SMARTY Family and Group Plans Review 2021

SMARTY’s group plans are quite straightforward. You save 10% on every SIM you add to your account. It doesn’t matter if it’s a data discount plan or big data plan. SMARTY allows you to add up to 8 SIMS, including the group owner. You can easily manage everyone’s usage and payments from one place, your SMARTY dashboard. You can change other’s plans, purchase add-ons for them or cancel plans, no questions asked.

You can choose any available SMARTY plan for any SIM, and you’ll get a 10% discount regardless. This is in addition to SMARTY’s data discount for unused data, and those plans are already competitively priced!

Each SMARTY SIM only plan comes with unlimited UK minutes and texts; there are no credit checks to pass either. Just start a SMARTY Group and enjoy the extra benefits.

How to Start Your SMARTY Family/Group Plan

Starting your SMARTY Group is straightforward. In fact, it only takes a minute, after which you can start enjoying discounted SIM only deals.

To start your SMARTY Group log in to your account and jump to the ‘Group plan’ page. Then choose whether to invite an existing SMARTY account or add a brand new SIM.

If you invite an existing SMARTY member to your group, you’ll get a notification once they accept your invitation. You’ll be able to see the details of their next month’s charges.

If you choose to add a new SMARTY SIM, the network will add this line to your SMARTY Group automatically. You’ll be notified when this SIM is activated.

That’s it. As long as you have at least 2 plans in your group you’ll save 10% on every SIM.

How Does the SMARTY Family/Group Plan Work?

First things first, you need to start a SMARTY Group from your dashboard and then add at least one member. You can start your group with as little as 2 SIM plans. You can have up to a total of 8 SIMs in a SMARTY Group, including the group owner. Your 10% discount starts as soon as there are 2 plans in the group. All SMARTY customers can start a group/family mobile plan, as long as they’re 18 or older.

As the group owner, you can make all of the group’s payments, see your members’ plans and how much data they use each month. You can also see their call history starting from the day they join your SMARTY group. This may be a deal-breaker!

You can also edit every member’s plan or purchase add-ons to their SIM plans. You’re also allowed to remove any member from your group or cancel the service for your additional SIMs.

Group members can only see their own plan, data usage and call history. They can also edit their own personal details. They have no access to other accounts or their details.

Bear in mind that the ownership can’t be transferred to another person. You can, however, cancel your group and join another group. Another issue is, if you’re a group member you won’t have any access to any payment related actions. You can’t change your plan without the group owner’s permission.

If you already have an existing discount or promotional deal, your 10% discount will start once your offer expires.

This pretty much covers all you need to know about SMARTY’s Group Plans, but if you wish to dig deeper, you can always check out SMARTY’s group support pages.

These are SMARTY’s wallet-friendly SIM only deals. The network offers some of the cheapest 30-day lasting tariffs and on top of that, you get money back for any unused data, after the £5 base cost. This means you can save up to £3 every month and the best part is you can combine SMARTY’s data rollover scheme with their family mobile plans. Not only will you get a discount for unused data, but you’ll also get 10% off every month when you’re in a group.

All SMARTY SIM only plans include unlimited UK calls & texts, Wi-Fi Calling and unrestricted tethering in the UK. The network also allows you to roam like home in the EU, but there are no special add-ons to expand the number of destinations where you can use your UK allowances.

The mobile virtual network operator also has a referral programme. It’s simple and straightforward. Refer to a friend via your unique link and you’ll both get a free month. Plus, there’s no limit to how many people you can refer to. You could refer 12 friends and get a whole year free on SMARTY.

You can benefit from SMARTY’s money back feature, if you pick one of the three tariffs listed below.

The network’s Big Data Plans start from 30GB for just £10 a month. You can also grab their 50GB deal for £15 a month, but it’s currently on sale priced at £12/month. If you don’t want to worry about your data allowance, you can always choose the network’s unlimited data offer. SMARTY’s big data customers can’t benefit from the money back scheme.

We would like to remind you that SMARTY’s unlimited data plan isn’t actually truly unlimited; the network enforces a fair usage limit of 1TB (1000GB). Then again 1TB of data is a lot and this data allowance should cover your more than well enough. We expect the fair usage limit to change when 5G is available on SMARTY.

First things first we need to address the elephant in the room: SMARTY doesn’t provide a 2G service, meaning if your device only has 2G it won’t work with a SMARTY SIM. The same applies for SMARTY’s parent network Three and all the other Three powered mobile virtual networks such as Superdrug and iD Mobile.

However, SMARTY customers get the same 4G & 3G coverage, as well as the same data speeds as Three customers. Unlike some other main networks Three doesn’t limit the data speeds their MVNOs get. All SMARTY plans come with unrestricted 4G data speeds, you’ll always get the fastest download and upload speeds available.

In terms of 4G population coverage, Three is as good as any other major mobile provider, but they’re significantly behind in terms of UK geographical coverage, which is objectively more important. Three offers 4G Calling (a.k.a VoLTE or Super-Voice) and Wi-Fi Calling at no additional cost to close the gap, but sadly 4G Calling isn’t available on SMARTY. In any case, we always recommend using SMARTY’s coverage checker to ensure your frequent areas are covered.

Three’s average 4G download speeds are faster than O2, pretty much on par with Vodafone and considerably behind EE, per Open Signal’s and OOKLA’s October 2020 speed test results.

Three’s average 4G download speeds are around 22Mbps and their upload speeds are around 8Mbps. SMARTY itself wasn’t tested, but that’s because their data speeds are identical to the parent network Three.

SMARTY is one of the most popular UK MVNOs among younger mobile customers, but we must mention that SMARTY is far from ideal for competitive mobile gaming. SMARTY’s latency is higher than its competitors and this may cause problems when you’re playing a game where the connection type is P2P (player to player).

If you want the fastest 4G download speeds and best 4G network coverage in the UK, no other network can compete with EE or their MVNOs. The network’s average 4G download speeds are around 36Mbps and their average upload speeds are around 10Mbps. You can read our EE Review to discover why they’re objectively the best 4G network.

5G Coverage

Unlike its parent network Three, SMARTY doesn’t offer 5G yet, but they announced that it’s coming. Sadly, there’s no date that’s been set but we know they’ll be powered by their parent network Three.

Three has the fastest 5G data speeds as well as the most 5G spectrum in the UK, plus their 5G coverage is live in 193 cities and towns across the country. This means they cover more locations than any other UK network that offer 5G. Though we must mention that Three’s 5G coverage per location isn’t as wide as EE’s.

Three’s 5G download speeds average around 201Mbps, per OOKLA. The second fastest 5G network is O2 with 5G speeds averaging around 170Mbps. Having said that, even 100Mbps is extremely fast and you would experience no issues even if multiple people were using the same connection and streaming 4K videos simultaneously.

If your area has Three 5G and you can’t wait till SMARTY starts offering 5G plans, you can always read our Three Review and discover what makes them the best 5G network in the UK. There are other great 5G SIM only deals on offer from other operators too.

SMARTY’s family/group plans are simple, effective and can save you a nice chunk of money every month. Plus they work with the network’s unique data discount offer. On top of all that, SMARTY already offers competitive prices – usually the cheapest one on the UK mobile market.

The biggest deal-breaker is privacy issues. Arguably, group owners have too much power in their hands. They can even see group members call history. Then again, this is the same for all family/group mobile plans.

The network doesn’t have an app yet, but they said it’s coming soon. It should help managing multiple SIMs a lot.