Need to get an eSim for a trip to New Zealand, 3 weeks, quite a bit of travel so need some data.
There seems to be loads and loads of providers. Any suggestions as to who to use, or more importantly, who to avoid?
We used airalo for a few days in the US earlier in the year, seemed to just work with no concerns. They look a bit more expensive for Southern hemisphere and 30 days, but no idea how relative this is.
I'm looking at the same for next week as EE have stopped the add on package for worldwide on our plans. The new deal is a extortionate price for 2 phones over 6 weeks
Seems to be alot out there. Still looking but have been recommended Roamic
We used airalo for a month in Japan. Worked very well and the cost was ok. Would use them again.
I have used Nomad a couple of times. Reasonable prices and most importantly they work.
Just had a chat with ee and have now temporary added worldwide roaming, we already have European roaming, to our account for less than the best esim we could find so now sorted
I read about this earlier, it might be of use to some here…
Saily is OK. It’s worked for me a few times outside of Europe.
A 30 day contract for 5 GB of data is USD 13.99 for NZ.
Airolo worked fine for me in Turkey. They also advertise a lot through youtubers and other "influencer"/content creator types so it's quite easy to find a discount code and save a couple of extra pounds.
Bizarrely I've just had the same thought because I might be working from France for a week in summer with reliable internet crucial, so an eSim might be the way to go. Can you still get hot spot sims?
You can hotspot from most that I've had (Holafly and Saily).
But the speed isn't always what you'd get on a native SIM (that's true for all downloads, not just hotspotting).
The eSIM providers direct traffic through 'home' networks which add delays.
So beware, even with a strong signal, the download speeds can be slow.
See link here for a some background.
Bizarrely I've just had the same thought because I might be working from France for a week in summer with reliable internet crucial, so an eSim might be the way to go. Can you still get hot spot sims?
Won't your normal roaming be OK for a week? Another option, we bought one of these from Orange:
https://boutique.orange.fr/tablette-et-cle/choisir-un-equipement?segment=airbox&intention=terminal-seul
Just get a local NZ esim. e.g. One NZ do one aimed at travellers, which was good value when I was there, you can buy before you fly and activate on landing.
Alternatively, if you have virgin media, get a cheap O2 contract and use volt to get unlimited data while you are in NZ.
If you really want a travel esim, in my experience all the ones on esim.db are just as good as each other even at the cheap end (as long as you pay attention not to get a hamstrung one etc, with crazy limitations but they are listed on the site).
Similarly for France, just pick up a lycamobile.fr esim.
Holafly I had trouble with in the US, as they seem to buy service from China Mobile. My phone thought it was in Hong Kong or Singapore. Caused some issues with apps, app stores and Android Auto would refuse to start up in the hire car.
The second time it happened (different hire car), I bought an alosim, and everything worked fine.
So in my experience, you need to do a bit of digging into whose service they use.
What I did for Spain was to change my normal U.K. sim for an e-sim which let me have a sim slot free for picking up a cheap sim.(lobster)
it’s handy to have the best of all worlds
Our EE worldwide roaming is up and running. On the second leg now and have free Starlink on the plane
I used Maaltalk on my last trip and it worked really well for me. I bought the eSIM before I left, installed it the night before departure, and didn’t have to worry about swapping SIMs at the airport. Coverage was solid around Auckland and down toward Queenstown, and the data speeds were pretty good for maps, streaming, and messaging.
Ended up with Simify, it worked as it should, no issues at all.