Tubi is a great service for anyone looking for free access to TV shows and movies. One of its major selling points (beside free content) is that you don’t even need to create an account, let alone hand over credit card details. While that is a great feature, and one that will appeal to many users, you should consider creating a free account. Here’s why.
It is hard to argue against the benefits of using Tubi. For starters, it’s free. Secondly, it’s free. Thirdly, it’s free. On top of those three great reasons, the streaming service is packed with a decent variety of TV shows and movies. In fact, with some shows, you actually get access to every episode making it as bingeable as Netflix. Again, all of this is irrespective of having a Tubi account.
Yes, Tubi does display ads before, during, and after shows and movies, but that’s how the service makes money and why it can be offered to consumers for free. What’s more, having a Tubi account won’t make that situation any better. In a rare show of equality, Tubi does not distinguish (at the content level) between account holders and account-avoiders. Both sets of users get access to the same catalog, and both have to suffer the same level (and frequency) of ads.
In fact, there’s very few reasons why you should even bother to create a Tubi account and that’s good. However, those few reasons do make a significant difference by enriching the experience to the point where it is worth signing up.
Signing up for a Tubi account
Before getting into the benefits of having a Tubi account, it is important to discuss the security of having one, as this is becoming an increasingly important factor for consumers.
Creating an account with any service is not something to ever take lightly. Your data is extremely important in the modern age, and not only important to you, but also to businesses. Companies often use this information to ensure targeted ads reach the best audiences and this makes user data extremely valuable. Due to this, the advice here to create an account is not something that’s offered without consideration of that point. To be perfectly clear, if you rarely find use for the service, then you shouldn’t create an account.
However, if you find value in Tubi and feel it is something that adds to your TV viewing, then creating an account is a worthwhile move. Firstly, the Tubi signup page doesn’t require any payment information. The form requests a first and last name, as well as an email address, password, date of birth and gender. However, we were able to sign up just by providing a first name and email address. Therefore, most of these fields you can consider as optional.
You can also sign up by connecting your Facebook account, although we would not advise doing this. Not with Tubi, or any other service, and especially if you want to limit the amount of data you are sharing online.
Considering the only real information being handed over is an email address (you can set up a new one just for the purpose of Tubi if you want), the outlay of personal information is fairly minimal here. Now let’s take a look at what you get in return.
The benefits of having a Tubi account
As already mentioned, there’s not many reasons to actually create a Tubi account, considering the service makes things so easy without one. However, if you invest any time in Tubi, then an account becomes more of a necessity than a luxury.
The biggest reason for this is the wish list. In spite of this being a free service, the choice of TV shows and movies is fairly extensive. While that’s great in theory, without an account it can become increasingly harder to manage the service. As you navigate through the interface and see plenty of “I’ll watch that later” content, there’s no way to actually bookmark videos. Unless you opt to make a list elsewhere or have a seriously good memory, and are happy to manually search each time, then creating an account will streamline the Tubi experience and save you time overall.
Once an account is created, you gain the option to “add to queue” and this changes the experience drastically. From then on, you get a watch list row added to the home screen, and a queue section in the categories.
Both of which results in easy access to content you’ve bookmarked. In fact, at this point, you can just spend one evening going through as much of the catalog as you want and bookmarking everything you plan to watch. The next time you fire up the app, you’ll have a ton of content you know you want to watch ready, just like you probably do with Netflix, Hulu or any other subscription service.
There are some other benefits as well, such as watch history, and probably a better recommendation experience, although these simply factor into the wider personalization point made with the watch list.
Overall, having a Tubi account changes the free service from one that’s difficult to manage to one that’s more in line with what many users will already be getting with other streaming services. Albeit without having to pay, and without having to give away any more data than an email address of your choosing.
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