[tubemonkey]

Hulu drops to just $5.99 per month after Netflix’s price hikes

The core service is getting cheaper, but live TV now costs more

Hulu just announced that it will lower the price of its base, ad-supported subscription plan to $5.99 per month — down from the current $7.99 — beginning on February 26th. Hulu has offered its service at $5.99 previously on a promotional basis, and it clearly makes enough of a difference at pulling in subscribers to justify a price drop for the standard rate. In case you were concerned, customers will not see an increase in ad volume because of the reduced pricing. The $11.99-per-month “no commercials” plan will stay at its current price, as will the $12.99 Hulu/Spotify combo subscription, which Spotify handles billing for.

The price drop comes only days after rival Netflix announced increased subscription fees across all of its plans. The most popular plan (with HD streaming) is now $13 per month. Netflix’s content is, of course, ad-free, but Hulu is now creating enough of a cost divide that consumers might find its commercials easier to put up with. Hulu revealed earlier this month that it ended 2018 with over 25 million subscribers. That’s less than half of Netflix’s 58 million US-based customers, but it represents an impressive 48 percent increase in subscribers compared to where its subscriber count stood at the end of 2017.

However, Hulu does have one price hike of its own: the company is increasing the cost of its Hulu with Live TV service, which will jump to $44.99 instead of the current $39.99. As a result, the gulf between the standard service and Hulu’s internet TV offering is growing wider and a dollar shy of $40. The justification for the uptick in price is an increased channel selection — Hulu reached an agreement with Discovery, Inc. in September — and improvements to reliability and usability of the live TV experience. But this is also just the hard reality of these streaming TV services: they face the same hurdles as cable providers in reaching deals with networks and broadcast affiliates, and the major ones are all money losers. It’s inevitable that prices will continue to climb. You've also got to factor in that Hulu with Live TV includes the full on-demand product, which is relatively unique as these services go.