Ring recently announced it’s raising the price of the Ring Protect Basic subscription from $4 per month to $5 per month ($40 per year to $50 per year). The change doesn’t go into effect until March 11 — and customers have plenty of questions about the price hike ahead of its arrival. Thankfully, many of these questions have already been answered. There are a lot of caveats to the new pricing schedule, and there’s even a way to get the old 2023 pricing throughout the rest of 2024.

Here’s a look at everything you need to know about the Ring Protect price hike happening on March 11.

Since the new pricing doesn’t go into effect until March 11, any billing that happens before then is done at the old price. This means a yearly subscription that renews before March 11 will cost $40 instead of the new price of $50. In other words, that lets you continue using your Ring Protect Basic plan for the rest of 2024 at the same price as you paid in 2023. If it’s renewed after March 11, the new billing will kick in immediately.

While the Ring Protect Basic plan is seeing a big price hike, the other Ring Protect Plans aren’t changing. This means you can get Ring Protect Plus for $10 per month ($100 per year) or Ring Protect Pro for $20 per month ($200 per year). Unfortunately, these largely cater to homes with multiple Ring devices, and if you just have a Ring doorbell, your cheapest option is sticking with Ring Protect Basic.

Ring notes that you can switch plans at any time without any penalty. Whatever the pricing is for your plan at the time of your switch is what you’ll pay. But since no other plans are changing prices, upgrading to the Plus or Pro plan will continue to cost $10 or $20 per month. If you downgrade from Plus or Pro to Basic, you’ll pay $5 per month if you sign up on or after March 11 (sign up before, and you’ll pay $4 per month).

When you cancel your Ring Protect plan, Ring deletes all your videos. If there are any clips you want to keep, be sure to download them. This can be done by opening the Ring app, navigating to the menu bar, and finding the History section. From here, you can select the Three dots icon next to the video you want to save, then select Share and Download.

Depending on when you purchased your Ring Alarm, different things will happen to it if you decide to cancel your Ring Protect plan. Homes that purchased a Ring Alarm before March 29, 2023, will be able to access in-app features with or without a subscription.

Homes that bought the device after March 29, 2023 will lose in-app features. However, you’ll still be able to arm or disarm the unit from the Ring Keypad after canceling your membership.