HP raising Instant Ink subscription pricing significantly
Customers subscribed to HP's Instant Ink subscription service receive emails currently from HP about the service. The company explains in the email that it is raising the price of the monthly subscription in January 2024.
It is unclear at this point if HP is raising the price of Instant Ink subscriptions globally or only in select regions. The emails that we have seen were all sent to German subscribers of the service.
HP Instant Ink is a subscription-based service that provides subscribers with printer cartridges and ink, and a number of pages that they may print each month. A similar service is available for laser printer toners.
HP Instant Ink subscribers may select one of seven different plans. Plans differ in the number of pages that they may print each month using their printer. Pages accumulate to a certain number if some are not used in a given month and subscribers may make additional payments to print more pages.
The cheapest plan is available for 0,99 € (roughly $1) at the time of writing, which equates to 0.099 Cents for each page . It gives subscribers the right to print 10 pages in the month.
The price of this plan increases to 1,49 € per month from January 23, 2024 onward. This is roughly an increase of 50% and equates to paying 0.149 € per printed paper.
The other plans increase as well, albeit not as sharply. The next plan, the 50 pages plan, increases by about 25% from 3,99 € to 4,99 € per month. The 100 pages plan increases from 5.99 € to 6.99 €, and the 300 pages plan from 11.99 € to 13.99 €.
The three remaining plans allow subscribers to print 500, 7000 or 1500 pages per month. Their price increases from 18.99 €, 24.99 € and 49,99 € to 20.99 €, 27,99 € and 54.99 € respectively.
The number of papers that subscribers are allowed to print does not change in any of the plans.
| Plan | Old Price | New Price | Old Price / Page | New Price / Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Pages | 0.99 € | 1.49 € | 0.099 € | 0.149 € |
| 50 Pages | 3.99 € | 4.99 € | 0.08 € | 0.10 € |
| 100 Pages | 5.99 € | 6.99 € | 0.06 € | 0.07 € |
| 300 Pages | 11.99 € | 13.99 € | 0.04 € | 0.046 € |
| 500 Pages | 18.99 € | 20.99 € | 0.038 € | 0.042 € |
| 700 Pages | 24.99 € | 27.99 € | 0.036 € | 0.04 € |
| 1500 Pages | 49.99 € | 54.99 € | 0.033 € | 0.037 € |
Not the first increase
This is the second price increase since 2022. Back then, HP raised Instant Ink printing prices by up to 50% as well. HP changed the number of allowance for the smallest plan, from 15 pages to 10, and increased the price of several of the other plans.
Closing Words
HP's subscription service is lucrative for the company. While it is not as bad as HP+, which prevents the use of third-party ink cartridges entirely, it is still not the best deal for most users.
If you need a new printer, buy a Brother laser printer. You don't have to worry about ink and ink cartridges not working anymore, subscriptions, or companies like HP trying all kinds of things to block third-party ink cartridges.
I have used the MFC-L2719DN laser printer for years and it is excellent. Other laser printers, from other companies, may be good as well.
Now You: would you subscribe to HP Instant Ink or a similar service?
I use the HP Instant Ink plan and while the latest price increase hasn’t hit Canada (yet) I will probably continue to use it.
One positive feature I discovered is if a cartridge dries up and is unusable even though it still contains ink, you can contact HP and they will send you a new cartridge. You are paying for pages printed not cartridges. So all the complaints about inkjet cartridges drying out are moot. With your store-bought ink you are out of luck.
I have an HP all-in-one printer. It was great for the first year I owned it and I purchased the instant ink subscription.
Sometime during the second year, I stopped using it as frequently and sometimes I didn’t use it at all for a few months.
I began shutting the printer down between uses. This resulted in receiving emails to turn the printer on because it wasn’t being “detected” and somehow that was not a good thing.
When I did turn the printer on, I was charged for every month that I didn’t use the instant ink service, so I tried to stop the subscription. Nope, you cannot cancel the instant ink subscription. I tried several different methods, even resorting to contacting HP tech support. Either I was connected to someone incompetent, or it really cannot be canceled.
So, now I have a dust collector that I cannot even give away to someone else because the printer is registered in my name and that’s also a no-can-do scenario for HP.
Hp computers and laptops seem to be okay, but I will never purchase another HP printer. Ever.
I don’t want a color printer at all.
I don’t want to have any type of printer in my home. (Especially HP, which runs a system check every night for no purpose other than to scare the crap out of pets.)
I wish I could go back to the kind of basic blank ink printer I had in the 1990’s. No bells. No whistles. Just a simple and straightforward printer.
Every company is in business to make money and profits are a main factor.
Now, according to Martin….”If you need a new printer, buy a Brother laser printer.”
The problem with Brother printers, especially their Laser printers, apart from the fact that the print quality is sub-par,(acceptable) by some, whenever you need to replace the Toner, you also have to buy a new Drum, after every 2nd Toner purchase, which can add to the replacement cost.
An additional $60.00 to $80.00 CAD.
With HP Laser printers, the Drum is INCLUDED with the Toner.
Something to keep in mind.
In many instances, HP practically gives away their printers, so they have to make money somewhere and that “somewhere” lies in the ink.
The company didn’t become the No1 computer company by being a charitable organization!!
Instant Ink is a novel idea and still inexpensive regardless, and the print quality is far superior to most other printers on the market.
I also have three Brother MFC-L2719DW (i think, but am not sure, that the final W instead of Martin’s N is USA nomenclature) laser all-in-one printers in different locations. Its the best printer I have ever owned as its efficient, reliable and cost effective. I can’t imagine buying anything else unless Brother discontinues the model (they do that often for reasons I have never been able to understand).
Please stop buying HP printers. Let them go out of business. Thanks!
I have my brother inkjet printer set not to update the firmware because these updates tend to invalidate 3rd party cartridges. If you use the printer strictly through USB you most likely won’t get firmware updates but it is always best to search for settings to disable it if you can. And yes this could be a security risk but only if you have it directly hooked up to the internet with no firewall.
Is “subscription pricing” the only option from HP? If it is one of the options, I guess it is ok. Lets the market decide whatever people want it or not. But if this only option from HP, I doubt they will be in business much longer.
Two things you would think average people would have figured out a long time ago.
1. Any product that cannot work without connecting to the Internet will eventually be rendered completely inoperable and entirely useless by the manufacturer.
2. Any time a company hooks you with subscriptions, they will double the cost of them yearly, most likely while actually simultaneously making the product or service that you are subscribing to worse.
Honestly I don’t understand why people can’t figure out the above.
Subscription to run your own printer? This actually is the first I’ve heard of such a thing. No thank you. I shall stick with my ever-dependable Brother laser printers and continue to buy cartridges when and from whatever company I choose. Never have a problem, and never give a thought to the number of prints I may need during any time frame.
The incredible greed and stupidity of Hewlett-Packard never fails to astound me. I very deeply regret every having purchased an HP product, and in the future will never do so again.
Brother is likewise doing unacceptable things. For instance, I’m using 3rd party toner cartridges with my HL-L3270CDW and it seems to be stuck on Ecomode. It wasn’t that way when I first installed the cartridges, but then I started noticing the problem later on.
Also, Brother never tells you that when you leave the setting at “Auto” to determine which cartridges to use based on whether or not a document is Color or Mono, it will almost always print a black and white document by using a combination of all the color cartridges. I learned this to my horror when all my expensive color cartridges suddenly became very close to being empty. And I verified that this was what was happening by contacting the company’s technical support.
Ink color printers are mostly the worst garbage ever made, a completely waste of resources. HP ones are the worst of all, I remember some time ago when my former HP printer started to print test pages to calibrate itself like there was no tomorrow, one page each time I turn on the printer. It stopped doing this mess after nearly forty pages, giving me the unexpected result of losing the 1/3 part of the color cartridge and 1/2 part of the black one. Now I have a Brother laser printer and I can sure you all that it has been the best invested money of my life. I really hate ink printers.
Xerox laser printers are the best. Not cheap, but well worth it.
Neuer Preis pro Seite bei 300/500/700/1500 ist falsch, da ist da ist wohl das Komma/Punkt verrutscht
Thank you!
As we rarely use the private printer, we have the ten page subscription for it. It’s completely free in Denmark, no cost at all.
Yet.
I’m in Denmark and wasn’t offered the 10 page option when I subscribed about two months ago, the cheapest was the 50 page option. But in the email about price changes from yesterday it is, and it costs 14 DKK (about $2) per month.
Considering the postage prices in Denmark I was wondering how it could be that cheap, but I since learned that in some “underdeveloped” countries like China you can send international mail for almost nothing, so maybe that’s what they’re doing. However, it’s the receiver countries that pay the bill in the end. Explained in this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA6gDep6jVM
However, since HP also asks you to return the used cartridges in an envelope they include, and for which they pay the postage, that’s going to cost them some since postage prices are pretty high here in Denmark.
I also recall that, when I subscribed, they wrote something about the subscription cartridges containing more ink than regular cartridges, but whether they meant the half-filled ones that come with the printers or those you can buy in the stores I don’t know.
Louis Rossman has made several critical youtube videos abut HP and their practices, search youtube for “rossman hp” if you want to see them.
I highly recommend my Epson Ecotank printer. It’s been totally reliable and the ink is cheaper than laser toner.
The instant ink concept is a useful one (we have it) – you always have working cartridges to produce perfect prints, mono or colour. At the new price here £4p/m that’s less than £1 per week. Buying a set of cartridges indpendently and always having them working properly and not drying up would cost more, I think.
The issue really is the price, and how much (excess) profit HP makes from a captive revenue stream. Why do prices need to increase in £1 steps? This is where they leave a very bad taste in the mouth. People pay automatically, so if the ink price rises by, say 6.5% then the price could be raised by 6.5% with no difficulty. But no, this year it’s 25%. Consumer protection should be stepping in, but I’m not holding my breath…