The first argument of a group holiday rarely happens over where to eat: It happens at the baggage carousel when someone realizes their phone has no data and the address of the Airbnb is buried in an email they can’t open. Saily is one of the leading eSIM apps (with more than 6 million users already) and it has a fix for that moment: Now, one person can buy a Saily data plan and share it with up to four other people so the whole group lands connected without everyone setting up their own plan.
Take a family of five spending two weeks in Italy this summer. Until now, the parents either paid for a plan on every phone or the teenagers spent the trip hunting for Wi-Fi in every café between Florence and the coast. With a shared plan, one parent buys a single 20 GB plan and sends the invites to the kids. Everyone has data as soon as the plane lands, and only one card gets charged.
It also solves the problem of the friend who always forgets. Every group has one: the person who shows up at the gate without having sorted anything out and plans to borrow someone else’s hotspot for the next ten days. Add their email to the shared plan beforehand and the problem never comes up.
Invite Everyone Before You Hit Activate
The setup takes a few minutes, but the order matters: The buyer starts with a plan that hasn’t been activated yet and enters up to four email addresses. Saily then sends each person a link, which takes them to the Saily app to log in or create an account before confirming they want to join. Invites have to go out before the plan is activated, because once it’s running, nobody else can be added. If a cousin decides to join the family in Italy halfway through the trip, they’re buying their own eSIM.
Not every plan can be shared either as sharing works on the 3 GB, 5 GB, 10 GB and 20 GB plans. The 1 GB plans are left out, and so are unlimited plans and the Ultra subscription, at least for now. Saily covers more than 200 destinations, so the choice of country isn’t the problem. The plan size is, because everyone draws from the same pool and the data isn’t divided up per person. On the family trip, the teenager streaming videos on the beach is using the same gigabytes the parents need for directions to the restaurant, which is worth talking about before departure. The plan stops for everyone at once, when the data runs out or when it expires, whichever comes first.
Since only one person pays, only one discount is needed. The best Saily coupon code GIZMODO takes 15% off any plan at checkout, shareable plans included, and that single purchase gets all five people online.
