The New Price
As of January 22, 2020, existing SlingTV customers will see their base package pricing increase by $5/month. For customers who only use 1 base package, that’s a whopping 20% increase. The best part? Some of us found out online while I found out because I happened to see someone complaining about it on Twitter. No email notification, no text message, nothing popped up on any of my SlingTV apps. edit: as of 1/23/2020 I did receive an email notification from Sling regarding a price increase, this was almost a week after it had been reported online.
This Feels Awfully Familiar
One of the reasons many people leave traditional cable companies is due to ever-increasing prices with little to no explanation. You just get your bill and it’s higher month after month. To be fair, Sling did post about it on their website but there’s little reason to think anyone actually reads that regularly. There are still lots of cable companies out there, and streaming options are abound.
Still an Decent Deal
For what you get, SlingTV is still a great deal even with the new prices when compared to those mammoth plans from large cable providers such as Verizon or Comcast.
The Best Alternative to Sling TV
If the price hike irritates you enough to think about switching, you do have some other options – but I’m only going to speak to the one I’ve actually tried since I can’t vouch for the others.
YouTube TV
In many ways, YouTube TV is by far superior to Sling. And now with Sling’s price increase bringing the difference in cost between the two closer together, now might be a great time to switch. With YouTube TV, you can get 6 streams and share access with up to 5 other Google accounts. Their Cloud DVR is essentially unlimited (recordings expire after 9 months) and local channels stream along with all the cable channels whereas Sling requires you to use an antenna to get local channels.
I’ve also noted that app performance on YouTube TV is incredibly better than Sling. In fact, the only reason I haven’t switched to YouTube TV completely is because they don’t have the History Channel or the Science Channel, both of which are my primary channels that I watch.
Final Thoughts
SlingTV is still a great deal, but their communication is lacking heavily. Considering how they market themselves, it’s disappointing they would execute a price increase without much advance notification and, in some cases, no notification at all. They’re becoming the very thing they marketed themselves against.
