What subscription services do you actually pay for and get value from?
What subscription services do you actually pay for and get value from?
I'm usually against subscription services, but there are a few I use that I think provide enough value to justify the cost. Are there subscriptions you think are worth the money for you?
I donate about $5/month to a bunch of nonprofits that I benefit from.
- Debian project
- openbsd project
- wikimedia foundation
- EFF
- Internet Archive
My career wouldn’t exist without these folks, so it’s the least I can do.
Great selection. I feel if you have the means to do so, drop a few dollars their way each month. You'll likely spend more on a night out drinking anyway 😜.
At the risk of being crucified, YouTube Premium.
I like having no commercials on something by legitimate means, and unlike most streaming services, the content stays there once it's there. For the hours we use it, it's still a hell of a deal.
I adblock and sail the seas, but Premium gives what it promises without any real hassle. We use it way more than we used Netflix or Disney+.
Same, I have the Family tier and it just makes sense. At 23/month if all 5 slots are filled it works out too $4.60/month/person.
No ads AND no hassle with this and that instance going down or that app being blocked or browser shannigans
Every time I talked myself into it they ended up raising the rate. I've stopped trying to talk myself into it.
Same here. I'm mostly paying because at least some of the money goes to creators, and I don't want to have to constantly be fighting with the adblocker stuff. I watch a lot of youtube (perhaps more than is healthy) and realistically it does cost Google money to host it.
This is mine too. I use the hell out of it and YouTube music that comes with it. If we look at $/hr, then this is a no-brainer for me.
I got Yt premium as a side effect of the Google one thing. I don't necessarily need the extra space I got the Google one thing for, but I'll probably keep it because I'm too lazy to clear out my storage and the side perks like Yt premium are probably worth more than I'm spending on one.
Bring in the downvotes, but Spotify. I listen to music several hours a day, both old and new and it helps me discover lots of new music and even genres. For me personally, that's worth the money.
I feel the same. I like not having commercials in my music and being able to listen to a wide variety.
Also offline mode and list syncing. I would die on long flights if I didn't have music to listen to and my tastes change frequently.
Same, I think it's worth it. I rarely listen to the radio, so I get to discover new music with them. And the offline play saves on data when I'm just going around the corner or something.
Tons of amazing original content, and very cheap.
Joined for Dimension 20, stayed for basically everything else.
I joined for Game Changer, but Dimension 20 I've what made me keep my subscription lol
Same! And if anyone disagrees, feel free to get in the comments! 😉
I know this is the "wrong answer," but YouTube. I watch it a lot, and mostly on my PS in the evenings. If I only watched it in my phone or PC, I wouldn't bother.
I also pay for Spotify for my mom and I, and ProtonVPN/Mail for myself. Oh, and PS+, which I still think is bullshit. 🙄
It's only a 'wrong answer' because people here downvote on an ideological basis. If it works for you, then it's okay 👍
My domain.
$20/year for Nintendo Switch Online. That's $20 more than it should be, but at least it's not nearly as expensive as the other consoles.
Wait.... It's how much? For online access?
And others are more??
I'm a dedicated PC gamer, so I'm out of the loop on what's happening with consoles, but this seems nuts to me
PSN Plus is $80/year, XBox Live is $60/year. And both of those are for the lowest tier.
Ground News because I want to see what's going on in news across the media spectrum and they make it a lot easier.
Discord nitro classic because I don't have a better alternative and I get the features I actually need at half the price I'd pay for the normal subscription.
A VPN because none of your goddamn business.
YouTube premium. Mostly for music but no-ads is nice.
I have the basic iCloud sub but it feels like a scam. I should at least get more storage if I buy more Apple products. If you have two devices your backups get too big for the free storage amount.
I offloaded a bunch of things from iCloud but it becomes a hassle for how cheap their subscription is.
Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, protonmail / drive / vpn, Usenet, bitwarden
That's about all I have.
Although I pirate 90% of what tv and movies we watch, I feel like I pay my fair share for internet stuff.
I might sub to a few local streaming sites from time to time. To catch up on tv.
Apple Music. It’s just easier than pirating music. You also get Apple Classical which is awesome as classical music can’t be indexed in the same way as regular music.
And Atmos! And 4K music videos! Couldn’t agree more.
Hulu. Best collection of shows for me, right now.
Spotify. I listen to music constantly, it's a necessity.
Libro.fm for audiobooks, and supporting my local book store.
My gym membership (lumping Zwift in there too). I exercise a lot, like 15+ hours per week. These are part of my chosen lifestyle.
Opensnow. The only phone app I pay for. It's a weather app but better if you're a skier/snowboarder.
RuneScape. I love OSRS and I enjoy playing in my downtime. I'm an adult, I can do what I want.
osrs is the best
MullvadVPN, Posteo, Bitwarden, Hetzner VPS, Hetzner Storage Box, Porkbun domain
- YouTube Premium, because I listen to a ton of music but I also like listening to dorkier deep-dive video channels.
- Disney+ w/ Hulu because I am a raging Marvel fanboy and like to be able to keep up with shows like Simpsons/Family Guy/Bob's Burgers.
- Office 365. This is the most likely to get canceled at some point. I used to need Office for work, but now I mostly use the Notes app and Excel on my phone... and the 1 TB of OneDrive storage isn't as great a deal as it once was.
Taxes. They pay fory wifes wage.
ProtonMail, Nebula, Backblaze, Parcel, BigNews, Glass, my local paper, local coffee delivery.
I pay for Apple iCloud too but I'm trying to figure out how to get away from it.
- Tidal ($5.82/month student), like my HiFi music, even if it's indistinguishable on most of the speakers I use
- Nebula ($2.50/month), mostly the same shit as on YouTube but as-free (without adblock) and usually a bit early access
- PIA (~$2.33/month), avoids a Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, Discovery +, Paramount+, you get the gist+ subscription. You had a good thing going but you got greedy and fucked it
- Recurring donation to Lemmy dev ($5/month), despite any of the devs political views, I appreciate the service and continued support of the software and recognize that dev isn't free,though I do need to sit down and set one up for my instance as well as my mastodon & pixelfed instances.
Some of these are yearly but reduced to monthly for ease of viewing
The Atlantic. Because of its magazine heritage, there's the perfect number of new articles per day (5 or 10), all top notch journalism and beautifully written. I look forward to reading a few of them each evening.
I pay monthly to a local makerspace. Its worth every cent.
Is that like a shared work space?
- Spotify: yes, you can download and set up your own music but spotify has a bunch of integrations that just work without any effort. I'm also using a student subscription (that will probably keep working forever) so it's not very expensive.
- Mobile contract: mobile data is expensive compared to other countries but at least my current ISP has coverage everywhere. Too bad everything else about the company sucks.
as much as I hate to admit it. amazon. still if my wife passed I would likely not continue it.
Mullvad VPN!
Mailbox.org
Real-Debrid+Stremio
Humble bundle
Mullvad VPNBitwarden.
Annual donation to KDE Foundation.
Donations to a number of my podcast hosts.
Premiumize.
Upvote for bitwarden. I love that service.
I especially love that you can host it yourself if you want. I don't do that right now, but I did in the past for a work thing. It's great.
Apple One+
Music, TV, Games, and 50GB storage for $10/month via Verizon.
Just proton. VPN + drive + pass is great.
I think I’m gonna swap over to them once my nord runs out. Them or mullvad
Either is better than Nord. Definitely drop Nord.
JetBrains IDEs.
If you can get 5 people for the Apple One Family plan, it's worth it.
- Apple Music
- Apple TV+
- Apple Arcade
- iCloud+
- Mullvad
- Addy.io
- A TV EPG provider so i can set my HTPC USB receivers to record stuff each week for the family (1. It details for specific channels new series/new episodes for the week aired between certain times of day which websites dont seem to do 2. Its cheaper & far more efficient than a TV mag/newspaper 3. Its extremely cheap so great value)
- I donate to some open source projects/devs when I find I'm using a product regularly
- A seed box (Whatbox). I'm paying USD 15/month, and they've actually upgraded my storage and bandwidth twice now without any price increases. I think I've been using that for roughly 10 years now. At this point, it's cheaper than any single streaming service, while allowing me access to basically every TV show and movie ever produced, and I can easily share my library with friends via Plex. Now that I have *aars, it's very little effort to keep up with my favorite shows.
- Whatever the YouTube music thing is called now. I signed up when it was brand new, and while I occasionally consider going back to piracy for music, it's just not worth the effort for me these days, but I am extremely opposed to ads.
- Amazon Prime. I should probably cancel, but I don't have a car and definitely utilize the same day delivery quite often.
- Housing. Do mortgage payments & HOA fees count as subscriptions? Lol. I definitely get a lot of value out of housing, and appreciate the fact that I don't have to wonder if my landlord is going to renew my lease each year.
A gym membership, my mail account (mailbox.org) and Spotify.
Protonmail
Spotify
Motortrend (now Discovery Plus)
Nebula
An small-time streamer
Amazon Prime - planning to cancel- Bitwarden
- Proton Mail/VPN
- Kagi
Apple One is expensive but my whole family uses it and the only offered service I don’t really use much is Apple News.
Some that I use:
- Proton Unlimited, which gives me access to mail, storage and a VPN.
- Linode, I have a VPN which I use for selfhosting some things.
- Various domain names. They're actually cheaper than you think they are.
- Youtube Premium. I watch a lot of YouTube, and it helps creators.
- Discord Nitro. Begrudgingly.
- 1Password. Technically I don't pay for this, as I get it free as part of a plan from work, but I'd probably buy it when that runs out.
I'm kinda interested in watching streams more (to diversify my video watching habits), so am kinda curious about Twitch's ad-free premium plan thing as well...
Of course, there's also donations and patreon/subscribestar/ko-fi subscriptions, but I don't really consider those "subscription services".
Spotify and DropOut for me!
Realdebrid
Signal Lemmy Pi-hole Bitwarden YouTube + a whole raft of creators
Disney+
I'm learning a language as a hobby and Disney+ BY FAR is the most consistent in having dubs and subs available in a variety of languages. I haven't actually watched anything that didn't have it (for the language I'm learning). Whereas most things on other streaming sites don't tend to have it at all unless it's a foreign film and that's the original language.
For me, it's easily worth the money just for that
Max. Better than Netflix any day.
Logseq sync, need it for work, and its only £3.74 (5 cows for the Americans). Tried proton VPN plus as well, too expensive for me being £8.38, but its fine because their free tier is generous and I can do video calls with plus aswell. Food is also a good subscription, you can find food shops everywhere with great variety, but the price of the overall spend is higher, but if you buy high volume low cost food you can combat this price increase; some people like to spend extra and add alcohol to their subscription, but i don't see the appeal unless its liquor shots like Apple sour or Baileys, because they taste good.
Prime video
Mullvad.
Usenet (Grandfathered real cheap plan) Brewfather (Excelent recipe manager for beer brewing) Netflix + Spotify (Keeps girls at home happy) Domains (for selfhosting) Backblaze B2 & Cloudflare R3 (Backups)
Yeah that's it
Proton - Mail, VPN, Calendar, Passwords, Notes
PBS - Gotta support public broadcasting.
The Satanic Temple - Helping support women's rights, religious rights, compassion.
Usenet - Cheaper and better content than streaming services
Trade coffee. I enjoy trying new coffees. And it's easy to pause the service if I'm traveling a lot and picking up coffees on my own.
I don't subscribe to much as I try to avoid subscriptions
Bit warden subbed as soon as last pass went to shit Duolingo been studying Spanish every day Crunchyroll anime High-dive anime not on Crunchyroll
Marine Traffic - I live by the sea.
Proton Mail - trying to give up Gmail.
Bitwarden - had to stop using the same password for everything.
My Row Counter - for knitting, it's a fantastic app.
I've been using Trade coffee for the last 2 years or so. The subscription basically amounts to free shipping.
The selection is good, and I get something new every time I order without having to go to multiple websites to see who has what in stock that I'd like.
I don't think their recommendations are that great, but the filter options make it easy to find something I am interested in.
Same. And the coffee is really really good
Proton Unlimited, Mullvad VPN and Kagi are all great. Standard Notes is a great app, too.
Real-Debrid. No more paying for compressed streaming services!
Crunchyroll. Largest catalog I’ve seen and I don’t have to sail the seas for everything. Also enjoy all the dubs.
I have a subscription to natural gas I really get a lot out of
I subscribe to two podcast networks on patreon. I could listen for free, but I feel it's worth paying for the several hours a month of entertainment I get from them.
VPN
Udio. There aren't yet any locally-runnable music generation tools like it, and even if they were they'd have to be pretty darned good to rival Udio's quality. I make a lot of use of it for tabletop roleplaying games, but also "just for fun." It's only $10 a month.
Spotify. I started paying because I got fed up with shuffling my mp3 files from one place to another.
80% of the time I'm not angry at them. This day and age that is a high score. Hey Spotify: if you want to improve your score fix your recommendations during Eurovision Song Contest. There is nothing in my playlists that suggests that I'll even be remotely interested.
$50 a year to Starcraft Broodwar Patreon that casts Korean language games into English.
Uber Meats. Nothing but gabagool on demand.
But seriously, a VPN.