Ink subscriptions: what you need to know
There are many good reasons to consider ink subscriptions; just make sure that it doesn’t end up costing you more
If you buy a printer from Epson or HP, you’ll be bombarded with information about ink subscriptions. Adverts litter their websites, the printer boxes, stickers attached to the printers themselves and, in the case of HP, we even got an advert for the service on the printers’ screens. Both companies claim you can save up to 70% on ink if you take out a subscription rather than buying the company’s own inks directly.
HP’s service is called Instant Ink and Epson’s is ReadyPrint Flex. Subscribe to either service and your network-connected printer reports back to base when its ink supplies are getting low, at which point new ink cartridges are promptly despatched. You can send empty cartridges back to be recycled using the supplied prepaid envelope.
Bur neither is simply an inkreplacement service. Rather than pay on a per-cartridge basis, you pay a certain amount per month and that buys you a certain number of pages
( see tables below). If you print fewer, you can roll some of them over and add them to next month’s quota. If you print more, you’re charged an additional amount per page until the next month’s quota kicks in.
HP’s Instant Ink service starts at 99p per month for its Light plan. This allows you to print 15 pages per month, which works out to 6.6p per page regardless of whether they’re mono or colour (if you use your entire quota). Excess pages are then charged at 10p each. If you haven’t used your full quota, you can roll up to 45 pages (three times the number of pages in the plan) over to the following month.
Need more? As the table below shows, there are many other choices.
The Epson course
Epson has five plans in its ReadyPrint Flex subscription, but where HP’s start at 99p per month Epson’s cheapest is £1.29 per month. This lets you print 30 pages per month, twice that of HP’s equivalent. Epson’s rollover also operates slightly differently: you can carry over all your pages, but only for two months, after which excess pages will expire. As you can see from the table below, Epson’s £1.99, £3.49 and £9.99 options offer the same price per page as HP’s service, but its 500-page £16.49 per month level isn’t as good value as HP’s highest tier. Epson’s service is offered with its Expression Home and WorkForce printers.
If you like the idea of getting replacement ink sent when you need it but would prefer to pay for the cartridges rather than by the page, Epson’s ReadyPrint Go service uses the same just-in-time ink delivery and recycling, but charges for each cartridge it sends out. Note that both of the services allow you to switch plans or cancel at any time, and there’s no minimum contract length.
Brother for rent
Brother offers a different take on the service: you effectively rent the device and printing supplies in one package. As a result, the costs are higher, with the cheapest inkjet deal costing £13 per month. You also have to agree to a contract of 24 months, which works out at £312 over the course of the contract, but in return you can print 6,000 pages per year (500 per month). You don’t get to choose which printer you’ll receive as Brother will fulfil this based on what it has in stock.
One key factor to consider is that all these prices are for any page, mono or colour, and whether the print is a success or not. If you cancel a print, for example, any partially printed pages will count.
As you can see from the tables, the subscription model could save you money, as long as you’re getting close to your full quota of printing every month and you tend to print more colour pages than mono. However, if most of your output is mono printed, the cost per page of printing might still work out cheaper if you simply replace cartridges normally.
It’s also worth noting that none of these services approach the value for money you can get per page if you opt for a printer that uses an ink tank instead, such as Epson’s ET-2750 or Canon’s G series. Although these models cost more upfront, the price of printing is lower than even the best value subscription.
“None of these services approach the value for money you can get per page if you opt for a printer that uses an ink tank instead”