Zen Internet review: A quality offering, on all fronts

In an industry dominated by multinational giants, Zen Internet is a UK-based provider that’s won many awards for its service over the past 20 years. Now it can add another one to the trophy cabinet as the winner of the 2024 Expert Reviews Broadband Awards. 

Customer service has long been one of Zen Internet’s unrivalled strengths, not least because it puts trained technicians in its UK call centres, not assistants reading off a script. It’s no surprise, then, that 62% of Zen Internet customers declared themselves “very satisfied” with the company’s customer service, which is double the score of the next closest provider, Plusnet. 

Reliability is another of Zen’s core strengths, according to our YouGov partnered survey. Almost 9/10 customers were happy with the reliability of their broadband connection, with less than 4% unhappy – enough to narrowly claim the Reliability award ahead of Hyperoptic.

Strong levels of service and reliability don’t come at the expense of speed, either; 87% of the Zen Internet customers we surveyed were impressed with the speed on offer, though Hyperoptic narrowly pipped Zen to the speed crown.

Zen might not always have the cheapest deals on the market, but there’s a very strong sense of paying for top quality, and the company guarantees there will be no price rises for the duration of your contract. Let’s explore what tariffs this table-topping provider has to offer. 

Zen Internet review: Unlimited Fibre 1 and 2

Unlimited Fibre 1 & 2 are the tariffs on offer to customers who aren’t within reach of a full-fibre network. They top out at 73Mbits/sec for the most expensive Unlimited Fibre 2 tariff, though Zen will give you a more accurate speed estimate and a minimum speed guarantee when you enter your postcode on its website. 

Customers on these tariffs will be supplied with a FRITZ!Box 7530 router. These are highly configurable, reliable routers, but they’re stuck on the Wi-Fi 5 technology and beginning to show their age.

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Zen Internet review: Full Fibre 100, 300, 500 and 900

Thanks to partnerships with both Openreach and CityFibre, Zen is able to offer full-fibre connections to customers in many cities across the UK. The cheapest full-fibre tariff is actually less expensive than the slower fibre-to-the-cabinet connection on Unlimited Fibre 2, albeit only by £1/mth. 

Zen offers Wi-Fi 6 routers only to customers on the two more expensive tariffs: Full Fibre 500 and 900. This FRITZ!Box 7530 AX router is a slightly enhanced version of the company’s Wi-Fi 5 offering, but it does make it more likely that customers paying for the very fastest connections will get more of that speed to their wireless devices.

Zen has an EveryRoom offer for customers on all tariffs, which provides guaranteed coverage in every room of the house from £9 extra per month. However, you may find it cheaper simply to buy your own FRITZ signal repeaters, which is what Zen provides.  

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Zen Internet review: Coverage

As mentioned above, Zen has wholesale partnerships with both Openreach and CityFibre, giving it a larger full-fibre footprint than rivals that rely on Openreach alone.

Openreach claimed to have reached 12.5m premises with its full-fibre network earlier this year, the bulk of which will be in the major cities, but it’s extending into smaller towns and villages, too. 

The list of full-fibre cities reachable via Zen’s partnership with CityFibre can be seen on the company’s website, but it reaches as far north as Inverness and right down to Eastbourne in the south.

Zen Internet review: Performance and customer satisfaction

Zen Internet is clearly one of the top performers, according to our YouGov partnered survey of broadband customers. A healthy 87% of Zen’s customers are happy with the speed of their service, with only one in 20 dissatisfied with the speed on offer.

Speed is nothing without reliability, and here Zen excels again, with 88% of customers satisfied. That’s enough to pip Hyperoptic to the Reliability award in this year’s survey. 

Customer service is an area where Zen puts clear daylight between itself and the other providers. More than 8/10 Zen customers are happy with customer service in general, though one of the few blots in Zen’s copybook appears when it comes to talking directly to the company’s support team. Just over 1/5 customers were left unsatisfied after reaching out to the Contact Centre, pushing Zen behind rivals Hyperoptic and Plusnet in that regard. 

However, there’s one stat above all else that tells you all you need to know about Zen Internet – 91% of its customers would be likely to recommend the provider. Endorsements don’t come much stronger than that. 

Zen Internet review: Verdict

Zen isn’t the cheapest provider on the market, and it can’t offer the TV/broadband bundles that bigger rivals can, but it’s the best when it comes to pure broadband. It’s head-and-shoulders above its rivals when it comes to customer service; it leads the way for reliability; it’s very strong on speed; and the vast majority of its customers would gladly recommend the company. Its dual partnership with Openreach and CityFibre also means it can deliver many more full-fibre connections than some of its rivals. All of these factors combined make it the winner of the 2024 Expert Reviews Broadband Awards.