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Proton launches privacy-centric alternative to your Google One family plan
One subscription to unlock everything Proton, for the whole household
Privacy is of the essence in the modern digital landscape, and every major business like Google promises to keep your data safe. However, Swiss brand Proton has made a name for itself in this business with secure services like Proton Mail, VPN, Drive, and Calendar. Unlocking their full scope requires a recurring payment, but Proton has now introduced a new subscription which can unlock all these services at an affordable price for families.
Xbox is testing a way to share Game Pass Ultimate with friends and family
Gamers interested sharing the love can invite up to four friends to join in
Everything's a subscription these days — like Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service, which crossed 25 million subscriptions earlier this year, and shows no signs of slowing down. The gaming offering has so far held its own against the likes of Playstation Plus and cloud service Google Stadia, thanks to its wide variety of indie games and AAA titles. With Sony revamping Playstation Plus, Microsoft is also looking to shake things up, and is starting a test that allows users to share Game Pass Ultimate benefits with their friends and family.
Dropbox Family is now available for everyone, and it's one hell of a bad deal
More expensive than Google's and Microsoft's family offers
Not too long ago, Dropbox introduced a whole slew of new features to its subscribers without raising its prices: there's its own password manager, the extra secure Dropbox Vault, and the option to back up select folders outside Dropbox from your computer. The company also announced a Family plan that would let up to six people share a single 2TB account, and today, this new tier is available to everyone. It costs $16.99 a month, which is just $7 more than a one-user Dropbox Plus subscription.
There are multiple layers to Amazon's Prime subscription model, from full access to video to just Kindle. All of these pricing tiers offer a lot of choice on how you get your media from Amazon's ecosystem, which is pretty great. Music Unlimited was added to this list a month ago, offering what Prime Music did already, but with a whole lot more content. An additional family plan was announced for those interested, allowing up to six people to access the vast selection of music. Well, now that new plan is available in the US.It comes in at $14.99/month for both Prime and non-Prime customers, or $149/year for the former. New users of the music service will get a 30-day trial. This makes it the fourth tier, joining Prime, non-Prime, and single Echo pricing. So if you're a Music Unlimited subscriber, this is neat and in league with Google Play Music's family plan (same price, too). Below is further information for those interested.
Spotify's Family Plan launched around 18 months ago, costing up to $29.99 for five members. While not outrageously expensive in the grand scheme of things, it was vastly overpriced compared to its chief competitors, Google Play Music and Apple Music, both of which charge $14.99 for six users on their Family Plans.
T-Mobile has run a few recent promotions for family plans with four or more lines, but what if you don't need that many? T-Mobile is starting a new promo tomorrow that might be just what you're looking for. The new (and unfortunately named) Data Gone Wild promo includes two lines with 6GB of data each for $80 per month.
It's official. Google has announced that Play Music family plans are arriving in the coming days in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the US. They will let account holders share music with up to five other family members for a cost of $15 a month.
With all of the activity surrounding YouTube Red, including a brand new YouTube Music app, it seems like a good time for a Play Music update. Version 6.1 just landed and aside from a mysterious new "Auto-offline" feature and a bit of cleanup in the Settings screen, it looks like a pretty typical bug fix release. However, the teardown tells a different story. It looks like this version also brings support for the recently announced family plans and Android Wear speaker support. As usual, we've also got a download link at the bottom if you can't wait for the apk to roll out to your account.
T-Mobile's unlimited talk, text, and data plan is the big carrier option to beat at a month. But so far it's only been available to individual customers - if you have four people and you want four lines of unlimited data, you need four different accounts. Starting tomorrow, December 10th, unlimited data will be available for families as well. The cheapest option is unlimited talk, text, and data on two lines for $100 a month, a $60 savings over the old structure.
Not content to fire back at the competition with just one volley, the company has continued its barrage with two new announcements. For starters, it's opening up family plans from a limit of five to up to ten lines. For most of us, that inherently means we're going to have to look outside of our immediate families to hit the max. It's time to get grandma a smartphone, call up that cheap uncle, and bring in a couple of college-bound cousins. Each additional line adds $10 per month after the second subscriber, and each person gets their own dedicated amount of data. This adjustment will take effect tomorrow, August 27th.
Sprint has heard your regular complaints about its slow network, your jabs at its decision to cram an r into the word family, and your steady insistence that it just isn't good enough to compete. Now the company is trying to turn that around with a bargain that, on paper at least, makes for a good deal. It's rolling out a new family plan called the Family Share Pack offering 20GB of shared data plus 2GB per device for just $100 a month. The offer supports up to ten lines and will be available starting August 22nd.
In an angsty blog post today eviscerating the prices AT&T and other carriers charge for family plans, T-Mobile CEO John Legere announced that his company was going to provide customers with even more bang for their buck. From July 30th through September, the carrier will offer a family of four up to 10GB of data for $100. For people who sign up during this time, these rates will last until 2016.