An Honest Sparklight Internet Review: Is It Worth It?

Sparklight Internet offers both cable and fiber internet services, but you don’t have your pick—you have to take whichever is available where you live. (In general, I recommend getting a fiber plan if you can. Fiber internet is extra fast and dependable.) The exact Sparklight plans, prices, and sometimes even plan names vary based on location.

Sparklight offers heavily discounted promotional prices on most plans for the first 12 months. For instance, in some areas, the promo price for the Freedom Internet Gig plan is $60 a month—cheaper than even Google Fiber. But after that first year, the monthly payment jumps by at least $26.

Depending on location, you may also have the option of signing up for a FlexConnect plan, starting at $45 per month for 300Mbps. The prepaid plans cost a little more than the regular cable or fiber plans, so unless they’re the only Sparklight option in your area, signing up for one probably doesn’t make sense.

Some Sparklight plans come with unlimited data. If yours doesn’t, you can pay $40 a month to get it (although your data will slow down after 5TB, an extraordinary amount you’ll probably never exceed anyway). Some higher-tier plans in certain locales also include a modem at no additional cost.

If your plan doesn’t come with a modem, unless you buy your own Sparklight-compatible equipment, hardware costs an additional $12.50 a month. And professional installation and activation are $90 and $100, respectively, although Sparklight says you can choose to set up your equipment for a “reduced activation fee.”

Once you add everything up, Sparklight can get a bit expensive. But the service has no contracts and no termination fees, so whatever plan you sign up for, you can leave at any point.

For cable plans, I recommend the Connect 300 plan. It’s widely available, not outrageously expensive, and provides enough speed for most online activities and household sizes.

Even if you barely use the internet, I still recommend Connect 300 over Connect 100. In most markets, Connect 300 is cheaper than Connect 100, so downgrading won’t save you money. Might as well opt for the higher speed.

And for those lucky enough to live in a Sparklight fiber service area, I suggest the Sparklight Fiber 300 Mbps plan. It’s the slowest fiber plan, but it’s also the cheapest, and many households don’t need more than 300Mbps, even (especially) not with a fiber connection.

For all our internet reviews, we give a rating based on three main criteria—speed and reliability, dollar value, and customer experience—which we then average to make an overall score.

Want to know how Sparklight stacks up? See our full take below.