Is cruise ship wifi worth it?

It depends on which of four things you want it for, and only two of them justify the money. Work that genuinely cannot wait, yes. A real reason to be reachable at home, usually yes. Posting your holiday as it happens, probably not. Messaging the people you are on holiday with, definitely not — you can do that for nothing.

Work you cannot put down

Buy it, and buy the right tier. If your week depends on being online, this is not where to economise. Check whether the tier you are buying permits calling, because the cheaper ones often do not, and a meeting you cannot join is a package wasted.

Be realistic about when. A satellite link shared by several thousand people is at its worst in the evening and on sea days. Morning is reliably better.

Someone at home who may need you

Usually yes, and one package is enough. An elderly parent, a business, a teenager left behind — that is a sound reason. But it is one device, not one each. Whoever is most likely to be contacted buys it, and the rest of the party reaches that person onboard by other means.

This is the single biggest saving available to most families and almost nobody takes it, because everybody buys their own by default.

Posting as you go

Probably not. Photos and video are what a shared satellite link handles worst, and uploading them is the slowest thing you can ask of it. Most people find the experience annoying enough that they stop.

The alternative costs nothing: take the photos, post them from the café in the next port. The pictures are the same and the wifi is free.

Finding your own family on the ship

No. Do not buy wifi for this. It is the most common reason people buy multiple packages and it is the one that makes least sense, because the money buys you a round trip to a satellite and back to answer the question "where are you".

CruiseLink does that without the internet at all — messages pass straight between the phones in your group over Bluetooth and the ship's local network. It is free, and it works with every phone in airplane mode.

What it will not do: reach anyone outside your group, work for someone who did not install it before sailing, or deliver instantly across a whole ship. A message travels when phones come near enough.

Before you buy anything

1. Check whether you already have it. Plenty of fares bundle a package, and loyalty tiers often include minutes or a full one. People buy twice surprisingly often.
2. Check what the tier allows. Calling and streaming are frequently excluded from the cheaper ones.
3. Decide how many you genuinely need. Usually one, not one each.
4. Sort out the onboard problem separately, because that is the one you will actually have several times a day.

Deliberately no prices on this page. They vary by line, tier and voyage length and they change often — a number here would be wrong by the time you read it. Check the line's own pricing.

Get CruiseLink

Free, no account, nothing to set up beyond your group. On iPhone and Android, and the two work together.