My daughter’s living in the dorms this year at college and she really wants to access my Netflix account. Problem is it won’t let her, saying she’s not in the same household. How can I add her to my account anyway?
A few years ago Netflix decided that it didn’t make business sense for subscribers to be able to have people accessing their accounts from anywhere in the world. Before that, it was a standard thing to have family members – and even friends – sharing an account to save a few dollars. The earlier constraint was the number of simultaneous streams and I remember adding my Dad to my account just to find that occasionally one of us would see the error “too many streams” and have to wait until the other person stopped watching. Back then, the solution was to upgrade to a tier that included more streams, but with the rise of at-home viewing due to the pandemic, Netflix decided that was insufficient a few years ago and changed things.
Nowadays, Netflix states that a subscription is based on household and requires every user to be in the same location, accessing the service from the same IP address. Works fine when you have kids at home who want to watch their shows on their laptop or bedroom TV, but once people leave? Not so easy. The company has said you can watch Netflix while on vacation, but there are all sorts of limits and constraints on that too.
Shortcuts: Add A Member | Who Are They? | Invite Via Email
The solution is to pay for an Extra Member to your Netflix account. I just added an extra member to my account so that my daughter, who lives about 40 miles away, could share my account. A hassle, but the good news is that it’s a lot less expensive than getting her an account (particularly given that Netflix doesn’t offer any sort of student pricing or plan). Here’s how I got it all set up and working…
ADD AN EXTRA NETFLIX MEMBER
Start by going to this URL: help.netflix.com/en/node/123279/us. I know, it’s not very user-friendly, but you can also do a search for “Extra Members” in Netflix help to find the page too. Here’s where you’ll end up:
We’ll be adding an extra member slot so click on “buy an extra member slot” to proceed. If you’re not logged in to Netflix already, you’ll have to do so at this point in the process. Then you’ll get here:
Here’s where you see the pricing. As of this writing, it’s $7.99/mo to add a remote access member to your Netflix account. Not too bad, that’s $1.84/week for access to their enormous library of content! Notice that it still has that limitation on simultaneous streams: 1 device at a time. This means your daughter won’t be able to share her account with all of her new pals at the dorms.
Click “Next” to proceed. I pay for “HD”, not “4K” on Netflix, billed at $15.49/mo. It’ll confirm that the bill is going up due to this new service addition:
Fair enough, Netflix is still one of the better deals in online streaming, in my opinion. To proceed, click on “Buy Now“.
Now the fun part: specifying account details for the new member.
WHO IS THE NEW NETFLIX MEMBER?
Once you click on “Next” it prompts for their first name and email address…
Notice you can change the “from” name too if you want to make it a bit more fun or reference a family nickname you’ve acquired. You can enter just their first name if you want here too – if they want to change it, they can do so in their new account settings once they’ve got everything set up.
“Next” moves on to the last step: Whether they should be set up with an existing Netflix profile or start anew. The benefit of using an existing profile, of course, is it will know where they are in all of their favorite series, have their favorites, etc. A new profile can be a tabla rasa, of course, so that’s also an option:
You can see that my children have rather creative names for their profiles. My daughter’s profile is “Ronnie P”, even though her name isn’t Ronnie, and “P” isn’t the first letter of her middle name!
Another “Next” and you’ll get this warning message, of all things:
You can read about it and consider all the consequences, or you can just click. The only important factor here is that if your daughter still has a Kid Profile (perhaps she’s underage and just switch to living with your ex) those profiles cannot be transferred. If she’s in college, that’s likely not the case.
Click on “Allow Profile Transfers” to proceed.
INVITATION VIA EMAIL
The last few steps require you checking your email inbox, as Netflix explains:
Switch to your email and you’ll see many messages from Netflix that mirror the sequence you’ve just completed. Lots of disclosure, making it impossible for you not to know this is being added to your account.
In the last of the emails from Netflix, there’s a link to “Invite Extra Member”. Click on that and the invitation will be sent! Your daughter will then get an email like this:
If she doesn’t see it within a few seconds, tell her to check her spam folder. Once she’s ready, it’s a click on “Get Started” to proceed. You’ll know she’s done so because you’ll see this message:
Mission accomplished. Notice that her profile now vanishes from your Netflix account because it’s been transferred to her new account. Now, what’s the latest release…?
Pro Tip: I’ve written quite a bit about how to work with Netflix and make it work for you. Please check out my Netflix help area for more useful guides so you too can enjoy this popular streaming service.