A TikTok by @jackiesevna went viral recently after she discovered her HP printer was charging her a monthly subscription fee just to print. As Cybernews covered, the comments filled up fast — turns out a lot of people had no idea this was happening. The outrage is understandable, but the full picture is worth understanding before drawing conclusions.
Two Different Subscriptions, Two Very Different Situations
HP runs two models that often get conflated.
HP Instant Ink is an ink-only subscription. Your printer connects to HP’s servers over Wi-Fi, monitors its own cartridge levels, and automatically ships replacement ink before you run out. Plans start at around $1.79 a month for 15 pages and scale up from there. You pay per page, not per cartridge.
HP All-In Plan is a full printer-as-a-service model. You do not buy the printer — you lease it. The monthly fee covers the hardware, ink, and support. Plans start from around $6.99 a month for 20 pages on the entry-level HP Envy, up to $35.99 a month for 700 pages on a business tier. Cancel after the 30-day grace period and you pay a cancellation fee to exit. The printer goes back.
These are meaningfully different. One is an ink delivery service bolted onto a printer you own. The other means you never owned the printer to begin with.
What Jackie’s Video May Have Got Wrong
Jackie mentioned she purchased her printer and was then being charged a subscription on top of that purchase. If that’s accurate, she is almost certainly on HP Instant Ink, not the All-In Plan — because the All-In Plan does not involve buying a printer at all. It is a lease from the start.
The important clarification: cancelling HP Instant Ink does not permanently lock your printer. According to HP’s own support documentation, the Instant Ink cartridges stop working at the end of the billing cycle — but the printer itself continues to function normally once you replace those cartridges with regular retail ones you purchase separately. You are not locked out of printing forever. You just cannot keep using the subscription-specific cartridges that HP sent you, since those are leased alongside the ink plan.
What likely happened to Jackie, and to many others in the comments, is that they enrolled in HP Instant Ink during printer setup — often as part of a promotional offer — received HP’s subscription cartridges in the box or by post, and did not fully register that those cartridges only work while the subscription is active. Cancelling the plan means replacing those cartridges with ones you buy outright.
That is still a frustrating design. But it is different from your printer being held hostage.
Where It Gets Genuinely Worse
The murkier situation is HP+. If you activated HP+ during setup — HP’s free tier that offers cloud printing and extended warranty features — your printer becomes permanently locked to genuine HP cartridges only. Cancel Instant Ink, and you can still print. But you can never use cheaper third-party or remanufactured cartridges on that machine, ever. That restriction does not go away.
For the All-In Plan, the lock-in is the contract itself. Miss the 30-day cancellation window and you are committed until you pay your way out.
What to Check If You Own an HP Printer
Log into your HP account and look under active subscriptions. If you are on Instant Ink and want out, cancel through the HP Instant Ink website — not through your bank — then buy a standard set of retail cartridges before your billing cycle ends. The printer will work fine once those are installed.
If you are on the All-In Plan and within 30 days of signing up, cancel now. After that, read the terms carefully before acting — the cancellation fee depends on how long you have been enrolled and which tier you are on.
And if you are setting up a new HP printer: read every screen during the setup flow. The Instant Ink enrolment step is presented as part of the normal process. It is optional.