Travel eSIM Buyer’s Guide
Before you launch a travel eSIM, read this
There’s never been a better time to tap into the $30B roaming market.
The travel industry is booming and embedded connectivity is empowering brands—from fintech giants to commercial airlines—to launch mobile services to their millions of users, effortlessly.
As travel eSIMs gain mainstream adoption, consumers are seeking out roaming deals for their trips abroad. This creates an opportunity for popular apps to deliver travel data as a value-add to their core service.
Let’s face it: your customers can't use your product if they’re offline. It’s in your interest to help them stay connected, at home and abroad. But in an age when user experience is king, the difference between a mediocre product and one that delights your customers is in the details.
Until now, delivering a holistic product with great quality global coverage was near impossible. Anyone who tried experienced a huge strain on their resources. Today, there’s an alternative.
We spoke to our engineers, product managers, and customer success team, as well as our customers and industry peers, to identify the key factors to consider when launching a travel eSIM. The result is this guide.
If you want to launch a dominant travel product with the lowest acquisition cost, highest conversion and best UX in the industry, read on.
Decide your go-to-market strategy
There are several ways to position travel eSIMs within your user experience. The path you choose will depend on your objectives.
Beyond generating direct revenue, travel eSIMs can boost customer acquisition, retention and product engagement.
By offering roaming as a loyalty club perk, for example, you can deliver more value to customers and reduce churn. By bundling travel eSIMs with complimentary products, you can incentivize purchases.
The cost of roaming is a serious pain point for travelers. By offering a simple solution, you have an opportunity to drive real customer love.
Standalone product
Sell eSIMs directly on your platform as a value-added service.
Loyalty perks
Offer free eSIMs to premium members to boost loyalty and retention.
Bundling
Package eSIMs with other travel incentives,
such as insurance and foreign exchange.
Point redemption
Add value to your rewards program, by allowing users to redeem points for eSIMs.
Sign up and purchase incentive
Incentivize sign ups and repeat transactions by offering free travel data to customers.
You may want to experiment with your positioning over time. The important thing is that your telecom partner gives you that flexibility.
Choose your model: Embedded vs Affiliate
In the past, the easiest way for businesses to sell travel eSIMs was through an affiliate partnership. While this model works for some, it has its flaws. By redirecting customers to a partner website, you lose control of the user experience. That means you can’t ensure a seamless purchase journey or collect data on user behavior. You also lose control over retail pricing, product positioning and margin optimization, which can limit the revenue potential of your eSIM offering.
Today, there's an alternative: Embedding connectivity seamlessly in your product. This not only creates a smoother user experience—think one-click activation, midair, without WIFI—but also gives you full control over pricing, positioning, and go-to-market strategy. Instead of selling travel eSIMs as a standalone product, you can offer them as a free perk, let users pay with reward points, or bundle them with other products and services. There's also no risk of losing revenue through poor attribution models.
There’s even a best-of-both option: If you want the experience of embedded with the face of an affiliate brand, you can choose to offer affiliate-branded plans in your embedded experience - only with Gigs.
To help you decide which model is right for your business, here's a guide.
Embedded connectivity
How it works
Embed connectivity seamlessly within your user experience and allow customers to buy and activate their travel eSIM in a tap, without leaving your platform.
Upsides
Keep full control of the user experience.
A smooth purchase journey and accurate analytics.
Freedom to position travel eSIMs how you want.
No risk of lost revenue from poor attribution models.
Drawbacks
Implementation may take longer than an affiliate option (approx. 1-2 weeks).
As your brand name is attached to the service, the product must meet your high standards.
Choosing your partner
There’s an easy and a hard way to embed travel eSIMs in your product.
Just as integrating payments into a platform was painful before Stripe, embedding connectivity is a mammoth task without Gigs.
Telecom is a complex and highly regulated industry. Gigs was designed to make it simple.
The legacy way
Fragmented
Launching a roaming service required multiple partners, hours of development work and significant upfront investment.
Not tech-first
Legacy telecom systems aren’t designed for modern platforms and required time-intensive integrations.
Poor UX
Your users expect instant eSIM activation and excellent coverage across markets, standards that legacy providers often fail to meet.
The Gigs way
End-to-end
Everything you need to deliver a world-class service, all in one place. We’ve built it so you don’t have to.
Made for tech platforms
Launch in just 1-2 weeks with our intuitive API and the support of an expert team.
Exceptional UX
Beautiful experiences that keep customers coming back—including one-tap eSIM activation and 5G coverage, in every market with a 5G network.
Affiliate model
How it works
Partner with an eSIM provider, such as Gigs, and redirect customers to their website. Once the customer buys the eSIM, your business gets a kickback.
Upsides
The provider has full responsibility for the user experience.
Quick and easy. Minimal (if any) development work needed.
If you already sell affiliate products, this may slot in nicely.
Drawbacks
Ejecting customers from your product can mean losing them.
No control over the user experience, purchase journey or user data.
No control over retail pricing, product positioning or margin optimization.
Some affiliate attribution models are imprecise, leading to lost revenue.
Choosing your partner
Not all affiliate partners are created equal. Here’s what differentiates an average product from a market-leading one.
Standard eSIM challenges
Bad UX
Poor user journeys will impact your conversion rates and lose you customers.
Poor network quality
Some eSIM providers will leave your users buffering, with low speeds and high latency.
Outdated design
75% of consumers judge the credibility of a business by their brand design. Many providers won’t hit your high standards.
Gigs
World-class UX
Choose a plan and connect in one tap. Zero hassle, maximum conversions.
Superfast data
Gigs eSIMs automatically connect to the strongest network in every destination.
Exceptional design
Inspire confidence and trust with beautiful design throughout the customer journey.
The next step
If you're ready to make travel eSIMs a part of your business, Gigs can help.
With Gigs, you can embed connectivity into your product seamlessly, giving your customers instant access to the world’s best networks—right from your app.
While we recommend a fully embedded solution, we also offer an affiliate option. So, whatever your preferred go-to-market strategy, we've got you covered. Get in touch to learn more.
Speak to a member of our team
There's no need to be an expert to work with Gigs - we'll help you through every step of the process. Fill out the contact form below and we'll be in touch soon.
