Late last month, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery teamed up to launch a bundle of their assorted streaming services. Don't worry if you haven't heard the details yet, as an ad will soon show up in the middle of your favorite shows to fill you in.
The Disney Plus/Hulu/Max bundle, while not cleverly named, does exactly what it says on the label, making that trio of streaming services available for just one price. If you've already got all three services — or you're thinking about doing so — the appeal of this bundle lies in the fact that you can now subscribe for a reduced price over what you paid for each one separately.
Really, it's a very appealing offer that promises to bring you three of the best streaming services at an attractive price. And I wouldn't touch the Disney Plus/Hulu/Max Bundle with a 10-foot pole.
What you get from the Disney Plus/Hulu/Max bundle
Before we get into why I'm steering clear of this offer, let's drill down a little more into what you get by bundling together Disney Plus, Hulu and Max and how much it will cost you.
In case you're not familiar with what each service has to offer, Disney Plus boasts the a deep pool of titles pulled from Disney's library — animated classics, Pixar movies and a host of original programming and theatrical releases feature Marvel and Star Wars. Hulu has an every shifting library of movies of its own and gives you access to original shows like "Only Murders in the Building" and rebroadcasts of current TV shows like "The Bear." Max dips into the Warner Bros. film library, along with original HBO programming and — less interestingly — Discovery Channel filler.
The TLDR version of that last paragraph: the bundle will bring you a wide array of movies and shows across different genres. If you can't find at least half-a-dozen things in there that you like, you're a fussier viewer than me.
As to the price, the Disney Plus/Hulu/Max bundle starts at $16.99/month for an ad-supported version of those streaming services. To do away with ads, you'd pay $29.99/month.
My Tom's Guide colleague Alix Blackburn figures that you'd save nearly 35% with the ad-free bundle than you would if signed up for Disney Plus Premium ($13.99), Hulu without ads ($17.99) and the ad-free version of Max ($16.99). By my math, you're saving around $9 a month by opting for the lower-priced ad-supported version of the Disney Plus/Hulu/Max bundle.
The problem with the Disney Plus/Hulu/Max bundle
That would be a compelling deal — if I thought the price of the Disney Plus/Hulu/Max bundle would stay at $16.99 forever. But the last few years should have taught us all that prices of streaming service aren't carved in stone so much as they're written on dry-erase board.
Prices of streaming service aren't carved in stone so much as they're written on dry-erase board.
Lifehacker recently tallied up how much subscription fees have gone up since 2023 for some of the more popular streaming services. Its research found that if you subscribed to Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, Max, Paramount Plus, Peacock, Apple TV Plus and Amazon Prime Video, you would have gone from paying $76.92 at the start of 2023 to $98.91. That's a 29% rise in 18 months.
For an even longer-term look at the trajectory of subscription fees, a site called TrackSub lists the prices of major streaming services dating back four to eight years, depending on the service in question. Increases range from a modest $1 monthly hike all the way up to $37 for various tiers of video streaming services.
The larger point is that video streaming prices only seem to go in one direction, and if you think the Disney Plus/Hulu/Max bundle is going to be the exception to that rule, I've got a streaming video series on the Brooklyn Bridge I'd like to sell you. What goes up may eventually have to go down, but try explaining that to executives at Disney or Warner Bros. Discovery.
How streaming bundles could be more appealing
There's not much we can do about rising streaming service costs, as those are likely to continue so long as studios try to make up for the revenue they're losing from cable cord-cutting. And at the end of the day, the no-commitment nature of streaming means that you can always cancel your subscription should the monthly costs become too much.
But there's a way that offerings like the Disney Plus/Hulu/Max bundle could become a safer bet, convincing skeptics like me to actually commit to such a service. And it means taking a cue from some of the best phone carriers.
A trend currently taking place among wireless provides involves price lock guarantees. For example, Boost Mobile, as part of its recent rebranding, launched a plan with a lifetime guaranteed price of $25/month for unlimited data so long as you remain enrolled in autopay with the carrier. Verizon-owned Total Wireless introduced its own 5-year price guarantee in recent months, too, and we've even seen price locks offered from bigger carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon.
Streaming services should follow suit. Guarantee that if I sign up for a service now, my rate won't go up for a set amount of time — say, for a couple of years. This wouldn't be a contract binding me to a streaming service: I'd still be able to cancel at any time, though at the expense of giving up my guaranteed price. It would go a long way toward convincing me that a streaming service bundle is a sensible purchase.
As it stands, though, it's hard to take the savings being dangled by the Disney/Hulu/Max bundle seriously, when you know that a price hike is waiting just around the corner, like a disappointing Marvel TV series.
