We all know that printers are just the vehicle for selling ink for many manufacturers. That’s where they make all their money. That’s why you can often get a really good printer for less than the ink would otherwise cost and that’s why the manufacturers are so adamant about customer maintaining their official brand ink cartriges.

So, it’s a subscription. Now, HP is acting like it’s a subscription with an actual subscription service called Instant Ink.

It’s actually a genius idea and the numbers work out fine. We got a 6 month free trial that includes 100 printed pages included with the plan—all for $4.99. Not too shabby! They also give you rollover prints and allow up to 700 printed pages a month during the trial (not sure if that’s what it’ll be after the trial ends).

It seems to be a decent program to increase loyalty and cut costs.

If you use this link, you can get a free month of the service.

After the novelty of printing “without cost” and my kids wanting random pictures every day wore off, we haven’t used it much. That is until school started and we’re printing like crazy. It’s great to not have to worry about the ink costs.