By skyforbes 
If you’ve studied or worked at a higher education institution in the US, there’s a good chance you’ve held an EDU email address from your school at some point in your life. If you’re lucky, you still might have access to your EDU email account.
Because of its association with students and education, having an email from your school or college offers many perks. But what are those perks? Keep reading to discover the benefits and discounts you can tap into with your EDU email account.
If you have an EDU email, you can grab a six-month free trial of Amazon Prime in the United States. This trial is in place of the standard free trial length, which is 30 days. After the trial period ends, you automatically become eligible for the Amazon Prime student discount. It entitles you to grab a membership for just $7.49/month.
While using the Amazon Prime student discount, you get access to all Prime’s features. It also includes exclusive deals for students from top brands. There are no restrictions or limits.
And, unlike some other services which offer EDU benefits, Amazon Prime does not use SheerID verification. It means anyone with an EDU email can take advantage of the cheaper rate, even if they are not a student (for example, teachers). The only catch is you may have to verify your enrollment status manually. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to get Amazon Prime Student.
Another service that doesn’t use SheerID verification is Adobe Creative Cloud. All EDU email holders are eligible for over 60 percent discount in the first year and a 45 percent discount thereafter. That means you’ll only pay $20 a month for 12 months, then $30 per month following the initial period.
Like with Amazon Prime, you’ll have access to the entire Creative Cloud suite, comprising 20+ apps. That includes common ones like Photoshop, Lightroom, Spark, Premiere Rush, XD, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, Acrobat Pro, Dreamweaver, and many more.
The massive discount is a good enough reason to buy Creative Cloud and start working on your graphic designing skills.
Spotify offers a student discount to students with an EDU email. The discount is not available to teachers with an EDU email or anyone else who cannot be verified as a student through SheerID.
The Spotify student discount is 50 percent. That means you will only pay $4.99 per month for the duration of your study period, up to a maximum of four years. You can maintain your discount until the end of a 12-month billing cycle if you graduate mid-way through your plan.
As a bonus, you also get Hulu (ad-supported plan) thrown in for free, meaning you’ll have access to two apps for a single low price. This will save you north of $10 a month.
Spotify does not apply the student discount to its family plans. If you live in a student house with several people and only want a basic Spotify music plan, a family plan may still prove to be more economical.
Microsoft doesn’t use SheerID, so anyone with an EDU email can sign up to receive the basic version of Office 365 Education for free.
That means you’ll get the online versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Microsoft Teams, as well as some education-specific classroom tools that aren’t available in the regular versions of Office 365. All users also get 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage space for free.
GitHub offers its Student Developer Pack to all students who can authenticate themselves with SheerID. That means teachers and other EDU email owners are excluded. First and foremost, it includes GitHub Pro access.
Moreover, the pack includes a huge suite of free and discounted tools to help out young coders and programmers, including Name.com, Microsoft Azure, Educative, MongoDB, and more. However, GitHub offers a separate plan for teachers, which only offers free access to GitHub Team for writing code and research and GitHub Classroom for managing assignments.
It’s not only tech giants who offer benefits to students. Mainstream media companies have also gotten in on the act.
The Washington Post newspaper, for example, has an academic rate of $1 per month for all students and teachers. The regular piece of a plan is $4 per month for All-Access Digital and $2 more for Premium Digital.
Similarly, there are also student discounts if you subscribe to The New York Times. Students receive a free month, then pay $1 a week for the Basic Access plan. Teachers and other EDU email holders can enjoy the same service for $1.88 per week. Both plans allow subscribers to read an unlimited number of articles on any device.
For students, the All-Access Digital Subscription goes for $1.50 a week for students and $3.13 a week for teachers. An EDU email also gets you the print edition at $4.75 per week instead of $9.90 per week.
8. Cell Phone Plans
The big four American cell phone carriers—AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile—all offer student discounts for people with EDU email addresses.
The exact discounts available vary considerably depending on the institution you attend and the type of plan you want. We recommend speaking to the carriers directly if you would like more information.
Apple offers student discounts on Apple Music, as well as its hardware, such as MacBooks and iMacs, and some of its web services.
You can save $100 on a MacBook Air or Pro. Other savings include $50 on an iPad, and you can pick up Apple’s Pro Apps Bundle (Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage) for $199.
Apple Music is free for a month and will then cost you $5.99 per month with free access to Apple TV+. Like Spotify, Apple Music also verifies whether you are eligible for the offer, but using UNiDAYS and not SheerID. As long as you can verify your identity with UNiDAYS, you’re good to take advantage of Apple’s student plans.
If you have an EDU email address and can verify yourself as a student on ID.me, you can bag yourself an impressive 10% saving on any other Samsung offer that is ongoing. For example, if a laptop has a 20% discount, you can get it with a 30% discount.