The Best Internet Plans in Switzerland for 2020

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Mr. The Poor Swiss
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These days, everybody needs an internet connection. And we can agree that we all want to pay as little as possible for our connection to the web. Although your internet plan may have been the cheapest when you started using it, it may not be the case anymore. New deals may have appeared.

If you want to keep saving money on your internet plan, you need to compare offers and always keep up to date with the latest offerings.

In Switzerland, there are many internet providers. And each of them has many different subscriptions.

In this article, I am going to compare all the ways to get access to the Internet in Switzerland.

Maybe you do not need an internet plan?

Have you ever wondered if you could get rid of your internet subscription at home?

I am not saying that you do not need access to the web at home. Most people need access to the Internet at home.

But many people have access to unlimited and fast Internet on their smartphones. And smartphone can share their access by becoming a WiFI hotspot. This feature is a feature that every recent smartphone has (in the last five years, at least). Like this, you can connect any other appliances through your smartphone. This tip will, of course, only work if you have unlimited access from your phone. If your access is limited to some amount of bandwidth, you should avoid doing that.

If you do not use the Internet on your other appliances a lot, this could be a great option. And of course, this will only work once your smartphone is at home. Some people, like me, have servers at home that require online access all day. In that case, you will need a proper internet connection.

Using your smartphone as a hotspot is not much different than the WiFI access from your web provider. That way, you can save a lot of money since you only have to pay for your phone plan, not your internet subscription.

For more information on phone plans, find out about the best phone subscriptions in Switzerland.

Drop the landline phone

One thing you can do to save money on your subscription is to drop the support for a landline phone. Many subscriptions still include a home line phone.

The chances are that you have a mobile phone yourself. Do you need both? And the chances are that you do not even use your landline.

You will not save a lot of money by doing so, maybe 5 CHF or 10 CHF a month. But this is already much better than paying for something you do not need.

Be careful of activation costs

When you change your internet subscription, you will need to be cautious about activation costs.

Many providers will charge you some amount of money to change to their plans. Several providers will not charge you anymore. But for those that charge you, you will pay anything between 50 CHF and 100 CHF for the first year. Paying that can make a difference in your budget if you do not account for it.

Just make sure you take this activation fee into account when you choose a new subscription.

Be careful of one-year offers

If you change to a new internet provider, you will ideally keep the same plan for several years. Therefore, you need to consider long-term savings when you compare different subscriptions.

For this, you should be careful about offers that offer a discount on the first year. Some providers will offer up to 50% in the first year. But then, after that, they can be really expensive.

So, when you compare different offers, you should only consider the monthly costs excluding the first-year offer. If you only need a plan for one or two years, it may be worth considering one-year offers. But otherwise, be careful about them.

Do not fall for speed?

Over the last decade, internet speed has increased very significantly. These days, it is very easy to get a connection of 100Mbps. And with fiber optic, you can get a much faster connection.

But have you ever wondered whether you need these speeds? Likely, you do not need very fast internet speed.

Of course, providers and sellers will tell you that a higher speed is always better. But past a certain point, this is not true anymore. If you are just browsing the Internet, you will not see any difference between 50Mbps and 500Mbps.

I have been living with 50Mbps for the past year. And I have had zero problems. And I consider myself a heavy user. I am watching and downloading videos a lot. And I have five computers at home. Most individuals will never need anything faster than 50Mbps.

There could be some exceptions:

• If you are running a business at home and have several machines that need excellent access. In that case, you may need faster access. But this may not even be the case.
• If you are streaming in very high quality. Here, I am not talking about 1080p HD youtube. For this, 50Mbps would be more than enough. But if you are streaming 4K videos, it may not be enough anymore.
• If you need to download large assets over the web. For instance, if you are editing videos, you may receive raw videos. These files can be huge. In that case, if you do not want to wait too long, a higher speed will be necessary.

In the end, it is only up to you to decide which speed you want. Once you know how much you want, you can choose between different subscriptions.

If you feel your Internet is too fast for your needs, you could change to a slower speed and save some money every month!

Finally, you need to know how much speed is available at your home. Providers generally have a tool that will let you know the speed available at your home address. For instance, here is the speed tool from Swisscom.

For my address, it tells me that I can get access to up to 475Mbps. This speed is almost ten times more than what I am using. And this is also significantly more than a few years. Operators have been increasing their capacity a lot these last years.

So make sure you pay for a speed that you can reach in your home.

Internet Plans

Let’s compare the available plans for different internet speeds.

10 Mbps Internet

Let’s start with a low-speed internet connection. It may be slow for some users of the Internet. But if you only surf the web, it will be fine. It will not be enough to watch movies in high quality. But most Youtube videos will load fine. This speed will not be as bad as people think.

Here are the cheapest offers for this speed:

1. iWay Internet Economy DSL (10Mbps Download, 10Mbps Upload): 29CHF per month
   1. You will have to pay a 50 CHF activation fee
   2. Only available if you get access to fiber
2. Monzoon Prepaid DSL (10 Mbps, 2 Mbps): 34 CHF per month
3. Teleboy Internet (20Mbps, 4Mbps): 36CHF per month

With a low-speed Internet, you can get a subscription for a very low price. For only 29 CHF per month, you can get access to the Internet if you have access to the fiber at your home. If you do not get fiber at home, you can still get web access for 34 CHF per month. Such a subscription is much cheaper than most people are paying for their internet subscription.

Please note that I have never tried any of these providers. From what I have found online, iWay and Monzoon have mostly satisfied customers. But Telebox has mostly negative reviews online. So, you may want to avoid it or try to find more information before you use them.

50 Mbps Internet

If you want a bit more speed, 50Mbps should be working for almost everybody. 50Mbps is the speed I have, and it is perfectly fine.

Here are the cheapest offers for this speed:

1. SolNet EXPERT (50Mbps, 10Mbps): 41 CHF per month
2. Monzoon Prepaid DSL (50 Mbps, 10 Mbps): 42 CHF per month
3. Teleboy Internet (20Mbps, 4Mbps): 44 CHF per month

This time, the cheapest changed to be SolNet. For 41 CHF per month, you can get 50Mbps internet at home. This speed is not much more expensive than for 10Mbps. These three offers look very interesting.

Again, I have never used SolNet services. I have found almost no reviews online. The only one I have found was positive. But this does not mean much.

100 Mbps Internet

If you feel like you need more speed, you could get a 100Mbps Internet. This speed is the last speed that you can get with DSL. Past this speed, you will need to get a fiber-optic connection in Switzerland. And event for 100Mbps, you will need to make sure that your home is adequately connected for this speed.

Here are the cheapest offers for this speed:

1. SolNet Home (100Mbps, 20Mbps): 44 CHF per month
   1. You will have to pay a 50 CHF activation fee
2. green.ch Internet Comfo 100 (100 Mbps, 20 Mbps): 49 CHF per month
   1. You will have to pay a 50 CHF activation fee
3. M-Budget broadband plan (200Mbps, 40Mbps): 49.80 CHF per month
   1. You will have to pay a 49 CHF activation fee

Even for 100 Mbps, you can find very affordable internet subscriptions. For 44 CHF per month, you can already get fast access to the web. This offer is only slightly more expensive than for 50Mbps.

We find two new contenders on the list this time. Reviews on green.ch are mixed. On the other hand, reviews for M-Budget are quite good. I know many people using M-Budget internet with success.

1 Gbps Internet

Some people want 1 Gbps Internet. As I said before, this is probably useless for 99% of people. And this is probably useless for most people who claim that they need it. But to each their own. If people want such a speed, they can still find affordable offers.

The problem with comparing these offers is that some of these fiber plans are only available in some places. For my comparison, I took Fribourg as the base address.

Here are the cheapest offers for this sped:

1. Salt Fiber (10Gbps, 10Gbps): 49.95 CHF per month
2. green.ch Internet Flex Home (1Gbps, 1Gbps): 59 CHF per month
3. SolNet HOME (1Gbps, 1Gbps): 59 CHF per month

I have to say that I am astonished by the prices of these offers. You can even get 10Gbps for less than 50 CHF per month. This price is much lower than I expected.

I still think that this speed is not necessary. But it will not break your budget to get such an offer.

Wait for special offers

Another thing that you can do to save money on your internet plan is to wait for some special offers.

For instance, for its 2019 anniversary, Qoqa has run several very interesting offers for both Internet and phone subscriptions. You could get a 200Mbps Sunrise subscription for 29 CHF per month. This offer is quite incredible.

If you follow Qoqa, they may rerun this offer. Or you may find other offers with other provides.

If you need to change your internet subscription quickly, you will not have time to wait for an offer. But even if you have a good subscription, it is always good to keep track of these offers to save money in the future.

Comparators for Internet subscriptions

I did not find many comparators for Internet subscriptions in Switzerland.

The first good one I have found is the Internet comparator from moneyland. It is quite complete and can even do some searches based on your address. You can also combine it with a Television subscription and/or a landline phone.

The other good one is the Telecom comparator from comparis. It is good but much more limited than the one from moneyland.

I used the moneyland comparator for my comparisons and also tried to see if I could find cheaper alternatives myself. In the end, the results from their comparator are good.

Sometimes cheaper is not better

For many people, their home internet is very important. I am one of them. I have several servers running all the time at home. And I rely on a good internet for my job and most of my hobbies. Therefore, for me, it is very important to always a good internet connection at home.

For this, I have been using Swisscom since I moved into my apartment. And I have never had any issues with it. I am using the 65 CHF per month plan with 50Mbps. I plan to continue on that plan. I could save about 20 CHF per month by changing. But I am not willing to take the risk.

If you are not too worried about it, then you can probably save money by staying away from Swisscom. But if you really want something reliable, it may be very interesting to stay with them.

Conclusion

As we saw, there are many possible options for Internet plans in Switzerland. Which plan you will choose will depend on the speed you need. Be careful that you do not fall in the trap of speed. Most people will never need more than 50Mbps.

• For 50Mbps speed, I would use the SolNet EXPERT plan at 41 CHF per month.
• For 200Mbps speed, I would use the M-Budget Broadband plan at 49.80 CHF per month

If you are paying a large amount of money each month for your Internet subscription, you may want to change subscription and save money each month! Recurring expenses are an excellent way to reduce your budget. By doing the change once, you will save money each month for years to come.

One thing you may have never thought of is to lower your internet speed. The chances are high that you do not need a high connection speed.

Another thing you can do is cancel your phone line if you are paying for one and not using it. And maybe you can even cancel your TV subscription if you do not use much.

After saving money on your internet subscription, you may want to save money on your Television bill.