch streams ad-free, access to free games, and special Amazon discounts on games you’re looking to buy.
Last but not least, you can take advantage of your Prime membership with Prime Photos that offers unlimited photo storage in Amazon’s cloud.
Special Deals & Discounts
Prime users enjoy quite a lot of exclusive Amazon discounts. For example, if you often shop at Whole Foods, you’ll be happy to know that with Amazon Prime you get 10% off on selected items at all Whole Foods stores.
On Amazon, you also get early access to Lightning Deals as a Prime user. You still have to be quick to snatch a good deal though, since it’s just a 30 minutes extra that you get compared to a non-Prime user.
If you’re using Amazon Echo or Echo Dot, you can turn Alexa into your shopping assistant with Prime. You can request your digital assistant to buy items for you from Amazon. Saves you time and effort on online shopping.
Is Amazon Prime Worth It?
Like with any other Premium subscription, you’re the only one who can decide whether Amazon Prime is worth it for you. While it does come with many perks, you might either find them very useful or completely pointless if you can’t take advantage of them.
The good news is, you can try Amazon Prime for free and cancel it anytime in case you get disappointed (and you don’t even have to delete your Amazon account to do that).
Do you think Amazon Prime is worth the cost? Which Prime services do you use most as part of your subscription? Share your Amazon Prime experience with us in the comments below.
