Want to get your inkjet printer ink shipped to your home, and save money at the same time?
Let’s face it, we’re probably going to be spending A LOT of time at home. That’s a given. I’m so encouraged by how I see people making the most of it—enjoying family time together, going on hikes and bike rides, playing games, interacting and educating virtually. What a blessing!
But since we are at home, and will be at home awhile, we’ll probably be printing more. Printing worksheets for kids to practice handwriting and so on. It’s good to develop handwriting skills and keep them in practice. Printing coloring pages to do for fun or to bless people with. Printing planning guides, meal plans or whatever else it is for your home to function well!
I want to share a tip with you. A few years ago we bought our first HP Instant Ink printer. With this new system, we can print for really cheap and we don’t have to go to the store to buy ink! It’s automatically shipped to us. Woohoo!
What is HP Instant Ink?
Our family needed a new printer this fall, so my husband did some investigating and research. In his search for the most affordable price and best option for our family, he came across the HP Instant Ink program. As he was telling me about this plan, in which you buy a HP InstantInk Ready printer but you BUY NO INK—EVER, I became intrigued. I used to spend $60 on ink every time I went to replace my ink. Tell me more, please!
The HP Instant Ink program allows you to sign up for a monthly service plan starting at just $2.99 per month. You pay your subscription rate based on how many pages you think you will be printing. If you print more than the allotted number of pages, you pay $1 for every 25 pages, but you can also upgrade your plan at any time. There is also a FREE plan for just 15-pages per month. You’ll get a pre-paid envelope for returning your used ink cartridges for recycling.
One of the best parts of the Instant Ink program, is that the printer automatically orders your ink for you. No more running out of ink and needing to get to the store quick so you can get your items printed. When your ink is getting low, the printer places an order for you and the replacement ink cartridges are sent to you FREE of charge.
How do I start using HP Instant Ink?
The first step is to buy a printer.
Search Amazon for HP Instant Ink ready printers. They are all inkjet printers, but there are quite a variety and the price range is really economical for all income levels. Just $49 for the cheapest printer, that would really serve you well!! Or you can spend a little more and get printers that print faster, or both sides of the paper.
We chose the HP OfficeJet Pro 8740 because it auto-duplexed printing both sides at the same time, and I love it! I can also make copies if I have a maze book or instruction sheet or whatever that I want to print multiple copies of. My kids can use it to make copies of their drawings (they like to make their own card games for some reason!) 🙂
My husband is an engineer and he searches for the absolute best products when he makes purchase decisions. He recommends considering the following, since there are a lot of HP Instant Ink Ready printers to choose from.
For families who want the best deal:
- HP OfficeJet 3830 Multifunction Printer – This qualifies for the FREE 15 pages per month. If you don’t print often, this is a bargain!! It scans, faxes, and copies—perfect for a family or small business. It prints at only 8.5 pages per minute, but if you’re printing this little, you’re probably not concerned about speed. It can print borderless printing and print directly from your phone. It’s probably the most popular and affordable choice.
For families who like to print great photos:
- HP Tango X Smart Printer – This printer includes free photo printing! It includes the ink for all photos printed from a mobile device on paper up to 5 x 7 inches in size. Its stylish and perfect for minimalists. It also features voice control paired with an Alexa, Google Home, Cortana, etc. You can tell it to print out your daily calendar!!
For families that need to print quickly, and on a budget:
- HP OfficeJet Pro 8210 Printer – this printer is only $99. It doesn’t copy or scan but it can print up to 22pm. It can also handle printing many pages per month!
For families that want a professional printing experience at home consider:
- HP OfficeJet Pro 9025 Multifunction Printer – this is the newer model of the printer we have had for almost three years now! It’s affordable enough for home use but prints 24ppm and you can load an additional 250 sheets of paper. It prints two sides automatically and can scan two sides at a time. It’s just wonderful! 🙂
What’s the next step, after I have my HP Instant Ink Ready Printer?
Now that you have your printer, follow the setup instructions. During the set up process, it will ask you for a code. This is where you enter the following code to get FREE MONTHS of printing.
- When you register your printer, add the Promo Code SCHOOL2. This code may no longer be working.
- Add a second promo code y7wr8f, to get an additional month FREE. That is my refer a friend code. You can use any refer-a-friend code to get that extra month free. (After you set up your account, come back here and enter your code on this form. I’ll share your code with my readers and earn you some extra free months!)
You can start printing right away because your printer comes with starter ink for 3 months. HP tracks your printing volume and sends you new ink when you are getting low! The new ink that comes lasts you MUCH longer than the first batch of ink. We usually only replace our ink twice a year and we print a lot of pages!!
The HP Instant Ink plans start at $2.99 for occasional printing (up to 50 pages per month) and continues up to 700 pages per month!
My tip >> Choose the highest plan! Even if you don’t print this much, you can downgrade at any time after the promo is over. You might as well get your 700 pages per month FREE!
Any pages you do not print ROLL OVER to the next month!
That gives you a total of 6 months for FREE!!
If you order the $49.99 HP Deskjet 3755 All-In-One Printer you’ll pay less than $50 for a printer and ink for 6 months (or 1800 pages). You can’t find a better deal than that!
And no worries, if you already have one of those printers you can use the last two promo codes mentioned above and still get 3 months free.
Refer-A-Friend Program
After you sign-up for the HP Instant Ink program, your HP Instant Ink home page will give you a referral link. Share this with your friends and family and for a limited time, you will enjoy 3 FREE months of HP Instant Ink for every friend who signs up. Plus, your friend gets 1 month FREE of service!!
Tracking Your Printing
I was worried that I might print over 300 pages after we received our printer. If I’m told I can print 300 pages for FREE, I don’t hold back! I had a lot of homeschool papers to print for the year, so I knew I needed to be careful. Printing over my 300 pages is still cheaper than going to a copy shop but I didn’t want to spend more than I had to.
Which is why I was thrilled to discover how incredibly simple it was to track the pages I was printing. I could just log in to the HP Instant Ink site and within about 20 seconds, it would update and show me exactly how many pages I’ve printed this month.
Yes, the rollover pages on the right, means that you can roll over any plan pages from the month before that you did not use. However, you can only roll them over once. You can’t keep rolling them over and have more than 300 rolled over. But I still love that if I have a month where I am away or don’t print as much, I can use those extra 100 pages the next month. I plan to do this for months like December when I’ll be printing extra Christmas letters!
Other Tricks to Saving
- Sign up for the 700 page plan. Always sign up for this plan to start because you’ll want to get as many pages free as you can for the first 6 months of your free trial. After your free trial months are over, you can then knock it down to the $2.99/month plan to save money.
- Keep your old inkjet printer, if it is still working. At least until you run out of ink for it. We did this and now I use it to print pages that don’t use a lot of ink so I don’t go over my plan pages for the month.
- Use your Instant Ink printer to print full and high coverage pages, if you have a secondary printer for backup. Since I get charged per page, not by how much ink I use, I always print any photos or pages that have a lot of color on them with my Instant Ink printer. I’m not paying for that ink, so let’s use it!
<< Search all Instant Ink Ready Printers Now >>
wendy says
Hi,
I already register my printer but do you think I can still add your code ?
Kathy says
We are not 100% sure but we think you can’t add another code after you initially register your printer and set everything up. Sorry.
Vec says
It can be done. It happened to me. Go to HP Support Forum, post a Question about how you did not know when to put referral code and someone from HP will help you and add the code to you account.
Kathy says
Thank you!!!
wendy says
Thank you !
I have another question, do the 300 pages during free months roll over to the next month too ?
Kathy says
Yes they roll over the first month. You can’t roll the same ones over two months in a row. Hope that makes sense.
Alessandro says
Registered my account in Italy. The code worked here too! Thanks!