Experian IdentityWorks Identity Theft Protection

We’ve all heard the name Experian. After all, it’s one of the three main credit-monitoring bureaus. Just because it’s a big company doesn’t mean it offers the best identity theft protection service, though. In fact, IdentityWorks isn’t even the only identity theft protection service that Experian owns. But, how can you tell if IdentityWorks is right for you and your budget? Well, we’ve tested all of Experian’s identity theft protection services ourselves. Check out our review of IDNotify to see what we thought of Experian’s other identity theft protection service.

With that said, we’re not here to review IdentityWorks today. Instead, we’re doing a deep dive on their pricing structure. Let’s face it, even if you’ve read a guide to identity theft protection services, figuring out what you’re actually getting for your money can get confusing quickly. So, let’s go through all of IdentityWorks different subscription plans, how much they cost, and what they get you.

App ratings

Experian IdentityWorks Subscription Offerings

Experian’s subscription plans used to be pretty confusing. They used to have two tiers with separate subscriptions for single adult families and two parent families. But, they recently updated their pricing structure making it way simpler. Now, you can choose from three tiers of protection, a free plan, an individual plan, and a family plan. Here’s how much each plan costs:

If you’re looking for long-term protection, we definitely recommend paying annually rather than monthly. For one adult, a Premium account costs about $299 when paying monthly, but only $249 when paying annually. That means you get two months for free if you pay for the annual plan. And that goes for the Family plan too. Count us in!

Like with most plans, you’ll need to splurge for the Premium subscription if you want credit monitoring from all three credit bureaus. We think that the coverage from three credit-reporting bureaus makes the plan worthwhile, but let’s look at a breakdown of what else we actually got with this coverage.

What Does Experian IdentityWorks Cover?

While you don’t get much with the free plan aside from credit monitoring for Experian, the paid plans give you a full suite of identity theft protection features. Whether you go for the individual or family plan, you’ll get these services:

• Identity theft insurance: This is designed to cover some of the costs related to identity theft, reimbursing victims for money spent on reclaiming their financial identities, repairing their credit reports, and of course any money the thieves spent. Those costs can range from phone bills to legal help. Experian’s Premium and Family plan offers a $1 million maximum reimbursement. While $1 million might sound like a lot, that’s the standard across the industry.
• U.S-Based Fraud Resolution Specialist: The fraud specialist is there to help with every stage of the worst-case scenario when an identity has been stolen.
• Lost Wallet Assistance: If we ever end up losing our wallets, the restoration specialists would help us cancel the cards and replace them. We could do this ourselves, but it sounds calming to have a helping hand in what we assume would be a super-stressful situation.
• Identity Theft Monitoring & Alerts: We aren’t trying to fool ourselves here—not even the best of the best monitoring services can always fully protect our identities from being stolen. But what they can do is alert us at the slightest sign of trouble if our credentials are found someplace they’re not supposed to be, detecting warning signs to limit the damage. Both levels of Experian protection monitor:
  • Social Security Number usage
  • Dark web surveillance
  • Address Change Verification
  • Real-time Alerts on Attempted Credit Inquiries

• Lock and Unlock Your Experian Credit File: If anything suspicious happens (are we jinxing it by mentioning the possibility too much?) one of the first things we’d do is to lock our credit reports so nobody can take action with them. And once the issue has been resolved, we’d be able to unlock them just as easily.

• Daily Experian FICO Score Alerts: Every. Single. Day. We understand this might not be the type of clingy relationship everybody might want to have with their FICO score, but if you’re trying to improve your score or build credit toward a specific goal like buying a house, these daily alerts can provide all the motivation you need. Experian has a few FICO offerings:
  • Score Tracking
  • FICO Score Simulator
  • Additional FICO Scores

That’s a lot of coverage that makes us think our identities will be pretty safe. And for $10 more per month, you can protect your entire family too. That’s why Experian made our list of the best identity theft protection services for families.

Does Experian Offer a Free Trial?

Experian offers a 30-day free trial. The catch? We had to give them our Social Security Number, which made it feel like a little bit more of a commitment than our free trials at the gym or the local food co-op. One the free trial period ended, we were signed up for a Premium account automatically, so if we’d wanted to continue, it would have been $19.99 per month.

How to Cancel Experian

We’re not going to lie—Experian is one of those companies that makes it tricky to cancel your subscription. The best bet seems to be calling them directly at 1-479-343-6239. We had a feeling it wasn’t going to be easy based on our past experience with Experian customer support, which was a little lacking. There’s definitely no charge if you decide to cancel before your free 30-day trial has ended, but after that, you won’t be able to pro-rate your current month’s paid membership fee.

Favorite Features

If you haven’t already checked it out, we’ve done a full review of Experian’s identity monitoring services. Overall, we were pleased with it. Here’s what we were most excited about:

• Daily credit reports and scores: When we’re paying for a credit and identity monitoring service—especially for one directly from a credit bureau—the main thing we want is a lot of data. The daily credit reports and scores definitely filled that gap and are perfect for anybody looking to keep a close eye on their financial information.
• Great apps on iOS and Android: Apps are key these days. Honestly, you could be offering us free ice cream cones every day, but if the app to get them is hard to navigate, we won’t bite very often. The Experian app is definitely more focused on credit rather than their side-gig identity protection, but it’s ideal for a quick check-in to make sure everything looks okay.

• Free 30-day trial: Nothing beats free, and with an entire month of IdentityWorks, we felt we had enough time to confidently decide if this service was the right one for us.

Recap

Ultimately, Experian IdentityWorks is not our absolute favorite identity theft protection service this year, which is not to say that we wouldn’t recommend it at all. However, the app isn’t anything to write home about, and the customer service was truly lackluster, which was really annoying for us at times. And don’t forget that they’re collecting all that identifying information that we’ve asked them to protect. It gave us the heebie-jeebies, but hey, at least they haven’t had any big breaches lately, unlike some other companies. And Experian does come at a great price point, especially for large families. With a free trial, affordable prices, and extensive monitoring, they’ll definitely help you to stay safe online as they did us.