I’ve been a happy Amazon Prime customer for years, like many. The fast, free shipping it offered always seemed like a great value and I was happy to pay the Prime subscription fee which used to be $79 per year but is now $139 per year.
But Amazon Prime is not just free shipping anymore. It includes over 15 other benefits, many of which you probably do not know about, including one that saves me $120 per year which almost cancels out the annual fee.
Get Grubhub+ for Free
This saved me $120 per year
In the United States, Grubhub is one of the biggest food delivery services, allowing customers to get delivery from thousands of restaurants and stores.
Unless you spend $50 or more on Grubhub (which probably doesn’t happen unless you’re ordering for an entire family), you are slapped with a $0.99-$5.99 delivery fee every time you order, which can really add up. But if you pay for Grubhub+, ordinarily a $9.99 per month fee, you get $0 delivery fees on orders as long as your total is at least $12. That could be a huge savings if you order Grubhub often, with the math coming out to about three orders per month when you break even on the investment into Grubhub+.
If you have Amazon Prime, you can get Grubhub+ for free. That’s a $120 annual value and hugely worth it if you like to get food delivery.
To enable your free Grubhub+ account (you’ll have to link your existing Amazon Prime and Grubhub accounts), you can just go to this link and follow the steps to link your Prime and Grubhub accounts.
The next benefit will give you an unlimited way to store your photos.
Amazon Photos is unlimited
Get unlimited photo full-resolution storage
The word “unlimited” doesn’t get used much, but in the case of this Amazon Prime benefit, it’s real: you get unlimited photo storage at full resolution on Amazon Photos if you have a Prime account. The exception is video, where you only get 5GB of video storage.
In addition, there are Android and iOS apps for Amazon Photos. So if you wanted to, you could move your entire Google Photos or Apple Photos library of content to Amazon Photos, hopefully after removing gigabytes of junk, and use Amazon’s photo app as your main gallery (where it offers advanced search tools with facial recognition, daily memory recaps, and one-tap access to print-on-demand services).
Perhaps you might not want to fully move to Amazon Photos since it’s very limited in terms of video storage, but if you have old photos taking up a lot of storage space, you could offload a ton of pictures to Amazon for safe-keeping and to relieve your hard drive.
To get started, just log into Amazon Photos and start uploading your pictures.
Share Amazon Prime
Free, fast shipping for the whole family
You can share your Amazon Prime membership with up to 1 adult and 4 children and grant your family members free shipping, Prime video access, and access to Amazon Music, all for free, without having to pay additional Amazon Prime membership fees. Also, with Prime sharing, you don’t have to worry about sharing accounts or passwords.
The caveat is that these individuals must reside at the same address — so sorry, no sharing Prime with your college buddy that lives in another state. The other requirement is that you must share your Amazon wallet with these other accounts, and thus the same payment method, though each member can also use their own payment method. This Prime benefit is clearly designed for families.
To set up Amazon Prime sharing, just go to the Amazon Family setup page where you’ll be instructed to invite and verify your family members, and then pick which benefits you want to allow. Each invited member must have a working email account. Once invited, family members have 14 days to accept the invite via email in order to activate their benefits.
The next benefit will give you rewards every time you shop on Amazon that convert into credits you can use to save money.
Get the Amazon Prime Visa card
I get 5% cash back on every Amazon and Whole Foods purchase and it adds up fast
Prime members can apply for the Amazon Prime Visa card, which offers 5% cashback to members on all Amazon and Whole Foods purchases (though don’t forget to use Amazon’s new price history tool to make sure you’re getting a good price).
I have this card, and I have my Prime Visa card set as the default payment method on all Amazon purchases, which leaves me with hundreds of dollars per year of Amazon credits (also redeemable as Amazon gift cards or statement credits) I can use towards purchases. This only really works out if you pay off your balance every month to avoid interest fees and if you and your family spend a considerable amount on Amazon. But it really adds up, and you can sign up for the Amazon Prime Visa here.
Prime is not just free shipping
Don’t ignore your other benefits
If you want to see a detailed list of all of your Prime benefits, you can do so by visiting the Amazon Prime customer service page where all the features are listed. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that as great as Amazon is, there are two other sites I check first before buying on Amazon.