Eero’s routers get a cheaper $2.99 monthly subscription for added security features

Eero is adding a cheaper tier of service to its premium subscription with the introduction of the $2.99-per-month Eero Secure plan. It offers the same security, site filtering, and ad-blocking features of the old Eero Plus plan without the additional bundled products like 1Password, MalwareBytes, and the Encrypt.me VPN service. The new subscription tier marks one of the first major changes to come to Eero since its Amazon acquisition earlier this year.

The existing $9.99-per-month Eero Plus subscription is sticking around, although it’s getting new Eero Secure Plus branding, with the same benefits as before. Both plans will offer discounted prices for annual subscriptions: Eero Secure for $29.99 per year and Eero Secure Plus for $99 per year, effectively offering two free months to customers who buy the full year up front.

Eero first introduced the subscription service back in 2017, alongside its second-generation routers. The service is completely optional. Eero promises that the routers will always work as intended, even if you don’t pay the monthly or annual fee, but they do offer other features on top of the base internet service.

The goal here — as with many recent shifts toward monthly subscriptions across the industry, ranging from Apple to Google to Fitbit to Eero’s own parent company Amazon — is to help monetize hardware customers on a more reliable basis than waiting for them to upgrade.

It’s especially important for Eero since routers are not exactly at the top of the list for frequent hardware purchases in the same way that phones or even laptops are. Adding a cheaper tier is a smart move toward achieving that goal, offering most of the same protective services at less than a third of the cost of the expensive Secure Plus tier’s to entice existing Eero customers to subscribe.