Giffgaff review: Great but facing stiffer competition

Giffgaff was one of the original no-frills networks, delivering all the convenience of a traditional monthly contract but without any long-term commitments – and all at a lower cost. Its business model hasn’t changed much over the years; you pay from £6/mth to £35/mth for a rolling package or “Goodybag” of minutes, texts and data, and you can cancel or switch packages whenever you like.

It’s an approach that has won Giffgaff plenty of fans, along with some imitators. iD Mobile launched a few years after Giffgaff with a slightly different take on the same idea, while Vodafone and Three have built their own low-cost, no-frills virtual networks – Voxi and Smarty – to grab a slice of the budget network market. Giffgaff is up against some stiff competition in 2022.

That’s reflected in this year’s Expert Reviews Mobile Network Awards and accompanying survey conducted in partnership with YouGov. Where last year saw Giffgaff coming away with the highly commended honour in three out of four of the award categories, this year it’s empty-handed. It’s not falling short in any respect – nearly 87% of users surveyed would recommend it to a friend – but other providers such a Voxi, Smarty and Lebara have stolen some of its thunder this time around

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Giffgaff review: What do you get?

All of Giffgaff’s Goodybags are based on the same straightforward model. Unlimited texts and calls are inclusive, you just pay more or less depending on the data allowance. Only the most lightweight users should look at the cheapest £6 and £8 Goodybags, as 1GB or 3GB won’t go far these days. However, the £10/12GB Goodybag is a good option, while the £12 and £15 Goodybags give you enough data for most activities outside of streaming at 20GB and 25GB respectively.

If you need more, Giffgaff’s Goodybags stretch up to a £20/80GB package, along with a £25/Always On plan that effectively gives you unlimited data, with the caveat that your speeds are throttled after the first 80GB to 384Kbits/sec between 8am and midnight.

Giffgaff also has a selection of Golden Goodybags, which don’t tie you in to an annual contract, but ask you to use a saved credit or debit card for payment and accept a recurring billing cycle; the regular Goodybags can also be paid for through a one-off purchase or a top-up voucher. The advantage is that you get more data for your money, with 15GB for £10, 30GB for £15, 100GB for £20 or a true unlimited data package for £35/mth.

These aren’t always the cheapest plans available. You might find Smarty or iD Mobile giving you the same data allowance for less, or more data for around the same price. Tesco Mobile or Three can sometimes give you more value if you’re prepared to sign up on a two-year contract. However, Giffgaff is always competitive, and you have the flexibility of a no-frills service.

In any case, Giffgaff’s users feel they’re getting great value for money. Two-thirds of the customers we surveyed said they were very satisfied here, while a further 23% were fairly satisfied. Plusnet Mobile, iD Mobile, Smarty, Tesco Mobile and Voxi all had even better results, but that’s still a lot of happy customers by any yardstick.

In fact, there’s just one area where Giffgaff falls short on value: buying a smartphone. The network sells smartphones for an upfront fee or over 24 monthly payments, but the prices it charges aren’t any lower than those you’ll pay with Amazon or Carphone Warehouse, and can be more expensive.

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Giffgaff review: Customer service

Giffgaff’s customer support is a little unorthodox. It’s primarily community-led and based around the Giffgaff website and its forums, and you only really get involved with the formal customer support team if there’s an issue with your account or if something goes seriously wrong.

However, if you were expecting that this results in poor customer service, you’d be wrong. 41% of Giffgaff users told our survey that they were very satisfied with their customer support, while 38% said they were satisfied. Other networks, including Smarty, Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile and Plusnet Mobile scored higher, but Giffgaff isn’t too far behind. Giffgaff also came out well from Ofcom’s latest research, with the second highest score (95%) for overall satisfaction and the joint highest score on value for money.

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Giffgaff review: Coverage, reliability and speed

Like and Sky Mobile, Giffgaff is a virtual network that runs over Virgin Media O2’s infrastructure. The 4G network covers around 99% of the UK population, and it’s only in some more remote coastal and rural areas that you’ll struggle to get a signal. Meanwhile, the 5G network now covers around 750 towns and cities, and Virgin Media O2 claims that it should reach 50% of the UK population during 2023.

The news on performance isn’t quite so good. RootMetrics’ last round of median download speed tests puts Virgin Media O2 fourth of the UK’s big four mobile networks, with a median UK download speed of 16.4Mbits/sec, behind the third-placed Vodafone’s 23.8Mbits/sec. However, O2 fares better in Northern Ireland, and it now has median 5G download speeds of over 100Mbits/sec in most of the 16 cities where RootMetrics runs its tests. Three, EE and Vodafone go faster, but Virgin Media O2 has potential to catch up.

Only 33% of the Giffgaff users we surveyed were using its 5G services, and of those just 41% told us they were satisfied with their connection – the lowest result for any network. The main reason for the grumbling was the lack of 5G coverage, as picked by 68% of Giffgaff’s unhappy 5G users. Interestingly, O2 and Sky Mobile 5G customers went for the same issue, leading us to think that O2 needs to speed its 5G rollout up.

Don’t go to Giffgaff expecting class-leading performance, but reliability is a different matter. Here, 86% of users in our survey said their connection was mostly or always fast enough for web browsing and 66% said the same for audio streaming. Even video streaming doesn’t seem to be a problem; 59% of users said it was mostly or always fast enough, while around 12% said it was rarely or never fast enough. Voxi, Sky Mobile and Three had slightly better scores overall, but this is still a pretty good result.

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Giffgaff review: Roaming

Giffgaff still offers free EU roaming to its users, albeit with a 5GB roaming cap. Charges are reasonable elsewhere, at £1 per minute, 30p per text and 20p per MB in most destinations. You should look elsewhere if you’re a frequent traveller outside the EU, but other networks are even more expensive.

The only downside is that you’ll need to top up your account with credit before you venture abroad, as Giffgaff has no facilities to pay later through your monthly contract charges, as other networks would.

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Giffgaff review: Other services and spending caps

Because of the way Giffgaff operates, there’s no option (or reason) to set a monthly spending cap. Instead, you can set up a plan to recur automatically, then start your next Goodybag early if you need to. The alternative is to pay extra for data at a charge of 5p per MB, or simply top up your account.

Giffgaff review: Verdict

Giffgaff isn’t an award winner this year, or even highly commended, but it’s still a good tried and tested option if you want a flexible, low-cost deal. However, fierce competition from Lebara, Voxi and Smarty – with even lower prices and exceptional results in our survey – means it’s not as easy to recommend Giffgaff as it was last year. It’s not getting worse, but its rivals are getting better, and you might get more for less if you go with them.

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