Vodafone MyMix plans: Are they good value?

Vodafone launched its MyMix plans last week, promising freedom from the tyranny of inclusions you don’t use. But is it a good value offering? We've compared what it offers with existing plans on the market.

MyMix, launched last week, uses the same kind of formula that Yomojo (and its predecessor, Yatango Mobile) use: you build up a prepaid plan around a set of inclusions (voice, data and text) and expiry dates. The more you want, the more you pay, but the theory is that if you have parts of a phone service package that you don’t want, you can omit those bits and save some cash. Don't make international phone calls? Don't pay for them to be included.

That’s the theory, but what’s the reality like, and how does it compare to other similarly priced plans in the market? It’s a slightly complex question to answer, because the variety of options on the MyMix plan calculator means that it is, in essence, 72 different plans.

That being said, there’s a few ground rules to bear in mind. There three different expiry periods to consider -- 7, 28 or 90 days -- and the only option you can opt to not have is international calling. You have to select some level of calls and some level of data to build a plan. Every plan does come with unlimited standard national texts, but then the value of texts has shrunk to just about nothing anyway. Before you ask, no, you can’t grab a Vodafone SIM and claim texts without paying any money -- they’re just included as standard when you pay for anything else.

With that in mind, we’ll build three example plans, designed for very short, small usage (typical, say, of a visiting relative coming to Australia for a week and just needing something simple); a mid-range 28-day plan that you might use over a longer time; and a supreme plan with all the possible inclusions for the user who needs everything. Here’s how the pricing and inclusions for those plans looks:

The 7-day deal, like most very short expiry plans isn’t the most spectacular in terms of value, but there are a few key plans that follow the same kinds of logic, such as Coles’ Prepaid plans or Optus’ My Prepaid Daily Plus plans. Curiously, Vodafone’s even in competition with itself here, thanks to its 7-day Combo plans. Here is how those plans compare:

You can upgrade the MyMix plan for unlimited calls for $2 more, at which point it matches the Combo plan for price, but under a current promotion you get 100MB bonus data on the Combo pack if you recharge online, which means it’s better value. Coles offers more data again with a slightly longer expiry date. Optus’ My Prepaid Daily Plus would be more for 7 days -- $14 in total -- but you would get 500MB of data to use per day on that plan for a total of 3.5GB over that period.

In the mid-range space, Vodafone has given the MyMix plans a 28-day expiry period, matching a troubling industry trend for prepaid plans. You can read more about how 28 day plans can cost you a lot more over a year here. The fact that so many providers have jumped to 28 day plans does give us space to compare at that $40 price point, however. Here’s how a range of comparative plans stack up:

The flexibility of MyMix could score you a better data deal here; if you’re willing to drop the international minutes entirely and survive with 120 minutes of calls, Vodafone’s pricing allows for up to 9GB of data for $40 per month. That being said, Amaysim’s Unlimited deal would give you 7GB of data with unlimited calls thrown in, and even Vodafone’s own Combo deal again does a little better for data inclusions.

At the top tier, comparison is a little tougher, because in the prepaid space it’s not often you see lots of really high priced deals. It’s typically where a deal often stands out for data or international calling inclusions, and sometimes both. Here’s how Vodafone’s top whack MyMix plan compares:

MyMix’s ace up its sleeve here is the longer than usual expiry period at 90 days. There are long expiry prepaid plans from other providers, but they’re generally PAYG style affairs with little or no "included" data and relatively high data charging rates. It’s worth noting that if you opted for a 28 day full whack expiry MyMix plan, the cost drops to a much more reasonable $60, at which point it’s considerably better value than the comparable plans on other networks.

So what’s the practical upshot of this analysis? Vodafone’s MyMix plans could be good value if you’ve got a very specific picture of your ongoing usage patterns, but they’re not always going to represent the very best prepaid value depending on how you build out your variables, especially for heavy data users.

Want to compare all of Australia’s mobile plans to find the right deal for you? Check out our Mobile Phone Finder comparison engine where you can pick and compare between post- and pre-paid plans, month to month plans and phone bundling plans.