Tumblr introduces a $4.99 subscription plan that lets users avoid ads

Seeing advertisements while scrolling through social media feeds has become the norm. But Tumblr users now have an option to avoid those ads as long as they are willing to pay a monthly subscription fee.

Tumblr has recently announced its new ad-free subscription service that will cost users $4.99 per month. “As of today, you can set up ad-free browsing on your personal desktop computer, from anywhere in the world, and then enjoy the same effervescent Tumblr you know and love (yes, including mobile) without the interruption of ads,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Tumblr is also offering a 33 percent discount for users who will pay for an annual subscription with an upfront fee of $39.99. The company noted that it will be equivalent to a free $4.99 for four months.

Users interested in scrolling through their Tumblr dashboard without ads can subscribe to the new service by going to the Account settings. They will find a new Go Ad-Free button that will then display the $4.99 and $39.99 subscription options.

Tumblr is not the first social media company to introduce a subscription service. Twitter announced its $2.99 Twitter Blue service in 2021, which initially launched in Australia and Canada last June before becoming available to users in the United States and New Zealand in November.

There are stark differences between Tumblr and Twitter’s subscription services, though. The paid version of Tumblr is solely focused on removing ads that might explain why it is priced higher than Twitter Blue, which is not an ad-free service. “Currently, ads continue to fund our ability to innovate as we grow this new part of our business,” Twitter said on an FAQ page.

What Twitter users will pay for Twitter Blue, though, are a slate of exclusive features. The paid service does not have the ever-elusive edit button, but it features the Undo button that lets users revise their post up to 30 seconds after they hit the Tweet button. It also has an exclusive function that lets users organize their bookmarked tweets into separate folders based on the categories they set.

Photo by PhotoMIX-Company from Pixabay