Data on vacation? With eSIM, you can have internet connectivity anywhere

The holiday season is in full swing, and many of you are surely wondering how to stay online even in exotic destinations not covered by your domestic plan. Of course, if you plan to spend most of your vacation at a hotel resort covered by Wi-Fi, you probably don’t need to worry about this problem at all. However, assuming you plan to travel a bit, perhaps even independently, mobile internet connectivity can be an invaluable helper. And with eSIM, you can have internet connectivity anywhere and not worry about data on vacation at all.

eSIM-based services or a classic prepaid card?

One of the first things that probably comes to mind for many of you is “why should I pay for an eSIM service when I can get a local prepaid SIM in the given location and easily get data on vacation?”. This is certainly a very good point, as it is a relatively easy and in most cases cheaper solution. Furthermore, eSIM support is not required here, and if you want, you can choose a SIM that also supports voice calls and text messages, which is not possible with the latter option. However, services using eSIM also have several undeniable advantages. And if you happen to not know what eSIM is and how it works, we discussed it in detail in a separate article.

First of all, you can prepare everything nicely in the comfort of your home, and upon arrival, you just need to activate the given eSIM. This eliminates the potential search for where to buy a prepaid SIM card, and I dare say that choosing the right solution for you will be significantly easier with eSIM. Moreover, I also dare say that it will depend heavily on the specific location. For example, in Switzerland or England, finding and choosing a prepaid card will likely be easier than in Tunisia or China. And another undeniable advantage of eSIM services is related to the latter country, China. These services very often offer VPN within their plans for such countries, which allows you to access otherwise unavailable services, such as those from Google, even in China.

China, however, actively fights against some VPN services, which the services themselves warn about, stating that they cannot guarantee functionality under all circumstances. eSIM providers, however, usually use multiple VPNs, so the probability of a favorite service stopping working is significantly lower. A disadvantage of most services, however, can be that you cannot set the location within the VPN, and it may also change during the use of the service. Another great advantage of data connectivity via eSIM will be appreciated by avid travelers. Within one package, you can have coverage for several countries simultaneously, or even an entire continent – it depends on the offer of the specific service.

What to watch out for

Navigating the offers of individual providers is often not entirely easy. Just the fact that even within one service, the conditions can differ based solely on the chosen country. I already touched upon VPN in the previous chapter – while some services offer it as standard for all countries and plans, others only have it for selected countries like the aforementioned China. The cheapest services don’t even offer this feature at all.

Also, be sure to pay attention to the speeds offered in the plans. This applies especially to unlimited data plans, where you may encounter a speed reduction even after exhausting 1 GB of data, and often a very significant one, perhaps down to 512 kbps. Some services are more transparent in this regard than others and clearly state this fact before purchase, while elsewhere you have to dig deeper into the terms and conditions. Conversely, there are also services that leave you with at least a very slow data connection (usually) at 128 kbps even after exhausting the purchased data package. While the speed is extremely slow, it should be sufficient, for example, for sending a message via an instant messenger.

If you plan to handle data on vacation for the whole family through one phone with eSIM and a Wi-Fi hotspot, keep in mind that by far not every service supports internet sharing. Especially with the cheaper ones, the hotspot either doesn’t work at all or is severely limited. I usually encountered a limit of 500 MB for the entire plan – regardless of its duration or data limit.

Which service to choose?

As I mentioned in the introduction, there are a relatively large number of services offering data eSIMs for (almost) the whole world, with each having its own advantages and disadvantages. These also differ depending on the selected country – probably based on the agreement the service has with local operators. The fact that service A turns out to be by far the best for Egypt does not mean that service B cannot be better for traveling in Vietnam. I have prepared three tips for services with which I have either personal or at least indirect good experience.

ByteSim

One of the cheaper, yet quite feature-rich services. The offer on the ByteSim website might seem a bit confusing at first glance, but once you get oriented, you’ll find that all essential information is on one page and you don’t have to search through terms and conditions. Moreover, unlimited data sharing via Wi-Fi hotspot is included in the plan, but VPN is only included for a few countries. If you rely on user reviews, the service has received a rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot based on nearly 3 thousand reviews.

Saily

On the opposite side of the price spectrum is the Saily service. It is backed by the Nord Security company, which is also the operator of the NordVPN service, among others. It is therefore not too surprising that the service pays great attention to security and thus offers VPN within every plan. Furthermore, you also have the option to choose a specific virtual location, which other eSIM providers usually do not offer. A small but for some significant plus is the website and application in Czech and unlimited Wi-Fi hotspot. The disadvantages are the mentioned higher price and also that Saily has a rather limited selection of plans for many countries, often without the option to choose unlimited data. On Trustpilot, the service has a rating of 4.4 stars from 4.5 thousand reviews.

Holafly

My third tip is one of the largest services of this type. Holafly usually falls somewhere between ByteSim and Saily in terms of price, but it offers exclusively unlimited data plans with a choice of a specific number of days. The website and application are quite clear. Unfortunately, there is a data limit of 500 MB for the Wi-Fi hotspot here, so if you plan to share your data plan, look elsewhere. On Trustpilot, Holafly has a rating of 4.5 stars, but from nearly 58 thousand reviews.

Installation? Simple!

So we have chosen a service and purchased a suitable plan, now what? Well, all that’s left is to install the eSIM on your phone. Anyone who has installed an eSIM before knows that it is not a complicated process. Installing a data eSIM for data on vacation or a business trip is not fundamentally different from installing a local operator’s eSIM. There are usually two options for installing the given eSIM: via the service’s application, which will guide you through the complete installation, and you basically just need to confirm the individual steps. In the application, you can also check the status of the given eSIM along with the remaining data limit or, of course, the option to purchase more data.

If you don’t want to install the application, providers usually also offer installation via QR code. In your phone’s settings, you need to find the “eSIM” option and then select the option to add via QR code. Keep in mind that data connectivity is required to activate the eSIM, so ideally go through the installation process while still at home, otherwise you will be dependent on public Wi-Fi abroad. After installing the eSIM, don’t forget to enable roaming for it and possibly select it as the default for data connectivity before departure, and conversely, disable roaming on your physical SIM card.

Practical experience

Personally, I used data eSIM services once, but on two devices. During my almost month-long business trip to China, I needed data connectivity for both my personal and work phones. While a few GB were enough on my work phone for accessing work email, Teams, and WeChat, I wanted unlimited data on my personal phone and the ability to share it via Wi-Fi for working on my laptop while traveling. If you’re asking why I didn’t share internet for the second phone as well, there’s a very simple explanation – I needed to be constantly online and at the same time didn’t want to have the hotspot constantly on and drain my phone’s battery.

After researching the market and options, I finally chose a combination of ByteSim for an unlimited plan on my personal phone and a Saily 5GB plan on my work phone. Installation for both services went smoothly, as did their activation upon arrival. In terms of usage, data on the phone with ByteSim mostly stayed at speeds between 2 and 5 Mb/s, while with Saily, the speed was a bit more stable, and I usually measured values close to 5 Mb/s.

As for overall reliability, during the month I used the services, the connection fluctuated a few times, and its speed dropped to a few hundred kb/s. However, this was definitely not a daily occurrence, and usually, turning airplane mode on and off helped, and after reconnecting to the network, everything was fine again. It’s hard to say whether the slowdown was caused by the local operator, VPN, or something else. It is true that I only noticed a similar problem with Saily about 3 times during the entire period, but this could have been partly due to the fact that I used the phone with this service significantly less than the phone with Bytesim.

Final tip

At the very end of today’s article, I will add a small story and also a warning. In many phones, you can only have one eSIM active, and if its slot is already “occupied” by a SIM card from a Czech provider, you must deactivate it to use the data SIM. However, be very careful not to need the given SIM, for example, as the only option for multi-factor authentication, for instance, for your bank. A colleague who traveled to meet me had such an unpleasant experience when his bank blocked his card during an attempt at a “non-standard” payment and required multi-factor authentication, which was set up exclusively via SMS to his number. Since the code was sent every time he attempted a payment and required entry within a certain time limit, the problem was not entirely solvable with the help of hotel Wi-Fi, and moreover, he couldn’t even access the application without a VPN. Eventually, everything was resolved with the help of my Wi-Fi hotspot, but it was definitely not a pleasant situation.

How do you handle data on vacation or business trips outside the EU?