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I recently traveled to Poland and Ukraine and I used an esim from Airalo for my phone and the experience was amazing. This post is not a tutorial on how to set up the esim. It’s just a review about Airalo. It’s fairly easy to set up and there are a number of amazing tutorials on Youtube about.
What is an Airalo e-sim?
The easiest way I can explain it without getting into technical jargon is like this: When you travel and arrive in another country you will want to be able to use the internet and make phone calls. This usually involves calling up your carrier and paying for an expensive roaming type plan or buying a local sim and then replacing it in your phone. An esim is just a “virtual sim” card. It’s not a physical thing. It allows you to connect to the local carriers in your destination country and be connected to the internet. With the Airalo app, you just download the plan you want and activate it and when you get to your destination it will automatically connect. And you can keep your regular sim inside your phone. You don’t really get a phone number from Airalo. I believe all the plans are data only.
What type of esim plans are there?
Airalo works in over 200 countries and there are local eSims, regional eSims and global eSims. If you are only traveling to one country then a local esim is good for you. For example if you are traveling to Italy you can purchase the local eSim plan for Italy on the Airalo app and choose how many gigabytes you want. For 5 gig it is $14.50 and it’s good for 30 days. If you are going to a few countries then you may want to purchase a regional sim that works in more than a few countries. Once you leave one country and go to another the esim will connect to the new carrier. If you are traveling the globe then you will want a global esim.
Does it work on every phone?
Pretty much. Check out this graphic from Airalo below.
How was my experience?
I purchased a regional esim for Europe that works in 39 countries. I watched a tutorial on Youtube on how to set it up which was really easy. I wasn’t sure if it would work but when I landed in Warsaw, Poland (the first part of my journey), my phone automatically connected to a local carrier there and I had great internet access. I was able to use Whatsapp, upload pics and videos to Instagram and Twitter and use Google Maps to get around. I left Poland on a train to go to Ukraine and a few minutes after my train crossed into Ukraine, the esim connected to a carrier in Ukraine and it was the same experience as before. When I ran out of data, I topped up my phone with some more using the app. It was super simple, fast and a great addition to my trip.
