Straight up, I’m going to tell you why I am writing this Saily eSIM review. On a trip to Italy a few years ago, I didn’t have a Saily eSIM. Instead, I spent an entire morning in Rome trying to buy a local eSIM that would work with my teenage son’s Android phone.

This isn’t how I wanted to be spending my time in my favourite European city, nor was it planned. The plan was for all our eSIMs pre-purchased in Australia to work on arrival and have data roaming. Yeah, nup.

Turns out the eSIMs I had bought worked on iPhones but not on Android phones as advertised, and now I was paying double the price I wanted to for less data and fewer roaming options. On this trip to Europe, I was determined it wasn’t going to happen again!

What is an eSIM and do you need one?

An eSIM is a digital SIM that is electronically built into your device, letting you download carrier plans without a physical card. Newer mobile phones usually have capacity for two SIMs and one or both of these will usually be an eSIM. Do you need one? Yes, if you want to use traveller essentials like Google maps and do things like looking up train timetables with ease while you’re out and about.

Why use an eSIM when travelling?

The reason you need one for international travel is it provides easy, cheaper data by letting you buy local plans digitally. This avoids costly home carrier data roaming fees while keeping your home number for urgent calls from home, offering flexibility and security over physical SIMs.

Why choose Saily?

For our upcoming trip, I did loads of research on the best travel eSIMs and Saily kept coming up again and again. Saily promises three big drawcards: ease of setup, global coverage, and best of all, affordability. Because Saily in run by Nord VPN, it also has a vast network of servers and, best of all, a lot of security features as an add-on like ad blocking and web protection. All this sounded good to me so I arranged to try one of their eSIMs so I could write a review.

Is a Saily eSIM good?

There was only one way to find out if the Saily eSIM was any good. I installed a Global Saily eSIM before I left home and tried it out on a trip that spanned multiple countries in Europe. There are a lot of travel eSim providers and they often have offers for a cheap plan. But, as I discovered, these don’t always deliver what they promise. I wanted to see if a Saily eSIM was good.

Saily eSim plans and coverage

Saily offers both country and regional eSIM cards to over 200 destinations, with data plans from 1GB to 50GB. These plans feature an automatic 30-day activation window. If you don’t activate it within that time, your SIM will activate automatically 30 days after purchase. This means you need to be mindful of the timing when you purchase your Saily eSIM and when you are travelling.

Regional eSIMs like those for Europe or Asia are perfect for country-hopping. Country-specific options are often more budget-friendly, so do your research on the destinations you’re planning on visiting and choose from there. But double-check all your travel spots are covered. After all, nobody wants to be offline in paradise, unless you enjoy the digital detox!

My Saily eSIM review

Firstly, after getting the Saily e Sim, it was a very easy process of downloading the app and following the step-by-step setup. This process is straightforward and lets you get online in your country of choice. I was heading to Europe, and my first country was Turkey, which turned out to be a little tricky with the country’s eSim guidelines. In Turkey, you need to activate your Saily eSIM (and any other travel eSIM) before you arrive due to the country’s legislation.

So, it got a tough test first up, and I can report it worked perfectly. I got straight onto a local network and had effective speed and coverage. My plan incorporated Europe for a Mediterranean cruise taking me from Istanbul in Turkey, through Greece, and into Croatia and finally Italy.

The beauty I found with the Saily eSim is that when arriving at a port, the eSim would automatically connect with the local networks. This was absolutely seamless (unlike some other eSIMs I’ve used which required fiddling with my phone’s settings to get them to work).

Looking at all the benefits I got with Saily, like only one eSIM download for my entire trip through multiple countries, affordable prices, a built-in ad blocker that saved a lot of data usage, and over 200 destinations with coverage, I was really happy with how things went.

Saily eSIM downsides

So, what are the downsides? Fortunately, I only found one. There are no calls as Saily is a data only SIM but this is the case with most travel eSIMs. I kept my second SIM active to receive text messages and emergency phone calls. If I got a call from someone I wanted to speak to, I said I would call them back on WhatsApp using my data eSIM.

Saily eSIM: The verdict

Overall, I give the Saily eSIM 5 stars for being so reliable, working perfectly and saving my bank account from a WTF moment caused by my data usage charges when travelling. 

Disclosure: The writers received a Saily eSIM for review purposes.