Ring’s Protect Basic plan gets new features, plus a price hike

Ring’s most affordable subscription plan will soon add a slew of features, including more video storage, better bulk video downloading, sound detection, and smart alerts for cars and pets, but you’ll have to pay more in return.

The revamped Ring Protect Basic plan is slated to arrive July 1, and besides all the new features, you can expect a $1-a-month price hike. That’ll bring the monthly price for Ring Protect Basic to $3.99 a month, or $39.99 billed annually.

Next month’s price increase will be the first for Ring Protect Basic, which–for now–costs $3 a month, or $30 a year. Ring confirmed that you can lock in that $30-a-year price if you sign up before the July 1 deadline.

Rates for the pricier Ring Protect Plus and Ring Protect Pro plans, which cost $10 a month and $20 a month respectively, will remain unchanged after July 1. Ring last rejiggered its subscription plans last September, when it debuted the Ring Protect Pro plan and moved a couple of key features–professional monitoring and LTE backup for Ring Alarm systems–from the Protect Plus tier to the new Protect Pro plan.

In exchange for the price hike, Ring Protect Basic subscribers will get a variety of new features, including a boost in storage from 60 days of video history to 180 days, effectively tripling the length of your video history. That said, Protect Basic plans will default to just 60 days of video history, so you’ll need to change the setting manually to get the full 180 days.

Also coming to the Ring Protect Basic plan is the ability to download up to 50 recorded videos at once, up from 20 videos.

Moving along, Ring Protect Basic users will get “exclusive” discounts that were previously just for Protect Plus and Protect Pro members, including 10-percent discounts on “select” device purchases on Amazon and the Ring website.

A trio of detection and alert features are in the pipeline for Ring Protect Basic subscribers, but they won’t be available come July 1. 

Among the “upcoming” features are alerts for cars and animals, ideal for spotting vehicles in your driveway or wayward pets, while package selection will be coming to a wider selection of Ring video doorbells. Previously, Protect Basic users could enable people detection, along with package detection for a narrower range of doorbells.

Also coming soon for the Protect Basic tier is sound detection, meaning your Ring system will be able to fire off alerts when it hears breaking glass or other suspicious noises.

Finally, Ring Protect Basic users will be able to set up alerts triggered by custom events, such as when a gate is left open.

One aspect of the Ring Protect Basic plan that isn’t changing is that it still applies only to a single camera or device, whereas Ring Protect Plus and Pro functionality will work for all your Ring devices.