As the resident Starlink expert at PCMag, I've been pretty happy with the service since I started using it—and then, began wholly relying on it for my day-to-day work—in 2022. In fact, I've regularly sung the praises of the SpaceX satellite internet service, and rightly so: Every time I've formally speed-tested it (in 2023, and again here in 2024), it's been better than the time before. Readers seem to agree, based on the multiple Readers' Choice awards that the service has racked up in just a few short years.
But even as a happy Starlink customer and reviewer, I still don't like some aspects of the service. Scratch that: As a Starlink expert, I downright hate some things about Starlink.
To be fair, many of my biggest complaints from years past have already been solved. Retail availability makes it easier to buy new hardware in a pinch, and availability of the service has grown over time, making it available pretty much anywhere in North America, and eliminating the waitlists that left many early adopters hanging on for weeks or months before they could get service. Some worrisome problems never even materialized, like the long-mooted data-cap policy that was abandoned before it ever got implemented.
As Starlink has grown and shifted from a proof-of-concept technology to a profitable business with more than a million users, a lot of the wrinkles have gotten ironed out. Let's just hope that these remaining problems are also fixed in the near future.
1. That Lack of Customer Support
Got a problem with your Starlink dish or router? Good luck reaching a helpful customer service rep. I've actually written a guide on how to reach Starlink customer service, and I still have trouble getting help when I need it. What would genuinely be helpful is a real-life customer support line, staffed by humans on call.
I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the full-service customer support experience. Sometimes, it actually is helpful to talk to a real live person and get one-on-one assistance. Yes, I realize that it would probably be just as bad as customer support from other ISPs, complete with hair-tearingly-long hold times and unenthusiastic shift workers reading a script. But, honestly, sometimes that would be more helpful than what we've got.
2. Iffy Communication With Customers: Can I Get an Update Here?
A related issue is a general lack of communication from Starlink to its customers about, well, anything. If a general outage or a change in billing occurs, I may not hear about it until days after the fact, or sometimes not at all.
Case in point: A service issue affected many users in February. For over an hour, paying customers were stuck without service as a fumbled software update interrupted the normally steady connection. My own evening was disrupted by this. It happened on a Sunday night, but within the hour, service was restored, and I went back to business as usual. But Starlink didn't email me about it until Wednesday of that week.
In fact, it's a pretty common occurrence for my reporter colleague Michael Kan to reach out to me about Starlink announcements to see if customers were emailed about an issue, and it will be the first (and often only time) I hear about it.
3. Fixing Technical Issues: Trouble With Troubleshooting
I've praised Starlink for its reliable service many times, from the speeds relative to other rural internet providers (like other satellite companies, or DSL) to the general reliability of the service—I had far more connection troubles with my old cable provider than I've ever had with Starlink.
But when problems do crop up, it's difficult to troubleshoot. You can try rebooting your router, which might help. You can consider issues with your dish, such as obstructions or needing to reposition the dish. But it's just as likely to be an issue on the Starlink side of things, whether that means problems with the terrestrial infrastructure or issues with the low-Earth-orbit satellites that make the whole system work. And, let me tell you, not knowing if the problem is your router or a technical glitch in space can be a little nerve-wracking when all you really want is to stream a show or log on for a virtual work meeting.
4. Where Am I? IP Address Weirdness
One quirk of Starlink's home-to-satellite-to-server chain of data communication is that every website I go to thinks I'm somewhere I'm not. And it's not off by a little bit. For a long time, my IP address put me somewhere near Seattle. These days, everything routes through Denver. (I'm in Idaho.)
The reason: Starlink's internet service has to connect to the internet somewhere. The satellites may be in space, and the users scattered across the globe, but the point where Starlink's orbital system meets the Earth-bound internet is called a ground station, or in SpaceX-speak, a "Gateway."
Giant bubble-like antennas communicate with the satellites overhead. But if individual Starlink users are like individual strands, these Gateway antennas are more like heavy braided rope, with each antenna pulling in up to 10Gb of data each way, the combined data flow of thousands of users. To reduce user latency, these Gateways are strategically placed in areas that have access to the fastest commercial internet infrastructure, and users are routed through the Gateway nearest to them.
It's really a cool system, but it also means that my smart TV is constantly showing me local ads for stuff in Denver, and my online shopping always gets messed up when I want to check if something's locally in stock. And if I want to arrange a ship-to-store, and I have to figure out (yet again) how to tell Walmart or Best Buy that I'm in the middle of Idaho, not Colorado or Washington.
5. The Pricing: High Up-Front Costs, Expensive Monthly Bills
Starlink is expensive. It's absolutely worth it when you don't have any other good options, but the costs are not negligible. Take $599 for the hardware, and $120 per month for service? That's pretty steep, especially considering that gigabit fiber plans are often a lot less than $100 per month—where they're available. But the whole reason you get Starlink is that those speedier, more affordable options aren't available in your location, or your location changes too frequently to justify a fixed installation for cable or fiber.
That's all to say that I understand the expenses and the value trade-offs for Starlink users, and I appreciate the service for what it is. But as an inveterate cheapskate, those expenses are physically painful to me.
What's more, Starlink has gotten pricier since I started with the service back in 2022. When I first signed up, it was $99 per month, but then it crept up to $110 and now it's $120. It's held steady at this price for over a year now, so my fingers are crossed, hoping that we won't see any more price increases going forward.
On the flip side, we're finally seeing some price reductions and sales for Starlink hardware, which takes some of the sting out of things for new customers.
6. The Hassle of Hands-On Installation
I recently commented to a co-worker that I had no idea my job would have me on ladders and rooftops as much as it does. Until very recently, self-installation was the only option for most Starlink customers, requiring mounting and aligning the dish, running the cable, and connecting the external dish to the router inside the house.
Starlink is actually designed for self-installation, so this process is about as painless as the company can make it. But the process will still involve things like ladders and sometimes power tools, which can be daunting to some folks, and completely prohibitive to others. (I know I've got family members I wouldn't want climbing up a ladder.)
Recently, Starlink has started offering a $199 installation option that includes "permanent mounting on roofs or walls, cable routing, and more." But for the able-bodied customer, it's probably still worth it to sweat a bit instead of adding $199 to the $599 expense of the installation kit.
7. The Accessories Are Limited to the Starlink Store
Perhaps my biggest gripe about Starlink is that even as basic installation hardware is selling through big-name retailers, notably Best Buy, Home Depot, Target, and Walmart, these stores carry only the bare essentials. If you want to put your dish up on a roof, or mount it on a pole, or get a longer cable, you'll have to order it through the Starlink Shop, which is accessible exclusively to Starlink customers, and that only after your dish is set up and activated.
(Credit: Starlink)While that's fine for existing customers who merely need to improve their setup, it's a major pain for anyone who needs proper mounting from the start. If you can't get an unobstructed view of the sky without a proper mount, then it becomes a lot more difficult to activate your dish and get access to Starlink accessories in the first place.
Thankfully, this process has improved a bit with recent changes on the Starlink website. When ordering the basic installation kit through Starlink.com, you'll now get the option of buying the necessary mount or cables at the time of purchase. But if you bought it through one of the stores that has recently started selling Starlink kits, you're out of luck. You'll either have to get the dish activated first, or roll the dice on a third-party accessory, like those sold through Amazon.
Making this issue even more irritating, if you're an existing customer who's considering upgrading your hardware (as I recently did), you may have access to the Starlink Shop through your existing account, but you won't be able to access the accessories for the newer Starlink hardware until you have the new dish gear set up and activated.
I suppose this is meant to help customers, say, by preventing someone from accidentally ordering a V4 dish mount when they have an older V2 dish. But if you're trying to get the equipment for a new installation, you're still locked out from the new accessories, even though you can access the Starlink Store online and in the app. What a hassle!
8. Elon Musk Casts a Long Shadow
Finally, there's simply no talking about Starlink or SpaceX without some discussion of billionaire Elon Musk, its CEO. Love him or hate him, Musk is a major figure in today's world, crossing lines of industry, politics, and social media. How many ISPs out there have had their CEOs host Saturday Night Live? No doubt, Musk is a divisive figure, and the center of all sorts of argument and debate.
(Credit: Apu Gomes/Getty Images )I mean, seriously, search for Elon Musk on PCMag, and you'll get pages and pages of news stories about everything from Twitter and Tesla to bluster about cage-match challenges with Mark Zuckerberg. And we're not a particularly political outlet—that's just the Musk news that touches our tech-centric corner of the world.
Look at the comments on any of our Starlink coverage, and you'll see people openly refusing to use a service that Musk controls. In other parts of the internet, he's praised unabashedly, with his assorted accomplishments and future plans for colonizing Mars held up as proof of true genius.
I'm obviously not going to resolve any of these debatable positions in this article. But I would love to be able to talk about my internet provider without it turning into yet another weird political thing.
Complaints Aside, Starlink Still Rocks
Even with all of these challenges and complications, I have to say that I'm still a fan of Starlink. Over the two years that I've been using the service, I've seen download and upload speeds improve, latency get reduced, and the pricing stabilize. And with more than a million mostly satisfied customers, Elon Musk's big bet on satellite internet has not only been profitable, but it has also connected huge numbers of people with high-speed, low-latency internet they couldn't otherwise have, bringing the modern internet to rural and remote locations all over the world.
Obviously, I've got some Star-beefs. You've just read them. But if Starlink's biggest problems are where I can buy accessories or how frequently its CEO winds up in the news, then I think that Starlink, as a service, is on pretty firm footing.