We believe Quickflix is the best online rental company in Australia; their site design is user friendly, their price plans are straightforward with many, versatile options, and they go the extra mile in customer service. Quickflix was launched in 2003 and now stocks over 40,000 titles, over a dozen times more than most video stores, as well as 850+ new Blu-Ray High Definition titles. In February 2006 Quickflix acquired one of their major competitors, Homescreen, and their expansion has continued apace (48% increase in subscribers for 2009) as they challange the larger Bigpond for market share.
Quickflix offer their service throughout Australia and have an unmatched five distribution centers/DVD warehouses to reduce DVD turnaround times wherever you live. These are located in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide. These centers have shipped over three million DVDs to more than 65,000 households across Australia.
Their website design was revamped in 2008 due to customer feedback, and we're certainly impressed with the result. The expansions include member review and ratings of films as well as recommendations. There is plenty of information about each disc; cast, director, synopsis, etc. and even critic reviews for many films. Browsing is simple and easy, by Genre, Actor, and Director. They have an impressive 23 genres to browse through, each of which has many subgenres (a whopping 381 total when we counted; for instance, SciFi has Action SciFi, Horror SciFi, SciFi Spoofs, and another 14 subgenres!) No other Australian DVD company boasts this level of classification, important when you're browsing inventories of many thousands of films.
Their search engine is powerful compared to most, allowing queries on title, actor, or year. Other features include Movie Selector, Kid's Queue, Queue top-up functions as well as a reviews by Empire magazine, and critics Megan Spencer, Scott Goodings, David Bond, and David Stratton. There is also an active blog, featuring the latest new releases, new features, general Hollywood news, and such--content no other Australian DVD rental service matches in our opinion. In late 2009 Quickflixy updated their search and functionality for TV series (which represent 20% of all rentals), and an iPhone app is under development which will make managing queues on the go much easier.
Finally, they do seem to go the extra mile with customer service compared with other large DVD rental companies. This is not to be underestimated--if you've ever had problems canceling your subscription or returning a DVD which you never asked for, you'll certainly appreciate it. Moreover they continue to respond to criticism and suggestions to improve their service--their newly improved website, and recent introduction of adult film rentals are prime examples of this. Quickflix may not be perfect, but if we had to recommend one DVD rental company, this would be it.
Prices: Quickflix offers a 14-day free trial of its service, however, in February they introduced a limited time 30-day free trial, up to a maximum of 7 discs.
The budget options of 1 DVD out at-a-time (to a maximum of 2 DVDs per month) and 2 DVDs out at-a-time (to a maximum of 4 discs per month) cost just $9.95 and $14.95 respectively -- great if you're not a huge movie fan, but like to sit down to an occasional film. They also have a 2-out, 8 disc plan per month at $19.95, and a 3 out 10 per month plan at $24.95, both effectively $2.49 per disc which is quite competitive. On any of these limited plans, you can get additional discs for $3.00 per movie, though this really isn't cost effective on a regular basis.
In February 2009, they ceased to offer any unlimited rental tariffs, though a 2 disc out, unlimited rental plan has been resumed for $29.95 per month.
Discounts are also available if you sign up for a six or twelve month contract, though we suggest trying them out for a month or two before signing a long-term contract.