before buying any prepaid phone determine how many minutes per month you are likely to use.

Paying with a per-minute prepaid phone can end up costing you a lot more if you use more minutes.

Not that plan, but on My Family Mobile. The GBs of high speed data I'm supposed to be getting each month aren't high speed. All service is throttled. But, I do get unlimited data all month for only $25. It's just kinda slow. I can watch videos, they take a couple minutes to buffer out, especially during peak hours. The phone/calling service is fine, no problems there.

And, yeah, the customer service is worthless.

Edit to add: just checked my data usage for Feb. (I'm due to re-up the plan tomorrow). 14.90 GB so far. Not bad for $25. 2GB were supposed to be high speed.

I also use the phone as a hotspot for my iPad because we're feuding with Xfinity/Comcast. Again.

it looks like you only get 1500 minutes for the whole year. Similar limits for data and messages. If you exceed that, you probably have to buy monthly minute cards. So, even if you get a great phone for the price, you could end up paying for it in the end.

I had a Tracfone years ago, and the coverage was sort of OK, but there were a lot of problems all around. And, yeah, they didn't pay much for the CS reps in India to up their language skills.
Even when they had an answer, which was rare, you couldn't understand them.

Now, this was almost 10 years ago,so things may have gotten better. I would suggest you get the cheapest phone plan for a year, should be under $100, and see if it works for you.

And there are plenty of other cheap plans out there. I've looked at a few of them, but have been with Boost since I left Tracfone, and am OK with it. Unlimited everything, but 45 bucks a month and you buy or bring your phone.

How are they calculated? How is email or text time converted to usage minutes?

I confess I really know little about how this all works.

messages have a numerical limit.

Minutes used to be calculated "up"-- a 10 second call was a minute, a 1 minute 10 second call was 2 minutes. That may have changed, but I doubt it. If true it means if you get an answering machine you're stuck for a minute. Have to check, but I think minutes used to go for around 10 cents per.

If you don't use it much and you've got coverage in places you're going to be, it's not a bad deal. Just hope you don't need CS. And Instagram will kill your budget.

You can probably beat that annual cost if you roll your own with tracfone. Depends on how much you use your phone.

I've used tracfone for many years. It's cheap service but we don't use cell services hardly at all, but we always want the availability of a phone. I got a couple of iPhones from them, service connects to the new phone pretty much automatically if you follow directions. I find the service fine for my needs.

Make sure you have a minutes refill card available when you go to activate a tracfone. Go check out their web page, it's probably all the interaction you'll ever need from them, or want.

If you're not comfortable keeping track of minutes and adding service days when you need to I'd suggest you look at Consumer Cellular (https://www.consumercellular.com). If I lose the love for tracfone that would be my next move.

Edit to add a PS: My monthly cost for using a smartphone with tracfone is about $10. That could go up substantially if I used lots of minutes or data.

But I don't use my cell phone much. Since I upgraded to their Samsung Galaxy J3 Luna Pro ($25 for a refurbished one) I use it more when away from home but I get no cell signal at home so mostly it sits.

For the last six to eight years I have been getting the Tracfone one year of service which generally adds about 400 minutes of call time for $99, then for another $49 I'd add on another year of service with no minutes. I don't use 200 minutes a year so my minutes have added up a lot. The new system also adds data and texts.

With the Tracfone app you get an accounting of how much in minutes, data and texts you still have. It's really easy to add additional onto to any of those either by going to their website and buying what you need or purchasing a card from pretty much anywhere and entering the code number into the phone. With the app you can even add on the phone itself.

I do like the Samsung J3 as a smart phone - but it the first really smart phone I have had so I don't have much to compare to. I just checked and I have used a lot of data since I got the J3 but I have been learning how to use it for navigation and for checking weather and more.

I've always gone to the Tracfone site to look for deals - and not signed up for autopay with them, just added on service time and minutes as needed.