Last Updated on March 10, 2021 by Filip Poutintsev
Amazon Prime is best known for free same-day delivery and video streaming. It is a sole competitor to not only online shopping companies but also to video/movie and music streaming companies and is giving tough competition to them by providing all services in a single subscription plan.
What is Amazon Prime?
A paid subscription service from a tech giant Amazon, that provides many benefits to its users ranging from free same-day delivery to online streaming and many more. Amazon Prime is more of a package than a subscription because it has all the premium benefits that Amazon offers and it is also considered as the greatest membership plan of all time.
Amazon Prime service started with a free two-day delivery service in the US for $79 a year but now it has evolved much larger and expanded its service areas including online video and audio streaming, same-day delivery, amazon cloud, and many more.
A Brief History
In the year 2005, Amazon, a giant tech company launched a membership program called “Amazon Prime” to provide extra benefits to its users. In the beginning, Amazon Prime offered a free two-day delivery service and some discount for same-day delivery in the US for a yearly membership of $79.Now prime offers services such as online audio and video streaming, TV streaming, unlimited reading, Amazon Cloud, Prime Now, Prime Pantry, etc.
After the US, Amazon started to expand its program to other countries of Europe and Asia and until today it is expanded to 17 countries. By January 2020, there are about 150 prime users all across the world which are benefited from Amazon Prime service. By now next-day delivery is available worldwide with no extra charges.
Amazon Prime has been adding some exciting services over time like Amazon day, which allows prime users to schedule shipping date, amazon cloud where you can store your photos safely, and Amazon family, which provides some discount to the baby items purchases. Amazon Prime is continuously adding new benefits and exciting offers becoming more popular day by day.
What Is The Cost?
Currently Amazon Prime has monthly and yearly membership plans and one can choose the plan according to his need and the cost of each plan varies accordingly.
For a monthly plan, it costs $12.99 which costs $155.88 per year, and for a yearly plan, it costs $119.But there is another plan for students called Prime Student which costs $59 per year ($6.49 a month).
If you are trying Prime, you can get a free 30 days trial but in case of Prime student, you can get free 6 month’s free trial.
Advantages of Amazon Prime
Amazon prime offers great benefits to its users, not only limited to shopping but also offers online streaming, reading, cloud storage, and many more. Here are some of the advantages which amazon prime offers;
1. Prime Now
One of the cool features of Amazon Prime, which makes same-day delivery without any extra cost. It allows customers to shop from early morning to late night, seven days a week for groceries, food, and gifts. The delivery is normally expected within 2 or three hours but this service is only available to metro cities for now.
2. Video Streaming
Amazon Prime Video has a collection of thousands of shows, movies, series, TV shows which you can stream online. Amazon Prime also has its Prime Originals i.e. they are only available on Amazon Prime. You can watch anywhere, anytime on any device like mobile, laptop, smart TV, or Fire TV and you can download it on mobile or tablet for offline viewing.
3. Music Streaming
Another benefit of Amazon Prime is Prime Music where you can stream millions of songs in high quality. It offers unlimited ad-free access to music, playlists, and stations of various genres and languages across the world. You can stream your favourite music across any device and you can also download it to your phone.
4. Prime Reading
Amazon Prime member can get access to more than 800,000 kindly e-books and it also has a feature that allows you to buy one book per month without any due date. This feature is highly beneficial to all book lovers out there.
5. Amazon Cloud
Amazon Prime also offers cloud storage to its users where you can keep your photos. Cloud storage is both safe and you can access your photos across both your mobile and computer device.
6. Prime Pantry
In this service, Amazon offers a flat discount on shipping charges on low priced household essentials. If you spend less than $35 on items you are buying, then you have to pay $5.99 and otherwise, you get free shipping. This service is available in the US, UK, Germany, India, Austria, Japan, Spain, France, and Italy.
7. Amazon Day
This feature allows Prime users to change their delivery date and time as per their availability. It offers a variety of delivery options, which include one-day, two –day, no-rush-shipping. You can now choose your shipping date as per your availability and it helps to make the orders more predictable.
8. Amazon Family
For all Prime members, Amazon offers family-oriented deals and coupons on baby essentials where you can get some discount on baby diapers, baby foods, baby soaps, and other items for baby.
9. Early Access to Great Deals
Prime members can have early access to some exciting deals so that they can get more benefits and it also offers release date delivery for books and new tech products. Being a prime member, you can have access to the item on its release day.
10. Prime Day
Every year amazon sets exciting deals on a prime day falls in July every year and only Prime members get exciting deals, offers, and discounts on items and prime members are more beneficial in comparison to normal users. Prime members also take benefits from other lightning deals held throughout the year.
11. Amazon Prime Credit Card
With amazon prime visa signature card, you will get 5% back on purchases you buy from amazon.com and Wholefoods. If you aren’t a prime member you only get 3% back. Its other benefit includes 2% back at the gas station, restaurant, drug stores, and it also gives 1% back on every other purchase.
12. Membership Sharing
Amazon Household allows you to share membership among adults, using this feature you can share many of the prime benefits with other people, usually people living with you. Household also allows four teens to create profiles for shopping and streaming.
Conclusion
In conclusion, for a single subscription of amazon prime, you can have access to all the benefits from Amazon like better shopping, audio, and video streaming, unlimited books, etc. and the good thing is you don’t have to subscribe for music or online video separately, prime has it all in one place.
Amazon Prime is a ticket to the amazon universe where one can get all the premium features of Amazon. More than 150 million people out there are using amazon prime and are benefitted from numerous benefits of prime and one will surely choose to become a prime member after knowing about prime benefits.
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