Vodafone offers new subscription bundling feature, Pay with Vodafone

In what seems to be a growing trend for telcos, Vodafone is the latest provider to offer the option to add on entertainment subscriptions to your plan. This essentially means you can bundle everything into the one bill.

Called ‘Pay with Vodafone,’ this option allows you to add on a range of entertainment services — from music to video streaming — onto your Vodafone bill. While these typically aren’t free or discounted subscriptions (beyond special offers), it’s handy if you prefer to have fewer bills coming in, or if you’re not a fan of having too many direct debits coming out of your account.

What is Pay with Vodafone?

Pay with Vodafone is essentially a bundling service for new or existing Vodafone postpaid mobile plan customers. However, it is different to more traditional bundling services, where you would add on multiple products from the one provider to your plan. This bundling service allows you to add on subscriptions from multiple companies onto your Vodafone bill.

This means that those subscriptions and services will be provided by a third party (not Vodafone), however you’ll pay for it via your monthly Vodafone postpaid phone bill. While you might want to use this mainly for adding on a subscription service, it can also be used to make one-off payments.

You can currently use Pay with Vodafone to add on several services to your monthly bill. These include Netflix, Amazon Prime (including Prime Video, Prime Reading and Prime Gaming), Amazon Music Unlimited, Norton and Google Play.

While you will pay an additional amount more for each service you add to your account (with $100 the maximum each month you can add on to your Pay with Vodafone service), you might be able to pick up deals and discounts. Currently Vodafone is offering three months free of Amazon Music Unlimited (for new Amazon Music Unlimited customers on eligible Vodafone plans), and then after those three months, you’ll be charged $11.99 per month for the service. This offer expires February 22, 2022 and you must redeem within 30 days of purchase, terms apply.

One big condition of accessing Pay with Vodafone is that it is only available for customers with eligible postpaid Vodafone phone plans, meaning prepaid and internet customers are currently ineligible. The feature is also enabled by default, meaning if you don’t want the service, you’ll need to opt out by calling Vodafone (from your Vodafone phone service) on 1555. Otherwise, you can simply not add any subscriptions to your plan, or cancel existing ones such as any free offers you’ve taken up, so you’re not charged.

If Pay with Vodafone sounds like an interesting option for you, and you’re looking to sign up to a postpaid Vodafone phone plan, the following table shows all of Vodafone’s postpaid SIM-only plans from Canstar Blue’s database, listed in order of standard cost, lowest to highest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest. Use our mobile phone plan comparison tool to see a wide range of plans from other providers. This table includes products with links to referral partners.

Related: NBN Bundles Compared

Other subscription bundle services

As previously mentioned, Vodafone is only the latest telco to offer the option to bundle subscription services onto your bill. Entertainment bundles, especially for internet plans, have been a big feature for many internet providers for years. Additional set top boxes such as Fetch and Telstra TV have dominated the entertainment bundle space, however now that trend is moving towards bundling subscription services as our entertainment needs change.

Telstra has been doing subscription bundling for a while (in addition to Telstra TV), with Foxtel from Telstra being one of the first offerings Telstra provided to customers. This feature allowed you to sign up to your Foxtel service via Telstra, and put it on your Telstra bill. Telstra has also branched out into offering other services such as Foxtel Now (Foxtel’s on-demand subscription service), BINGE, Netflix, Kayo and a more recent addition, Disney+. Gamers can also add on an Xbox Game Pass and Xbox All Access, which includes your choice of Xbox console.

Optus has also branched out in the subscription bundling service, in addition to offering Fetch entertainment add-ons. Optus released Sub Hub in 2021, as a free-to-use service (subscription costs are extra) where Optus customers can manage their subscription services in the one place. Not only that, but you can get free access on subscriptions for a set period of time, and you can also save with the more subscriptions you’ve added on. Currently Optus offers access to Optus Sport, Amazon Prime, Calm, Kindle Unlimited, Inkl, iQiyi, Brit Box, Sweat and iWonder.

Related: Netflix Australia Plans & Prices

Should I bundle my subscriptions on my phone or internet plan?

Adding on subscriptions to your existing phone or internet plan does have its pros and cons. The clear advantage is that you can pay for everything on the one bill. With so many streaming services and subscription products out there, if you’re a serial subscriber and find it hard to keep track of what you’re signed up to, having it all in the one place could be useful.

In the case of Optus’s Sub Hub, the offer to save on your subscriptions when you add on more options does have its clear advantages (in addition to receiving free subscription periods at sign-up). But simply being able to condense multiple services on the one bill might not be enough to entice some people to switch over to a provider, or indeed to even use the service.

The only thing to be wary of, if you’re interested in these bundling services, is that you actually need, and will use, the subscription you’re adding on to your plan. Rather than being tempted by offers or discounts, and then perhaps forgetting to cancel when you’re no longer using the service, consider whether these are services you would be paying for regardless and just how much you get out of the content.

Ultimately, you’ll know if these bundling offers are right for you. Whether these are services you already subscribe to (and you like the convenience of one bill), or it’s the nudge you need to sign up to something you’ve been meaning to try out, consider the costs, any terms or conditions, and whether it suits your needs before signing up.