Every Perk You Get With An Amazon Prime Subscription
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While there are plenty of stores with their ownAmazon Prime alternatives with free shippingand other bonus perks, few of them offer the same range of benefits that Amazon does. While not every benefit is relevant for every customer, there are some that could be very useful if you haven’t looked at them before. It’s not a bad idea taking a closer look at everything included with Amazon Prime, especially if some of its bonuses are worthwhile to you — or to someone you know.
Fast and free delivery
You’re probably already familiar with how Prime offers free shipping on its orders, but this is something available to every Amazon buyer, not just those with a membership. Where Prime makes a difference is with speed, as it allows you to get items within two days, and possibly even the very same day you order. This is one of the biggest reasons why Prime isan Amazon feature that entirely changes the way you shop online, as you don’t have to plan ahead to account for longer shipping times.
Of course, though, this benefit can vary depending on multiple factors, including where you live and what specific item you’ve purchased. While you probably can’t expect everything to show up immediately, it’s not impossible to get items early without a Prime membership, and free shipping is common enough on its own if you order in bulk. In other words, one of the biggest reasons to get Prime might be entirely irrelevant if you live in a big city or close to an Amazon warehouse.
Customized delivery
One feature that’s unique to Prime members is the ability to customize your deliveries. With a membership, you’re able to give more instructions to the company as it delivers your package, including the opportunity to have them deliver it inside your garage. you’re able to also pick a specific “Amazon Day” each week for when you want your items delivered, making sure you get everything at once. For anyone living in a dangerous area or with a busy schedule, this is probably the biggest reason for you to have a Prime membership of your own.
Even this extra feature might be subject to outside circumstances. For example, garage delivery isn’t an option if you don’t have a garage, and it requires smart technology to work. Similary, Amazon Day only applies to eligible items, so if something is going to take a particularly long time to arrive no matter what, you might not get it at the same time as everything else.
Exclusive deals
Separate from the aforementioned Amazon Day, Prime members can also take advantage of Prime Day. There are two major shopping events – one in July (Amazon Prime Day) and the other in October (Prime Big Deal Days). In both, customers with a membership gain access to exclusive discounts on popular items, allowing buyers to save money during these days. Access to these discounts is only available to those with an active Prime membership.
Prime streaming services
Amazon Prime doesn’t just provide benefits for those willing to spend more money. It also grants access to a large library of media, including videos, books, music, and games. These all come with unique benefits for members, with Prime Video showcasing Amazon-original shows, Prime Gaming offering special in-game rewards, and Amazon Music giving Prime customers a discount on its “unlimited” subscription. You might not be using any of these services as often as you could be, especially if you haven’t kept up-to-date with their latest offerings.
These perks do come with some limitations. Back in 2023,Amazon Prime Video Streaming started getting ads, requiring an additional cost for an ad-free experience. A lot of titles offered by Prime Gaming are also only available for a limited time, meaning you’ll lose out on anything there if you neglect to claim it. These services are mostly helpful for long-term members rather than those dipping into a Prime subscription for one month at a time.
Unique kid-friendly content
Unlike the aforementioned services, Amazon Kids+ is meant for the children of Amazon account holders rather than the account holders themselves. This service consists of ad-free content including educational shows and family-friendly video games. It syncs up with specially designed devices (like theAmazon Fire HD 10 Kids Protablet) so you don’t have to bother learninghow to kid-proof an Amazon Fire tabletyourself. It even categorizes content by age groups, making it useful until your child reaches their teenage years.
Unfortunately, you can’t get Kids+ completely free even if you have a Prime account. But with a membership, you’re able to get a discount, reducing the cost by around $30 for an annual subscription. The kid-friendly content is also somewhat difficult to navigate, and it’s not a major help if you already have an existing service like YouTube Kids. Still, if Amazon is pretty much your primary website, your family can get a lot of use out of this service.
Photo and video storage
While Prime offers a lot of content from Amazon itself, it also enhances how you manage the content you already own. Amazon Photos offers Prime members the chance to store just about every photo they’ve ever taken, as well as an extra 5 GB of videos. This cloud-based storage allows you to access images across multiple devices and at any time, with extra storage options being available at a few extra dollars a month. Even if you don’t have a Prime subscription, you’ll still have a baseline of 5 GB available for both photos and videos.
You should keep in mind that there’sa big caveat with Amazon Prime Photos' unlimited storage. If you ever leave Amazon Prime and go over your storage quota, or you let your account sit for two years, the company will start automatically deleting whatever you uploaded. This might not be relevant for those who use Amazon every single day, but it could be something you easily forget about after a long enough period. For that reason, you shouldn’t use Amazon Photos as the primary storage location for anything that you can’t live without.
On-demand health care
Prime members also get access to extra benefits like RxPass, offering all the medication you need for just $5 a month. Some might question how well Amazon can provide this sort of health care, especially considering how itdiscontinued Halo devices as its controversial health business struggledlast year. But if you don’t have easy access to any sort of medical alternative, Amazon’s health care is at least a decent option with a Prime membership.
Fuel savings
Amazon might be more useful for those who are stuck at home, but customers who constantly drive for in-person shopping can still make use of Prime benefits. With the help of select partners like bp and Amoco, you can use your subscription to save money on every gallon of gas you pump from these companies. It actually works by linking to another app, earnify, and combining its own discount, leading to a total of 10 cents saved on each gallon. This isn’t a particularly massive discount, but if you own a massive gas-guzzler of a vehicle, the membership might end up paying for itself in the long run.
As mentioned, you get this sort of benefit at very specific gas stations, so you might not always be able to make use of it. You can only use this deal by linking to earnify, so you won’t get any discount without it — even if you have a Prime membership. Luckily, the app itself doesn’t cost a dime, and it also gives you some extra bonuses you can use at gas stations for further savings. It’s nothing but a win-win if you don’t mind having to manage multiple accounts at once.
Benefits with other services
There are plenty of other services partnered with Amazon to provide savings beyond fuel. Grubhub is one such service, offering Grubhub+ for free to Prime members. This allows you to get discounts on food from select locations and avoid delivery fees entirely, with advertised average savings of around $300. If delivery benefits happen to be one of your biggest reasons for having a Prime subscription, the extra savings from Grubhub+ might be particularly appealing, too.
Shareable Prime benefits
Even with all of these benefits, it’s possible that none of them are all that appealing to you specifically. If that’s the case, you still have the option of sharing these benefits with your friends or family by taking advantage of Amazon Households. These will allow two adults to link their accounts, granting both of them access to all the Prime bonuses while only one actually has to pay. Teenager accounts can also access Prime’s digital content, including Prime Video and Amazon Music, further extending the value of a subscription.
You’ll probably want to make sure these benefits are only shared with people you trust. There also isn’t very much preventing you from simply sharing a single account since you’re able to add payment methods and addresses without many restrictions, so using Households is mostly just a precaution. Still, if you want to be especially careful with your own personal account, it’s a fine way to take advantage of Amazon’s benefits at a reduced cost. Even if you don’t need everything offered by Prime, if you have the money to spare, you can at least help out someone who can actually make use of it all.
