Updated August 2016. Here’s the current status of things:
- New Ting customers get a $25 credit with a referral link. Thanks in advance if you use it, you’ll be saving my parents some money on their bill, as I set them up with Ting service and an old iPhone.
- GSM SIM cards currently cost $9 + free shipping via USPS Priority Mail.
- You can bring over any used T-Mobile or unlocked GSM phone. Ting phone compatibility checker tool. .
- You can buy a used iPhone 5 for about $109 now, or a used Samsung Galaxy S4 for $110.
Ting provides mobile phone service with a “pay-only-for-what-you-use” structure. While their classic program required Sprint phones, their newer GSM program is compatible with nearly any phone that takes GSM sim cards. Supposedly 80% of smartphones now work with GSM service and have SIM card slots. My old Verizon iPhone 5 was GSM unlocked. Their GSM SIM card service uses the T-Mobile GSM MVNO network.
I’ve been customer of the Ting GSM program with my out-of-contract iPhone 5 for over a year now. Useful links:
- Ting interactive rate calculator to see how much they would charge you. If you are not a power user or have a lot of variability in your usage, Ting can often save money over time. (Tip: You can set alerts or even hard usage caps, so you’ll never exceed a certain level.)
- Ting phone compatibility checker tool. Bringing over a used GSM or Sprint phone is the best deal in my opinion. You can find a lot of good, cheap GSM phones on the secondary market now, like the Galaxy S series or iPhone 5 or 5S.
Here’s a screenshot of their NEW rate breakdown:
Here’s a screenshot of their OLD rate breakdown. You can see that their data used to be much more expensive, working out to $19 for the first GB, $29 for 2GB tier, and then $15 per extra GB of data (billed pretty much down to the penny). As of 8/5/2016, the numbers are $16 for the first GB, $20 for 2 GB tier, and then $10 per extra GB of data (billed in $10 increments). Pretty much no matter what, the new data plan is cheaper than the old data plan.
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I checked out Ting, but I’m actually paying less for my second line with BYOWireless. BYO is an MVNO with CDMA (Verizon) and GSM (not sure who). TIng’s website looks a bit more refined than BYO, but I would take Verizon coverage over Sprint any day, and for nearly half the price, I think I’ll stick with BYO.
I like your blog, but have noticed that you often review phone plans, maybe too often.
Ting’s pay-per-use concept is very interesting. However, it looks like it doesn’t take a lot of usage before Ting becomes more expensive that Cricket’s $30 (after $5 autopay credit) 2.5GB, unlimited talk/text plan. And that’s on the AT&T network, which is better than TMo or Sprint for most.
I have Cricket as well and am completely satisfied with it. I was looking into Ting before but they didn’t have GSM support at the time and it turned out to be more costly then what I needed.
It’s actually $35 after $5 autopay credit. So, $70 for me and my wife.
If we add one more line, we can ditch the autopay discount for “Group Save” discount which gives you $10 off for the second line and $20 off for the 3rd line. $40 x 3 lines = $120 – $30 = $90 – which comes out to $30 per line.
$25 per month on Cricket is a great deal. With a cheap phone (iPhone 3) bought off Amazon, I get great talk/text and decent data for a killer price.
So, I guess you’re referring to Group Save discount with 4 lines?
$25 plan doesn’t have data.
My Cricket Wireless plan costs me $25 per month with unlimited talk/text. A basic data plan is $10 more.
It seems to me that Cricket would be cheaper for anyone who didn’t use their phone for emergencies only.
It all depends only your usage. Ting data is relatively expensive if you use a lot every month, for sure. But for example, two people on the Cricket unlimited talk/text is $50 a month. A moderate use couple could have two devices and share 1,000 minutes and 1,000 texts for $35 + taxes. My wife and I rarely use that much in talk/text, my parents never. For me the taxes on $35 would be around $5. But if they go a month and have light usage of 500 shared minutes and 100 texts, that’s only $18 + taxes for that month for two people.
Figured I would throw in my 2 cents. I gave the Ting GMS a whirl with my iphone 4s coming from T-mobile. Since Ting uses T-mobile as their GSM provider, I figured the service would not be different, but it appears I was wrong. When I went to activate the sim based on my phone’s IMEI it said I would not have access to anything above 2g/edge. This seemed odd considering my normal T-mobile service lists 4g (that non LTE 4g HSPA+ I think). I called Ting and while they stood behind what the site said (no 3g/4g) they assured me that their GSM service was the same as T-mobile and that it wouldn’t hurt to give it a shot. I went ahead with activation and my phone did end up connecting via 3g, but not 4g. This suggests that whatever deal Ting made with T-mobile, it not the same level of service as one can expect on T-mobile straight up (at least under my circumstances). I figured all the misinformation and such was due to GSM being in beta and I went ahead and scrapped the whole thing and popped back in my T-mobile sim. I might give it another try when I get a new phone sometime down the line.
gousmobile.com/plans (i.e. US Mobile) has better rate structure than Ting, at least for my usage. Tings $6 base fee kills the deal for me.
US Mobile looks great for GSM! I’m just not a huge GSM fan because of the rural areas I drive through.
My wife and I have been using Ting for over a year and we love it. Thankfully we both had phones that were on the Sprint network.
If I ever upgrade my phone, I’ll definitely check out these other services too.
I’ve been using RingPlus (Sprint MVNO) for the last 6 months and am pretty happy with it. 400 minutes, 400 texts and 300MB costs $11.36/mo after all taxes and fees in MA. Overages are 2cents per minute/text/MB. Overall, a great deal.
The one caveat is that MMS costs 6 cents each which can add up quickly if that’s a feature you use frequently.
I think the one thing that Ting has most of these other MVNOs beat on is customer service/support. They’re very responsive and have answered any of my issues quickly over email. They also provide excellent phone support.
The biggest downside for me has been the new device restrictions on the CDMA/Sprint side. Sprint is not allowing phones that have been bought for full price to be moved onto Ting. Hopefully the new Nexus (rumored to be coming in October) will fix that issue for my aging GS3.
>Sprint is not allowing phones that have been bought for full price to be moved onto Ting.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Once it’s paid in full, why would Sprint care whether it goes on Ting or not? How else would one get a Sprint phone onto Ting (I bought my phone used)?
A Sprint postpaid phone must have been activated on Sprint at least a year ago before it can be BYOD. Sprint does not consider themselves a source for Ting phones.
Sprint prepaid (Sprint Prepaid, Boost, Virgin Mobile) phones must have been on their native service at least 12 months continuously before being brought to Ting, permitting Sprint to reclaim the subsidy on those phones.
My question is about phones on the “secondary market.” Are you talking ebay or somewhere else? My wife and I are with Sprint and both have 2+ year old iphone 5. We will both need new phones soon as we have already begun to have issues. However, Sprint now charges $25 a month for an iphone 6 so what can I do? Any recs for how to find a good phone for less? Thanks!
I think the iPhone 5 or 5S is still a perfectly good phone, but you can find them or a 6 or 6+ at places like eBay and buyback sites like Gazelle, uSell, Nextworth, and so on. You can also buy them in some physical stores like GameStop for a bit higher. There’s always Craigslist but I’m not as into dealing with potential issues like no shows. Also just ask around with any coworker with a shiny new iPhone 6 because they probably have an old one at home.
Best prices i’ve seen have been on Gazelle. I also like Amazon (you can buy used items from 3rd party vendors). I dont really like eBay (their fees are high and searching for an item & bidding is annoying) and I would never recommend craigslist, 9/10 times its a scam or noshow or dangerous situation, etc.
I always buy a used phone. They depreciate ridiculously quickly (more than cars it seems) So for $350 you can get a really decent 1 yr old phone that cost $650 brand new a year ago. iPhone 5S is the phone to buy right now.
Wow, 9 out of 10 times are a failure via Craigslist? Where do you live, Detroit? I have used Craigslist for years now, almost a full decade and have never been stood-up, scammed, or endangered. I guess I need to start playing the lottery.
God bless you man, if it works for you then keep it up, I’m in eastern PA, but I tend to look for tech gadgets maybe that’s why?
This could be good for the low end user, and it is great to see more companies trying this method. Still appears, at first glance, to be pricier than my current plan with AT&T. That cannot be good for Ting, but then again I am using my phone daily and meeting my data caps on a regular basis.
This reminds me of the pay as you go method I used in southeast asia. I absolutely loved it there, but life was also much different when it came to calls/texting/data usage.
I’m doing something a little weird. I have a dual sim from Hong Kong that covers both Tmobile and ATT frequencies.
My first sim is pay as you go Lycamobile. They charge me 2¢/min (in coming and out going) and 4¢ for texts, no data and no mms. I have them reload $10 from credit card when ever the balance drops below $1. It works out that I only get charged $10 every 2 months.
My second sim is Harbor Mobile’s Tablet plan. $15/month ($18 with their $3 fee) for 5GB of data. Harbor Mobil is kind of weird and no telling how long they will be around. They seem to be making all their customers into employees in order to qualify for TMobile’s Business service. As such technically Harbor owns your number and account. Anything you need done to your account has to go through Harbor and not Tmobile. You also need to be a business or self employed, they will ask for EIN# or some proof that you are a business. Would I trust them with a number I have had for years…no. I would not have a problem porting my number to Google Voice and have that service forward to a HM number. In my case, I’m just using a data line, I don’t really care about the phone number on the data line. If Harbor goes away, I have another similar option that will only be a couple more dollars a month.
This gives me smartphone service for about $23/month. Both charge my credit card and its been a trouble free 4 months.
Hey Jonathan, have you looked into Google’s Project Fi: https://fi.google.com/about/plan/ It’s $20/mo + $10/GB but it supposedly uses BOTH T-mobile and Sprint networks (but you have to own a Nexus 6, for now). I really want to find a new carrier, but it seems that all of them have equally terrible coverage here in PDX!
I didn’t save any money with Ting. I ended up with $33 bill every month from Ting because of data overage. I left Ting to sign up with Cricket. Ting is a great company with good customer service but price wise it’s not competitive with other carriers.
Yes, Ting is not for consistently moderate to heavy data users due to their pay-for-what-you-eat structure. But if you are a light data user or have a bunch of months where you use hardly any data to balance out the other months, it can save money over other MVNOs. The Cricket $35 auto-pay plan is a good choice for GSM/ex-AT&T users.
I posted about 2 months ago about RingPlus and since then things have only gotten better. They’ve reduced MMS fees from 6 to 4 cents (however if you turn off MMS support you can receive them for free, just not send them) and added a completely free plan – no taxes, nothing! The only catch is that you listen to their adds instead of hearing the ringing sound when you make outgoing calls. Still, for that they give you 250 minutes, 500 texts and 10MB with 2 cent overages. If you’re a heavy data user you can add additional gigs for $8/month which automatically renews each month. You can add text and talk in a similar fashion, so it’s pretty much a make your own plan type of thing.
I’m pretty careful with my mobile data and last month my bill was 96 cents after taxes! My wife who’s not as careful decided to download the Lollipop update over mobile data and racked up a $30 bill last month though… Still not terrible.
This company is definitely worth a look if you’re a light phone user or don’t mind managing you data carefully.
https://ringplus.net/#plans
Here’s a link to my previous post about RingPlus. Each Free plan is a little different because they open up only for set windows of time. Just be sure to note both pros and cons. In the past, they have discontinued Free plans with little notice in certain geographic areas if they can’t line up enough advertising to subsidize them.
https://www.mymoneyblog.com/ringplus-basic-free-cellular-phone-service.html
True but in the worst case that they cancel the free plan I’m using, I fall back to Mint for $4.99 or Bella (the one I originally signed up with) for $9.99. Both are still great deals and much better than the ~$26 I paid to Virgin Mobile or what I would have had to pay with Ting (~$20/phone plus tax) which was the other service I was considering.
If RingPlus totally implodes, I can take the same phone and move it to Ting without any new hardware. The same sim works for both services.
I’d say RingPlus is 100% worth a shot, although for some reason I have a hard time convincing anyone of this. Perhaps it has too much of a fly-by-night air to it? I’d agree from the outside, but after taking the plunge, I’m totally satisfied and find that they are constantly looking for ways to innovate and are really active in the user community. Executive level employees are pretty frequently posting on their discourse site.
Oh, and your previous post mentioned that you were unsure how easy it is to check usage. It’s actually really, easy. They have a full featured dashboard set up that has loads of info. Also, a third party dev has created a pretty nice app to track usage.
Well, I think part of the problem is that there are two extremes of users. First, there are the folks that will pay a premium because their phone is critical for work and they will pay for a full carrier with roaming and big buckets of data, etc. (I happen to also get a corporate discount and deduct part of my monthly costs as a small business expense. Net personal cost is pretty low.)
On the other end, like my parents, they don’t use it all the time but want it to work reliably during emergencies (at the airport, when they need to get picked up, in the car if it breaks down). Ringplus doesn’t give off the reliable vibe, it gives off the we’re-barely-making-money vibe. RingPlus is for the folks that are relatively tech-savvy, price-sensitive, don’t use much data, AND willing to switch around and keep alert for the best deal. I totally respect such people and think the option should be publicized, but I’m not getting the plan and not putting my parents on it either.
Thanks for the tip on checking usage. If you wish to send me a screenshot of the RingPlus meter dashboard, I’ll add it to my review post. (DM or tweet @mymoneyblog or e-mail jonathan at this domain.)
Great points. It’s too bad about the lack of confidence the company exudes. Really they’re just Sprint under the hood. Theoretically if Sprint is working, then RP is too. I understand that this may not be enough to assuage fears and there are some ‘quirks’ that are definitely coming from RP’s side. With that said, I’ve never had a problem making or receiving calls.
And you’re right – it does cater to the tech-savvy crowd. You need to do some phone administration tasks to get up and running on the service but basically it amounts to following instructions. Still, I could see how that could be daunting. It’s definitely not plug and play.
What I don’t understand is the set of people who are somewhat tech-savvy but who are paying $50-$100 for their current cell service. With a couple hours invested in switching over, they could quite easily be saving on the order of $500 a year with little to no discernible loss in service quality. Somehow that’s still a hard sell. I get the impression that it’s seen as cheap or tacky which to me doesn’t make much sense. When did our phone service providers become status symbols?
A word of caution. I used to like Ting. I had close to $1,000 in credits with them from referrals. When I added a couple to new accounts for my family their system marked it as abuse and they closed all my accounts with no recourse. Even though their T&C don’t prohibit it and their website doesn’t prohibit it – they didn’t care. They basically told me over the phone they don’t want me as a customer as I’m not giving them any money. So, be careful with all these referrals, they can kick you out at any time if they decide to do that.
Used your link to sign up for Ting. Where can I see the credit balance?
“It looks like your friend thinks we’d get along. You just scored $50 off a new phone from the Ting shop or $50 in Ting credit if you buy used, buy refurbished or bring your own phone to Ting! Act now to claim your $50.”
Thanks! Assuming you went the BYOD route, I believe you should see your credit under “Billing History” and then “Refunds/Credits” after activating your device.
I have the service and honestly it’s not for everyone. The low caps make it difficult for people who are constantly using their phone. I was one of those people. But now I am not, in the interest of keeping my phone bills low. Ting lets you set limits on your phone and will cut off either voice, data or text according to your preference. There have been times I ran out of data and/or voice minutes. I lived. But if you want Ting this is what you are are getting. Unless you get a good deal of referral income, it can be expensive for what I think is minimal usage. I keep it b/c I want to curb my phone use, so it worked out.