When you hear one of those adverts where people seemingly control things with their voice, it can be tempting to have the same capability for yourself. Perhaps your neighbor already has one device capable of taking up commands. Alexa from Amazon is one such service that works like a personal assistant.
If you’re considering to get an Alexa and wondering about its price, then this article is for you. In this article, we’ll explain if there’s a monthly fee associated with using Amazon Alexa.
Further reading: What Is Alexa And What Does Alexa Do?
Is there a Monthly Fee for Amazon Alexa?
Alexa is a voice-enabled, home personal assistant from Amazon. You can order Alexa to do a whole lot of stuff like turning off your garage lights, playing your favorite song, searching for a local restaurant, among other things. Alexa offers all of these services for free. You do not have to incur any subscription fee or pay-as-you-go payments. All you ever need to start using Amazon is an Amazon account. After you’ve connected your account to the device, you can sign in and start submitting your query, and Alexa will oblige.
You do not even need an Amazon Prime membership. A general account will just be fine. But Amazon recommends upgrading to a Prime membership to get the most out of Alexa. For example, with Prime, you’ll be able to access free music from Amazon Music. Non-prime members don’t have access to this feature. Hence, when you ask Alexa to play the song, it might not retrieve the song for you. Besides that, you get much more when you’re a Prime member.
The bottom line is that you do not need to pay any monthly fee of some sort to use Amazon Alexa. It’s best if you can get a Prime membership, but non-Prime members can use Alexa too.
See more: How to Play SoundCloud on Amazon’s Alexa
Cost of Setting up Amazon Alexa
Amazon Alexa does not need a monthly subscription fee or anything of such sort. But you do need to set up the entire ecosystem, which would cost you money.
At the bare minimum, you’d need Amazon Echo, the smart speaker from Amazon. This is the controller that controls all other things around you and replies to your queries. This speaker is similar to Google Home.
Similarly, depending on your requirements, you’d have to invest in some other smart hardware. If you want your garage doors to open and close on your command, you must buy a smart garage door controller, which can cost around $1,000. If you want to play music in the room, you must purchase smart speakers that are voice-command enabled or connect with Amazon Echo.
Hardware costs are one-time in nature. Once you’ve purchased them, you need not pay anything further. Most people spend around $3000-4000 in setting up the entire ecosystem.
And as already mentioned, you can purchase a Prime membership to get the most out of Alexa.