Comment by doix
10 days ago
How do you judge "the best" network? It normally depends on if you're in the city, countryside, island etc.
I travel fulltime and constantly buy new esims. Normally I just go on esimdb and buy the cheapest one. Then when I get to the location I'm staying at, I chat with folks to figure which network works best there. Normally it's cheaper to get a local plan as well.
You are quite a bit more expensive than the no-name folks I buy from.
As far as best network goes, yes it depends in the city etc but there are always best networks for 99% locations in a country. I gave an example in another comment of Viettel vs VTC in Vietnam and Zain vs STC in Saudi Arabia.
I mean obviously it's cheaper to buy local plans. You can't compare local plans to travel eSIMs.
Which locations are you traveling to? Generally, I have the best quality to price ratio for North America, Europe, South East Asia, China and Japan. I saw your comment history and you visited Japan. The cheapest eSIM on eSIMDB in Japan for 5GB shows $2.42 via eSIM DOG [0]. But ... that's for a breakout IP in Hong Kong. That introduces latency on your network. So lets you want to move to a Japan IP, eSIM DOG doesn't have one. Their most expensive option is $7.49 which is a 3x price increase and that comes with a UK breakout IP. Now, contrast that to Akariq where you get 5GB for $4.86 and a Japan IP + NTT Docomo network [1] which has the best coverage and reliability. So yeah, I am generally the cheapest in at least those 4 regions for the quality I provide. I sell the best possible option option in that country and avoid selling junk eSIM plans.
[0] https://esim.dog/jp
[1] https://akariq.com/en/esim/jp/
I mostly travel around Africa & Asia (east, south east, central). Yeah, I used esim.dog with the HK break out IP and it was fine.
I guess my usage falls into two categories:
1. I have reliable wifi, and don't need to use mobile data for work
2. I don't have reliable wifi and I have to use mobile data for work.
If I'm in situation 1, then I don't really care too much. The cheapest junk esim works. If I'm in situation 2, I need a large amount of data and need a local plan.
I've saved your site though, never know what situation might come up. I don't know how esimdb chooses who to index, but I would try to get on there (I'm assuming it's free?).
I've spoken to quite a few travelers and they mostly fall into two groups. Those that use airlo or some other big provider or they use esim comparison sites to get the cheapest offer.
Thanks, definitely give it a try at least in South East and China, Japan and HongKong. Africa isn't my strongest market yet.
eSIMDB is not free, their commission is quite high. So someone is paying somewhere for customer acquisition.
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> You can't compare local plans to travel eSIMs.
Why not?
And who do you resell?