MoviePass alternatives: Other services to get your fix of cinema tickets with a subscription

They might not all be quite so generous – but that could be a good thing

Only some offer the ability to book your next movie (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

It has not been a good week for MoviePass. And it's been a similarly tough one for its customers.

The cinema ticket subscription service – which allows film fans to see a movie each day for a low subscription fee – has been hit by a whole raft of problems. Some have worried that MoviePass might soon not be around at all.

And whatever happens to the company, the issues have started to hit. Users have had to struggle through the service going offline, and recent reports suggest that many films may soon be excluded from MoviePass in the future.

As such, it could be worth at least looking into the alternatives to the ticket subscription service. Some of the best are collected below.

It is worth noting that none of the alternatives might be quite as good as MoviePass. One of the reasons that it has run into issues is that its price and offering is a little too good to be true, or at least to be sustainable – if you want your subscription service to stick around, you might have to pay a little more or give up something in terms of features.

Sinemia

This is probably MoviePass's closest competitor. It's much less well known – though, given the reasons MoviePass has become so famous, that might not be such a bad thing.

It comes with a series of tiers: you can pay more or less to get more or less tickets each week, and depending on what those tickets actually are. Paying $3.99 will get you one ticket per month, for instance; paying $14.99 will get you three tickets, which can be 3D or Imax experiences.

At the moment it is running a summer sale. Those prices will go up after it is over.

Sinemia is also available in the UK, too. And the deals are also being run on that local version of the site.

Company-specific options

Each of the big cinema chains have opened their own subscription services, partly as an attempt to address the need highlighted by MoviePass. What you actually get varies a lot.

At Alama Drafthouse, for instance, you can get unlimited movies. Except you have to sign up to even have the option, it's only available in Yonkers, NY, and it hasn't actually started properly yet. But the company's description sounds good, and you can find out more and sign up on their website.

Other offerings are a bit more advanced. The AMC Stubs A-List launched last month, and allows people to see up to three movies each week for $19.95 per month. That's more expensive than MoviePass but has fewer restrictions – and is probably more likely to stick around.

Cinemark runs a similar option for its theatres, known as the Movie Club. It's much cheaper, at $8.99 – but you only get one ticket.

Ultimately, which of these works for you will depend on whether you're happy to pay and if you actually have any of the cinemas near you.

Cineworld and Picturehouse Central

If all this talk of free cinema tickets has got you excited, but you happen to live in the UK, you'll be happy to find the provision is actually better here.

Cineworld, for instance, offers an Unlimited card that allows people to get as many tickets as they want. And Picturehouse sells memberships through which cinema fans get a number of tickets a year and cheaper admission if they want to pay over and above that.