Spliiit defends legal sharing to pay less for its subscriptions

Isabelle and Julien have done their accounts. Between their subscriptions to the platforms of streaming, like Netflix, to those of online music, like Deezer, without forgetting their Dropbox, and other digital newspapers… they spend more than 60 euros per month! Enough is enough. Faced with galloping inflation, the young couple will have to make choices to save money.

There is, however, a solution to pay less for subscriptions: share them at a split rate between co-subscribers. The practice, long a national sport in complete illegality, has a now recognized platform for this: Spliit.

“Places” to share, as for carpooling

“With Spliiit, we have transposed the mode of carpooling to that of subscriptions”, explains to 20 minutes, Guillaume Lochard co-founder of Spliiit. Launched in 2019, the platform now references 157 shared services in France. “The main ones concern SVOD, music and video games”, relates Guillaume Lochard. But Spliiit also aggregates subscriptions shared around software, such as Microsoft 365, or even meditation or yoga applications.

To date, Spliiit would total 540,000 subscribers and more than 108,000 active subscriptions. “It is thus possible to save 250 euros per year by sharing subscriptions to streaming video and audio and video games. But we have big consumers who can save up to 600 euros per year, ”says the co-founder of Spliiit.

Family accounts to share

How does it work? Merely. The owner of a subscription that has unused family profiles can offer them on the site. Disney+, OCS, Canal+ Series, FilmoTV… just select it from the proposed list. Example with a Premium subscription to Netflix for which it is possible to share three “seats” out of four. Spliiit is responsible for offering free places on its platform and pays 4.50 euros per place to the owner of the subscription. This is the price of the subscription divided by four. “On our side, a place is charged 5.08 euros to the co-subscriber. The difference of 58 cents is our margin”, specifies Guillaume Lochard.

80% of services (AppleTV+, Spotify, Deezer, Le Monde, L’Equipe, etc.) are shared through simple email invitations set up by the platform. “There is no mixing of genres, everyone will connect with their own identifier. This system is developing and makes it possible to have an individual and very private side,” reassures Guillaume Lochard. Exception for Netflix, where owner must share username and password. “We are adding PIN codes for co-users, which prevents people from knowing what we are watching,” says the co-founder of Spliiit. Anonymity is thus guaranteed.

Disney+ at 2.31 euros per month

Is it interesting? Yes, both for subscription owners and their co-subscribers. The latter can thus subscribe to a shared subscription to Netflix for 5.08 euros per month; to Spotify for 2.98 euros; to YouTube Premium for 3.50 euros. Other examples: Disney+ can cost 2.31 euros, Nintendo Switch at 0.73 euros, or even iCloud from 0.88 euros per month. For a good cause, the amount of the subscriptions can be, according to the goodwill of the co-subscriber, rounded up to the tenth of a cent or to the higher euro for the benefit of Emmaüs Connect, a partner of Spliiit, with the aim of financing training.

Major partner actors

Is it legal? Spliiit claims it. “At the beginning, the gray area seemed much grayer than today”, agrees however Guillaume Lochard faced with the void that the notion of shared family subscription can constitute. “At the beginning of our activity, we were attacked by major American players, who were condemned at their expense”. Today, Spliiit claims to have developed partnerships with them around the notion of out-of-home sharing. “There is a void on this question, especially for blended families, people who live alternately with each other, even students who no longer live with their parents”, deciphers Guillaume Lochard. “Netflix, which has increased its prices twice in two years, could very well block certain users with their IP address. But he doesn’t.”

According to the co-founder of Spliiit, publishers “are realizing that we have cancellation rates that are infinitely lower than what they had”. Another argument put forward by Guillaume Lochard: “we have also demonstrated that we are effective against piracy”.

Sharing two Netflix “seats” for 9 euros/month

We registered on Spliiit to “see”. Very neat, the platform is extremely intuitive. The steps to share a subscription or take out a co-subscription are simple, fast and fluid. At any time, we know what we will pay if we want to subscribe, or what we will earn if we are the owner of a subscription.

We have thus offered two “places” to share our Netflix Premium subscription (paid 17.99 euros per month). The money that will be returned to us when co-subscribers have subscribed to it (9 euros per month, or 108 euros over the year!) will be blocked for 30 days in an escrow account with the Banque de France (time to check that the shared subscription is valid). If we wish to remove our offers, we must do so 30 days in advance. Co-subscribers can terminate their subscription at any time.

According to a survey conducted by Spliiit among its subscribers, 29% of people indicate that without co-subscription at a reduced price, they would access their service illegally. 37% specify that they would forgo the service.

And, sign of the times: 80% of the owners of subscriptions passed by Spliiit to share them affirm that they would give up certain services if they could not share them.