Our Guide to eSIMs and Why an eSIM is Better Than SIM Cards and Roaming

Our eSIMs guide covers the essentials you need to know about eSIMs and why buying an eSIM before you travel is a much better idea than buying local SIM cards on arrival at the airport or using your international roaming – because the best things about eSIMs is that you can buy them online and you can still use your ‘home’ phone number at the same time as you use your new eSIM.

I’d arrived on a late night flight to an empty Melbourne airport. The baggage was delayed, making me regret checking my carry-on. The last airport bus was about to leave and I didn’t want to take a cab. What I wanted was to message my husband in Siem Reap and my sister in Perth. But my roaming wasn’t working, I couldn’t connect to the airport WiFi, and everything was closed, so I couldn’t buy a SIM card.

It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that as globetrotting travel writers we were recommending that travellers take an unlocked phone on holiday and buy a SIM card on arrival at the airport to use while they were away. In all our years of location-independent travel, a local SIM was an essential, far more economical than using international roaming, despite some inconveniences.

But because travel SIMs could only be used in the country in which they were purchased, Terence and I ended up with quite a collection of those little plastic cards. While those cards meant we could make local calls at cheaper prices, the biggest disadvantage of the SIM card was that we had to remove our home number, and all the problems that created.

Fortunately there are now eSIMs and they’re a game-changer. Based on my frustrating experiences getting connected this year, I’ll only be recommending travellers buy eSIMs from now on, and if you’re travelling to more than one country or doing a stopover en route to your main destination, buy an ‘eSIM global’ or ‘global eSIM’ than can be used in multiple countries.

In this guide to eSIMs – which you’ll also see called ‘e-SIMs’ as well as ‘eSIM cards’, although there’s no physical card – I’ll explain what eSIMs are, how eSIMs work, the benefits of using eSIMs and why they’re revolutionary for travellers, especially travellers covering multiple countries on a short trip, undertaking an epic round-the-world adventure, or doing a European road trip or multi-country train journey.

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Guide to eSIMs and Why an eSIM is Better Than SIM Cards and Roaming

Here’s our guide to eSIMs and the essential things you need to know before your next trip.

What is an eSIM?

Unlike those little plastic cards with chips, an eSIM is not a physical card that’s removable. It’s a SIM that’s ‘embedded’ in the form of software installed in a chip in your device. That’s the ‘e’ in eSIM.

How do eSIMs work?

Instead of having to manually install and remove those little plastic cards when you want to change telecom carriers when you travel, you simply go to the website of an eSIM provider, choose a plan and purchase your eSIM. You’ll be sent a QR code to scan to activate the eSIM and you’re all set to go!

You’ll need an unlocked phone

Of course, you first need to make sure that your phone is unlocked and has an embedded SIM, can accept multiple numbers, and is not tied to one carrier – just as you would with physical cards – and that your phone is compatible. You’ll find eSIM providers have lists of compatible phones on their websites.

How to install an eSIM

When you arrive in the country or countries you’ve bought the eSIM for, you connect to the internet and follow the provider’s instructions to install the eSIM. Too easy.

Benefits of using eSIMs

There are so many benefits to using eSIMs, these are just some of the advantages of using eSIMs over physical cards.

You can buy eSIMs online

For starters, if I would have had a compatible phone that night at Melbourne airport, it would not have mattered that everything was closed, I could have been messaging my husband and sister, calling the hotel to let them know I was arriving late, and looking up other transport options in case I missed the airport bus.

You can use multiple eSIMs

Unlike in the (not-so) old days when you had to pull out your home number to put in the new card, with compatible phones you can use multiple eSIMs purchased from multiple providers. So family, friends and colleagues can still be contacting you on your home number, at the same time as you’re using data on travel eSIM numbers to contact your hotel, book restaurants, buy train tickets etc.

Easy to add data and change plans

Again, there’s no need to go into a physical telcom store, you simply head to the provider’s website or portal or use their app and in your own private panel or dashboard you can add data or buy a new plan online.

You can share data

Terence and I have often bought one card over the years and shared data via our hotspots. You can also share data with eSIMs depending on the provider. Check the FAQs on the provider’s website before buying an eSIM. Not all providers allow data to be shared, although I know that Holafly does.

Easy to replace eSIM QR codes

Unlike with physical SIM cards where you’d have to go to a telcom store buy a new card if you lost one or it stopped working – been there, unfortunately! – you simply contact the eSIM provider via their website or app if you accidentally delete your QR code or it stops working.

That’s our mini guide to using eSIMs and the essentials you need to know, but we’ll add to our eSIM guide the more experience we have using. If you have any questions or tips to using eSIMs feel free to ask away or share them in the comments below.