WOW Internet Definitive Buyers Guide

WOW’s prices are so low they’ll WOW you

If there’s any way that WOW! can claim to have truly earned its name, it’s with low pricing. The first-tier plan will give you 100 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speed for only $20 a month, and that price lasts a full year. Sure, it’s not superfast speed, but 100/10 is as good as most first-tier cable internet plans. And $20/month is almost unheard of. After one year, your cost will jump to $40/month, but that’s still on the very low end of cable ISP pricing. Price hikes get lower as your plan gets faster. For example, you can get the mid-range plan at 500 Mbps download/50 Mbps upload speed for only $55/month. The shocker? There is no price hike at all. That is rock-bottom pricing for a half-Gig plan with pretty good upload speed by cable standards. It’s certainly enough speed to allow most households to do gaming and streaming simultaneously on multiple devices. A full 1000 Mbps or 1 Gig download from WOW! will run you $65 for the promotional period and $75 after the first year. That’s considerably cheaper than several other major cable providers’ 1 Gig plans, and offers the 50 Mbps upload speed that tends to be the max for cable internet. In July 2022, WOW! launched a 1.2 Gig plan as their fastest option [3]. This is an unusual speed tier given that the company already had a 1 Gig plan, and that the upload speeds for both plans are the same at 50 Mbps. But there are some advantages for the extra $20/month. The 1.2 Gig plan is the only WOW! Plan that doesn’t charge an equipment fee and doesn’t have data caps. Those are pretty good perks that probably justify the extra $20. But you did hear that correctly: WOW!’s lower-speed plans do have a couple of drawbacks that may increase their otherwise excellent prices. Those drawbacks are data caps and a $14/month modem rental fee. Fortunately, the equipment rental fee is optional, meaning that you can skip it if you provide your own modem/router instead. And the data caps are fairly high for the lowest-tier plans (1.5 TB/month) and very high for the 500 Mbps (2.5 TB) and 1 Gig (3 TB) plans. The high caps for the fastest plans make it very unlikely that you will exceed your data caps. If you do exceed them, you will get a maximum overage charge of $50/month. So, just don’t go crazy and have 40 gamers play at your house for a month. The vast majority of households will not ever approach the limits of a 2.5 TB data cap.

WOW! cable is a fast, strong choice with gigabit download speeds but slower upload speeds

Internet performance from WOW! matches the stats of the largest cable providers in the nation such as Spectrum and Infinity. You will get fast speeds from WOW!’s high-end plans that will support streaming and gaming with multiple devices. The chief disadvantage of cable internet is that upload speeds are so slow compared to the symmetrical speeds of fiber internet. If you want to do large uploads or real-time gaming on 10 devices at once in your home, there’s no question that you’ll be better off with fiber’s lightning-fast uploads. But for most households with average internet usage, a fast cable plan like WOW! internet will be good enough.

Equipment rental fees are optional, self-installation is free for WOW!

All WOW! plans come with a free self-installation kit. If for any reason you’re not comfortable with self-installation, you can get pro installation for $50. Though most plans will allow you to rent a modem/router from WOW! for $14/month, you also have the option to supply your own equipment. This choice may be better for your budget if you plan to have service for more than a year. Just make sure you check with WOW! to be sure your router has compatible specs.

WOW! offers the same customer support amenities as the largest national ISPs [4]. You will get an online portal to allow you to manage your account. Telephone help is available 24/7. Online chat is available every day between 7:00 AM and 11:45 PM EST. In the J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Residential Internet Service Provider Satisfaction Study, WOW! outperformed much larger ISPs such as Cox [5]. That strong performance indicates WOW! customers are pretty happy with their service.