One of the main incentives for cutting the cord is to avoid paying for a lot of bundled channels that you don't care about. But as fragmented as the streaming market is, subscribing to a bunch of different services to get all the content you want adds up, perhaps too close to your monthly cable bill . While that isn't bound to change in the short term, Hulu wants to offer some relief by cutting its entry level subscription to $5.99 per month for the first year.
The promotion is limited to new Hulu customers only and applies to its subscription service with limited ads, with pricing going back to $7.99 per month after the first year. The streaming service is not offering any discounts for its $11.99 per month commercial-free offering.
The promotional price undercuts Netflix's single-stream, SD-only plan, which goes for $7.99 per month, as well as their two-stream $9.99 plan with HD content, and Amazon's new standalone streaming option (sans Prime shipping) for $8.99 a month.
Hulu offers on-demand TV shows from major networks that become available a day after they are aired. The company is also working on a live TV streaming service that's going to be launched in 2017 and is rumored to cost $40 per month, with content from Disney, Fox and most recently Time Warner after the latter bought a 10% stake in the company.