Last week Hulu announced a price drop for Hulu Plus, which is a subscription based plan for streaming content to various devices to $7.99. Today Netflix has finally introduced a new price plan for streaming video only for $7.99 a month to compete with Hulu.
Back in September of this year, Netflix offered their streaming video service to Canada for $7.99 as well. The company received an overwhelming amount of feedback from their US customer base wanting a streaming only plan as an option as well. Finally the company has fulfilled the requests of their US customers.
Unfortunately though, Netflix raised the price of their other plans at the same time.
Below is the official announcement from the Netflix Blog:
“A new plan for watching instantly, plus price changes to existing unlimited plans
Hi, Jessie Becker here, VP Marketing, with an update about changes we are making today to our plans and prices.
First, we are now offering a new $7.99 a month plan which lets you instantly watch unlimited TV episodes and movies streamed to your computer or TV. This plan does not include any DVDs. All the titles you can watch instantly on your current plan are also available on this new plan, and as a reminder, not all titles on DVD are available to watch instantly. This new plan is available immediately – if you’d like to switch to this new plan at any time, simply visit Your Account.
Second, we are increasing the prices on our unlimited plans that offer both watching instantly and DVDs by mail. On our two most popular unlimited plans – the 1 DVD out at a time and 2 DVDs out at a time – the price is increasing by $1 a month. We’ve also included below the changes on all the plans. To see how these changes impact your Netflix account, visit Membership Details.Why the changes? Our selection of TV episodes and movies available to stream has grown dramatically, and as a result most members want us to deliver unlimited TV episodes and movies two ways: streaming instantly over the internet plus DVDs by mail. The price increase will allow us to continue to offer the popular plan choice of unlimited TV episodes and movies streaming instantly along with unlimited DVDs. The new plan, which does not include DVDs, is a great option for the increasing number of members who only want to watch instantly. The $7.99 a month price reflects no DVD shipping costs on this plan.
You might also wonder why we haven’t introduced a new plan that includes only DVDs by mail. The fact is that Netflix members are already watching more TV episodes and movies streamed instantly over the Internet than on DVDs, and we expect that trend to continue. Creating the best user experience that we can around watching instantly is how we’re spending the vast majority of our time and resources. Because of this, we are not creating any plans that are focused solely on DVDs by mail.
We hope you’re enjoying great TV shows and movies from Netflix, and that you’ll continue to enjoy Netflix on whichever plan you choose. We realize you have lots of home entertainment options, and we thank you for your business. As always, if you have any questions, please call us at 800-715-2146.”
