Finding the Best SIM Only Deals

Mobile phones are becoming an absolutely crucial part of most people’s lives.  You’ll find that almost everyone who leaves their house these days checks for their car keys, their wallet and their phone.  If you don’t have your phone, then you can’t leave the house.  It’s become such an important part of modern society for a huge swathe of the population, from teenagers who only get let out of their house if they are contactable, to business people who rely on being in contact with the office all day every day.  Thanks to huge advances in terms of what mobile phones can do, we can keep up with our emails, social apps and sites, take a photo on the move, listen to our favorite music, or even make a phone call.  There’s no doubt that the humble mobile phone has changed drastically over the last few years, so it’s only right that phone contracts change with them.

24 Month Contracts

For most people, the obvious thing to do is to opt for an expensive 24 month contract which comes with the latest and greatest handset.  This is all well and good if you can afford 30 or so pounds a month, but when you calculate the cost of a 24 month period, you’re talking about a minimum of £720, and that’s before you’ve gone over your allowance on a few occasions.  It’s safe to say that for most people opting for a good contract, the cost is likely to be upwards of £820, which is a huge amount of money.  Long term contracts are the most publicized option when it comes to mobile phone purchasing options, so many people wonder what their alternatives are.  Thankfully, there are plenty of alternatives out there if people are prepared to look around.

Roland and his Finnish SIM card at New Town Bakery by sillygwailo, on Flickr.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

SIM Only Deals

SIM only contracts are a great option that falls somewhere between contracts and pay as you go plans.  They tend to be a lot more affordable than contracts, and provide better usage policies than pay as you go options.  The main benefit is that they don’t come with a mobile phone handset, allowing someone to spend what they want on a phone outright at the beginning of their contract, meaning that the user only pays for the use of the phone, on either a 30 day basis, or a twelve month contract.  A twelve month contract will give better value for money, but the convenience and flexibility of a 30 day contract is hard to beat.  Even if you want the latest phone on the market, you will still find that it can be cheaper to do things this way.  An iPhone is often as much as £549 for a 16GB model, but if you fork out for this sort of cost, then there’s every chance that you can find a SIM only deal which works out as being cheaper over a twenty four month period.  You also get greater flexibility, being able to choose any SIM only deal with any provider, to suit your needs and wallet.  Of course, if you don’t mind spending a little less on a handset, then there’s every chance that you can cut your costs in half or even more than this, depending on the phone you decide to go for.

Which Deal to Go For

The big thing for most people is deciding what sort of SIM only deal you want to go for.  This will vary wildly depending on what sort of use your phone gets.  If you spend most of your time with your phone planted closely to your ear, then you’re going to need a deal that work well for the number of minutes available during the month.  However, if you’re more interested in the internet capabilities of the phone, you might be better off looking for SIM only deal which offers an unlimited monthly data usage package.

PublicDomainPictures / Pixabay

Online SIM Only Hunting

Of course, there’s nothing stopping someone looking at the viability of a pay as you go deal with a provider, or a pay monthly 24 month contract, but you can look forever before finding a deal that gives the value for money or the flexibility of the SIM only deals that are available on the net.  Of course, you do have to spend a bit of time finding the right deal, but this applies for any sort of phone contract.  It shouldn’t be any harder to find a good SIM only deal, and you’ll be rewarded for your efforts with an excellent deal that will start to make you feel like you mobile phone is actually reasonable value for money again.  So take the SIM only challenge.  Take a look online at some of the offers out there, and see if it represents better value for money overall compared to your existing deal.  We’ll bet it does.

Laura Ginn works tirelessly to find great mobile phone deals for her blog.  When she’s not working hard on the computer, she can normally be found enjoying one of her many mobile phones.

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