Looking for a Talk and Text Plan for a Second Phone

Recently, YouTuber, Beezy, asked about finding a plan for a second cell phone, primarily for use with talk and text. I decided to respond here rather than in the YouTube comment section.

Hi Beezy,
My best advice is to pick the network you want to use, then figure out if how much talk and text you need, and then look at your options for a phone you can use with that plan.

You did not mention what type of Tracfone you have. Tracfone typically uses the AT&T or Verizon networks so technically the phone is compatible with one of those two networks. Unfortunately most tracfone’s are restricted to use only on tracfone and the company doesn’t really want to be selling phones to people to use on other wireless networks.

You mentioned that you are using Boost on your primary phone which uses the Sprint network and a preference for the Sprint or Verizon network for your second phone.. You could try to find a phone and service that uses the Sprint network for your second phone or choose one that uses Verizon. That would give you coverage on two different networks in the case you end up someplace that either Sprint or Verizon do not have coverage.

If you want to go with the Verizon network, you might want to check if the tracfone you bought uses their Verizon network or their AT&T network. If it uses the Verizon network, this could be an option for you. Picking a tracfone plan can be confusing when you are trying to pick a plan because some plans have double or triple minutes. The 400 minute plan you are looking at is probabally triple minutes meaning your get 1200 minutes, 1200 texts, and 1200 mb of data for one year. If you only plan to use this phone occasionally you may be better of with with a by the minute plan like tracfone.

If you need to bee on the phone all the time, you may want to find a unlimited talk and text plan that uses the Verizon or Sprint networks. Typically these plans cost $25 to $30 a month. One interesting option is TextNow which uses the Sprint network and offers unlimited talk and text for $14 a month. I haven’t tried it yet but it does look interesting.

If you need to use group texts and picture messages, you’ll want to check if the plans you look at support MMS. Some prepaid talk and text plans do. Others count MMS usage into your data quotas and sending pictures may not work or get really slow if you use up your allotted data. I know you said that you don’t need data, but it could turn out that the best plan for you happens to include some data.

I hope this helps.

Comments are closed.