Netflix has confirmed it is dropping the Basic plan in the UK and the United States.
Now those seeking a cheaper subscription will have to go to for the Basic With Ads plan. If you don’t want ads at all, you’ll be paying £11 for the standard subscription.
In a letter to shareholders, the company said confirmed earlier reporting that the Basic ads-free plan was going away, just as it did in Canada earlier this year. Netflix says: “We’re now doing the same in the US and the UK. We believe our entry prices in these countries – $6.99 in the US, £4.99 in the UK and $5.99 in Canada – provide great value to consumers given the breadth and quality of our catalogue.”
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The good news is, current subscribers will be able to retain access to Basic ads-free. They won’t have to upgrade to the £10.99 a month Netflix Standard plan, or downgrade to the £4.99 Basic With Ads plan. You can learn all about the current plans in our guide.
Meanwhile, Netflix’s decision to crack down on password sharing is working out quite well, it seems. In its latest earnings report, the streaming giant revealed it added a whopping six million new and paying subscribers in the three months leading up to the end of June.
The gains coincide with the company’s efforts to remove users who don’t live with the primary account holder and have been using someone else’s password – something Netflix once encouraged.
The company wrote: “The cancel reaction was low and while we’re still in the early stages of monetisation, we’re seeing healthy conversion of borrower households into full paying Netflix memberships as well as the uptake of our extra member feature. We are revenue and paid membership positive vs. prior to the launch of paid sharing across every region in our latest launch.”
Netflix said the remaining countries where sharing between households hasn’t yet been addressed will be today, so there’ll be no escaping it. The password sharing crackdown also came alongside the launch of the Extra Member offer, which enables account holders to add additional members who live outside of their household.
Seeing as Netflix kicked off password sharing users living outside of the primary residence, this was seen as a healthy middle ground because it’s less expensive than the password borrower getting their own account.
