The MVNOs World Congress is not exactly a household name, but in the mobile virtual network operator world it’s about as official as it gets. This year’s ceremony took place in Amsterdam, and Saily, the eSIM app built by the team behind NordVPN, walked away with the Rising Star award, which recognizes an operator that has shown unusual momentum and market impact in a short amount of time.
Vykintas Maknickas, Saily’s CEO, put it this way: “In just a couple of years, we’ve gone from an idea to a globally recognized eSIM app used by travelers all over the world.” Saily has been moving fast in ways that are actually visible to people who use the app.
What They’ve Been Building
The most interesting recent launch is cruise support: Saily now offers dedicated eSIM plans that work at sea which sounds obvious until you realize that nobody else has done it (Airalo, Holafly, and the rest of the field don’t cover maritime networks). The reason your phone goes dead on a cruise is that once a ship crosses 12 nautical miles from the coast, it switches to its own satellite-based cellular infrastructure and standard eSIM plans don’t reach there. Saily built plans specifically for that gap and now covers more than 200 vessels across Royal Caribbean Group, Carnival Corporation, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, MSC Cruises, Disney Cruise Line, Virgin Voyages, and P&O Cruises and Cunard Line.
Pricing on the cruise plans runs from $16.99 for 500 MB over a day to $69.99 for the 5 GB/30-day option the app flags as its best pick. All plans earn 3% back in Saily credits. Our colleagues at Gizmodo negotiated a coupon code that’s currently the best discount available on Saily: “GIZMODO” takes 15% off any plan at checkout, cruise plans included. And if you’re heading to the US for the World Cup, the same code gets you 35% off the North America plan covering the US, Canada, and Mexico, which is worth knowing about right now.
Beyond the cruise stuff, June has been a busy month for the app across the board. Saily added a real US phone number feature, a proper +1 line with no contract for $0.84 a month which is useful for anyone who needs to get past the two-factor authentication walls that American services like Ticketmaster put up. Payments now also go through in USD, EUR, and GBP directly, which removes the currency conversion friction that international users have been dealing with since the app launched.
The award is a nice moment for a company that’s only been around a couple of years, but the more interesting story is what’s in the app right now.
