Vodafone vs plus net

Currently torn between these as Vodafone have some very good deals on. Their router also appears to be much better.

Im keen on real world reviews of anyone who’s moved to Vodafone from plusnet or the other way around. The appeal of 500mbps for the same price as 145mbps from plusnet is strong!

In reply to a post by Broadband20261:

Currently torn between these as Vodafone have some very good deals on. Their router also appears to be much better.

Im keen on real world reviews of anyone who’s moved to Vodafone from plusnet or the other way around. The appeal of 500mbps for the same price as 145mbps from plusnet is strong!

Just my take but I've heard to many horror shows to even consider switching from Plusnet to Vodafone. Plusnet admittedly is bargain basement but that tells you what I think of Vodafone.

In what why is the router better for Vodafone? You can always buy a decent router at a good price, don't change networks because of their router. I liked Plusnet router when I was with them as it was basic, with no useless [censored] in the firmware that is not needed, unlike BT router.
As for the service itself, I doubt there will be any difference, FTTP is more or less the same from any of the Openreach based services.

While it was FTTC, I went with Plusnet as a stop gap and ended up staying for 9 years almost, had one major issue and that was not a plusnet problem, but an Openreach problem. I was happy with them, going to another provider would have not made a difference.
I would say stick with plusnet unless Vodafone offers you something you need.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In what why is the router better for Vodafone? You can always buy a decent router at a good price, don't change networks because of their router.

This. Choose your own router, either simple or complex, to suit your needs. It is not one size fits all. And choose your ISP to suit your needs. And never choose an ISP because of the router. Just buy the router. Remember, no one rents televisions these days.

Vodafone and Plusnet both have millions of customers. Both are likely to be okay. Choose whichever offer suits you best.

In reply to a post by FibreBubble:

Vodafone and Plusnet both have millions of customers. Both are likely to be okay. Choose whichever offer suits you best.

Both does the job, but remember most of those customers just go with they get, plug it in and that is it, as long as they get Wi-Fi, that is all most of them are bothered about. When you get people thinking that Wi-Fi is the internet, then something is really wrong.

In reply to a post by DFScale:

This. Choose your own router, either simple or complex, to suit your needs. It is not one size fits all. And choose your ISP to suit your needs. And never choose an ISP because of the router. Just buy the router. Remember, no one rents televisions these days.

I had routers from providers, they were okay, the only reason i changed to the one i have now is because the plusnet one was playing up, and I thought it would be nice to get something that suited me and i could move to another provider should i move providers and I did move providers.

We switched when our Plusnet contract ended, their price went up and they wouldn't give us an alternative offer. Since we have been with Vodafone we have upgraded every time the contract ended at a lower price.
We have had the same Vodafone router since being with them, having moved from copper to FTTC to FTTP so it's not the most recent technology but does the job. When we were with them, Plusnet's router was the same as one of the earlier BT routers, so likewise not the latest technology.
In both cases the quality of technical support depends on the agent you get but with Vodafone you have to argue with their bot before getting put through to anybody that is likely to be able to give answers that are not read off a screen.
We haven't had many problems in the four years with Vodafone, those I remember:

• an argument about whether phone calls should have been in an upgrade package as they were in the previous package and we had asked before signing up for the upgrade
• somebody forgetting to do a firmware update needed for digital voice when we moved to FTTP
• an issue with wi-fi that we think resulted from a router firmware update that self resolved with another update

but on the whole they have not been too bad.

Thanks all. Must say recent review here by Simon has put me off Vodafone

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/11/vodafo...

Simon's assessment is interesting.
Our demands aren't massive, we don't do a lot of streaming and are contracted at 150 Mb/s
The OOKLA speedtest (that VF recommend) indicates that we get within a whisker of the contracted speed most of the time. TBB test gives an indication 3 - 5 Mb/s lower.
I have always suspected that the Ookla test effectively measures to the connection to the VF trunk system whereas TBB gives a more accurate measurement of connection to the www.
Generally, the TBB quality monitor shows latancy of c. 7ms with 5-6 spikes of 50ms or more and 20 smaller spikes each day.

I do wonder if Vodafone over subscribe their cable links in comparison to some other providers like BTW

I must admit the Vodafone offer via moneysavingexpert is about £1 more for 500mbps vs 145 with plusnet , but slow speeds and the often poorer resilience non open reach providers have when exchange outages happen (rare i know) is making me think twice

Agree with router separation... with your own router you don't have to re-jig all the ports and settings each time you have to do the regular 24 month ISP shuffle.

I'm looking to upgrade to FTTP as soon as it comes available but will stick with VF (again) because of the effective "free" static IPs.

I have a friend on 1Gb FTTP with VF as well and he kindly (I don't think he knows or cares the cost of electricity) lets me host a 40TB raided zfs server there. The static IPs make life simple without occasional DDNS losses.

Over 4 years of service I've no horror stories to tell, dealing with out-sourced support seems the norm.

Interesting - sounds like you’re noticing no slow downs?!

> Slowdowns
It's hard to say, mostly I think it's what you're connecting to. I can test my friends 1Gb/s via a torrent of large public (non-copyright file). When using torrents generally with VPN it seems to be limited to about 100Mb/s but I'm sure that's the VPN service.

Obviously at peak times, some slow down can be expected, dependant on your source.
My VDSL connection is 22Mb/s, which I can strean 4K from the external server, they are both on VF but deographically seperate exchanges. But the data rate isn't tha high for that.

I'd say for me they've been an acceptable, reasonably reliable but budget connection. I got a £17/m deal a couple of years ago, it's currently £18 something for the VDSL ! The £3.50 increase in April will require a contract switch to wife's name, Topcashback deal and hopefuly FTTP to make it palatable.

Had issues with Vodafone but they were quickly resolved. 3yrs now without issue.
vs Plusnet? Look at the relevant forums lower down. See how quiet the Vodafone forum is.

Cannot comment on Vodafone vs Plusnet, but can comment on Vodafone vs TalkTalk as we now have services from both at different properties.
The customer service from Vodafone is worse than TalkTalk, an example this morning, gf rang the Vodafone equipped house, phone didn't work, so we went over to investigate, indicator light for phone service on the router was flashing red and the dialing tone was very odd and calls could not be made or received, so a call to customer services, what a joke, was told nothing wrong with internet (which I already knew) and it was a problem with our phone as shown by the red flashing light, that we had the wrong type of phone (which had been working fine for 3 months) and that we needed to go out and buy a 'Voice over Landline' phone, where do they find these people. Anyhow after trying another DECT phone and still no joy we hit upon the obvious answer, 'switch it off and on again' (the router that is), this restored the phone service and once this was working we could see that the indicator light for phone was green if the phone was plugged in or not, so had no bearing on the function of the phone handset.

In reply to a post by burble:

... we needed to go out and buy a 'Voice over Landline' phone ...

LOL. The very latest pre-internet tech

In reply to a post by burble:

The customer service from Vodafone is worse than TalkTalk

And that is quite an achievement.