Services you are subscribed to (or used to be)

[shevek]

I was wondering what services you are subscribed to right now, or used to be subscribed to.
What I specifically mean is not the type of subscription where you follow an internet personality for free (some sites call it that..), but where you pay a monthly payment to continue to access a service, or a special version of the service, or support a creator of the service with regular payments.

I personally don't like the turn towards subscription based services (SaaS), but for some, I guess it is unavoidable. I understand the need for it when something will need to be maintained and always gets fresh content, but I don't like subscribing to versions of a software, like Adobe or Autodesk software.

In my case, my current subscriptions are

• Neocities; happy with it so far, no complaints about price and what's given
• Spotify; very unhappy, but don't feel like switching to YT music or Apple Music would make me happier
• Apple iCloud, Apple Fitness, and Apple TV; Happy so far. The Apple TV subscription is the most useless one, I admit, since I don't watch anything on there aside from Severance, and will only start watching Silo today. The other two I am very happy with.
• Down Dog; Yoga app that gives me a lot of control over the type of Yoga, music, ambient noise, length, instruction voice, instruction detail, and what body parts I wanna focus on. Makes a customized session every time based on my settings. I hope they never go away.
• Proton; I have their whole package with mail, VPN etc.
• stoic; it's a journal app together with nice quotes, breathing exercises, meditation options, and lots of other stuff. I find it good in general but too bloated at times, and it's a thing where I don't appreciate the subscription. It seems like the development and subscription payment feed off of each other negatively to me; what I mean is the recurring charge makes the devs wanna deliver something so it is justified, and the changes you get every few weeks are supposed to justify the price. However, the app has always worked fine and the changes and additions are really unnecessary and just switch navigation up every time, making things more convoluted. Once the integrated Journal app by Apple is out, I will likely cancel and switch.
• Discord Classsic, but I kinda wanna leave?

other subscriptions I use but don't pay for (because others share with me <3) are Nintendo Online, Spiegel, and Disney+.

used to be subscribed to:

• Twitch; I simply grew out of it and the whole idea of online streamers and content creators is unappealing to me now. Back when I quit, I also did so because for so many of them, it seemed like the money spent subscribing to them fed them while also making them severely depressed and unhappy, tying them to the computer for 12h+ just engaging with chat and always playing the same games while ordering McDonalds to eat on stream. They'd sometimes have drunk streams breaking down and venting how miserable they are; not just one, but several. Since then I've moved on, I don't wanna be the reason someone is trapped at home like that unsure what else they should do as a job. Their entertainment didn't feel wholesome to me anymore, and with all the Twitch drama still nowadays, I am glad I moved on.
• Netflix; I don't see why I should pay so much money for less and less content and for getting invested into shows that barely ever get past the second season anymore and get no closure. It was over when they announced they also wanna restrict location and devices too. You don't make me pay for several devices to get a decent quality just to decide how I use the device number I am already paying for. Deleted subscription and account this year.
• Amazon Prime; I barely ever ordered, it is a company I didn't wanna support anymore, and the site is full of trash, scammers and fake/bought reviews now. I didn't like their Video content at all and didn't use any other service either. Didn't have it for years, deleted account this year.
• Blinkist; I like the service, but after some time I didn't check it out anymore and it was too high to just keep idling along without using it. The concept is good, however I also wanna be able to enjoy the long content and focus, instead of giving in to heavy summaries and short form stuff like social media. I think it can be great to find out if some books are really gonna be your cup of tea, but they write the summaries in a way that makes you feel like you don't need the full version book after you're done with their summary, so... that kinda defeats that purpose. I think it is wiser to fully immerse yourself in the whole book, see the whole build up and entire arguments and discussion instead of just bullet points. Their marketing heavily thrives on the productivity mindset and the idea of having a way to read a 200 page book in 10 minutes by seeing their awesome summaries, but really, there is no way past it and you can't "hack" time like that. Just as you don't remember most tweets you scroll by, you will forget their summaries while you probably have a handful of books that stayed with you and are very memorable.
  

[Absentmind]

I'm pretty tight when it comes to out goings, I'm only subscribed to:

Spotify: I'm on my friends family plan so I pay not that much,
NTS Radio: Radio service that I find a load of cool music through
Prime: Feels like a bit of a sin to say this, I am a student so I get a discount and my family use my account, I hate amazon but it makes my family happy, Once I no longer get the discount I'll probably ditch it
Adobe creative suite: For my professional work, if there were viable alternatives I would jump ship from Adobe, they're a nightmare.

Previously

Netflix: I started sailing the seven seas so I don't need it anymore
Audible: I like audio books, but I couldn't justify the price and honestly and their range was kind of lacking for the kind of books I was looking for. I'm dyslexic and sometimes I'd spend my tokens on e-books I already had so I could listen along whilst I read.

That's about it really! I might give down dog a look because I am an amateur yogi myself 

[Frost Sheridan]

i try to keep the amount of services that i'm subscribed to pretty small as i'm really not a fan of subscription services in general, but there are a couple that i find useful enough to subscribe to.

• discord nitro classic ($5/mo) - i share a lot of high-res photographs with friends over discord, so the increased file upload size that nitro grants is nice. i'm annoyed by how many features discord arbitrarily locks behind nitro subscriptions, but sharing and storing larger files does actually cost them more bandwidth and storage space, so i understand why they require a paid subscription for large file transfers.
• nabu casa ($6/mo) - this service provides remote/internet access to an install of Home Assistant (locally-hosted home automation software) without having to manually forward ports or deal with TLS stuff.
• posteo (€1/mo) - lots of people here probably also use posteo; it's just a simple, private, no-nonsense email service. i used to use gmail for my personal email, but have since switched to posteo as i've been trying to lessen my dependency on google services.

Adobe creative suite: For my professional work, if there were viable alternatives I would jump ship from Adobe, they're a nightmare.

depending on what specific features/programs of the adobe suite you use, this may also not be a viable alternative, but have you checked out the affinity suite? they provide alternatives to illustrator, photoshop, and indesign. instead of a subscription service like adobe, you can just purchase each major version of the affinity suite and own it forever. i don't use it professionally, but do i use it for my personal artwork and have been very happy with it.

[Memory]

Discord Nitro - I'm on Discord all the time and I do use all the features Nitro gives. I do not like that so many features are behind the paywall, though.
Walmart+ - I live alone and while I do get rides from mom to go places, it's convenient to pay for this and get free grocery delivery. I use it enough times a month to make it worth it. free delivery on most non-food items is a major plus too. I used to do pickup but it was kind of a hassle, given my mom's wacky work schedule.
Mullvad - uh. my VPN. not sure what to say about this.
pixiv - I, uh, subbed to pixiv because they put their block feature behind the sub. yeah it's dumb. but like, whatever. it's not really worth it, but to me it kind of is. I dunno.
Nintendo Switch Online - as a Splatoon player, it's more or less obligatory.

previously
RuneScape - only played Old School but the sub covers both versions. I'll probably resub someday but I haven't had the urge to play in a while since I was in it for the quests and at this point I have some real lengthy grinds ahead of me. they've added new quests I can do, but there's so many other games I wanna play... one day tho. one day
dreamwidth basic paid account - limit of 15 icons was just too little, and I didn't mind supporting such a cool site. that said, it feels kind of like a waste now that I'm not on there because it just really wasn't for me. ah well.

[tarraxahum]

I used to be subscribed to Spotify, Netflix and Nord VPN.

Nowadays I don't have such opportunities, so it's the pirate's life for me (and free VPN options...) 

EDIT: Oh, and the Artbreeder, for a short time.

[Kolo]

I'm also subscribed to Neocities, and then another hosting service for my subdomain. ~$10/month there.
I have Toyhouse premium (as does my partner) but I might drop it soon. I don't really want to lose my CSS but... I like my website more... but it's really cheap ($25/year) so maybe I will keep it haha.

I was subbed to Nintendo Switch Online, but I cancelled it earlier this year. Unfortunately canceled right after it renewed (oops) so I guess we have it for the rest of the year haha.

Um... I think that's about it. I've never tried any music subscriptions, I just bought the albums off the artists' Bandcamps because I'm really picky about songs and have only listened to the same handful of stuff for years. And I don't watch much TV so I've dodged those kinds of subs haha.

I used to think about getting Nitro, with how much I use Discord, but with the constant strange changes to the platform I'm kind of glad I didn't.

[Memory]

I only have one subscription currently, for my Email service Posteo. I do plan to get Mullvad VPN at some point in the future when I start to interact with more... exclusive parts of the internet.

pixiv - I, uh, subbed to pixiv because they put their block feature behind the sub.

...Well, looks like I have another reason to dislike pixiv.

[grovyle]

I only pay for HBO max! While I do use other streaming services, I share my HBO password with like 8 people who each give me their password for a different streaming service. Like god intended.
For Spotify I use a cracked apk and then just adblock on Spotify web (not the desktop app). I used to pay for Prime video a while ago but then stopped using it, and eventually got a password for it from a friend. I'm considering starting to pay for Crunchyroll because lately I've only been watching dubbed anime, it's hard to find and the sites that have it are the ones that get taken down the most often, and it's so ridiculously cheap that I might just as well pay for it.
I also used to have nintendo switch online, but also didn't pay for it haha. It's awfully expensive in my country, and a friend from Spain volunteered to let me into her family subscription as long as I wanted <3 my switch is hacked now though so like. No use for it.

I've been looking for email alternatives (I use outlook now, which sucks just a tiny bit less than google) and I hadn't heard about posteo before this thread, so I'm definitely looking into it!

[shevek]

discord nitro classic ($5/mo) - i share a lot of high-res photographs with friends over discord, so the increased file upload size that nitro grants is nice. i'm annoyed by how many features discord arbitrarily locks behind nitro subscriptions, but sharing and storing larger files does actually cost them more bandwidth and storage space, so i understand why they require a paid subscription for large file transfers.

Oh man, I completely forgot Discord Classic on my list, will edit that in.
Though recently I thought about quitting that as well. I used to have the full Nitro and at some point, switched to Classic. Now that is no more and they're doing a terrible job of showing what Classic can even still do compared to Basic and Nitro. I used to get it because of the cross-server emote, file size, and the better stream quality.

But at this point, I am in no big servers where emotes matter much for participating, and I am mostly in dms and it's enough to type the word without having the image show up because we all know what it is. I also only ever stream Jackbox anymore for people, since my girlfriend moved here and our relationship is not long distance anymore. If I wanna play games in front of her, I can just do that irl now. Garbage quality should be enough for Jackbox streams. And it's maybe an issue on my end only, but other Classic users, please tell me if you are also hitting your file limit despite Classic much more easily now since about two weeks or so. I have the suspicion they either lowered the file size perk or completely took that perk out of Classic. I hit file size limit way too easily now when nothing else changed and I know they increased file size limit for free users recently, so maybe they took that out.

The only thing making me think twice about cancelling Classic is that I can't go back because it's a legacy subscription, and the choice between Basic and Nitro is extremely bad. It's like either pay little money for something that is not enough, or pay a lot of money for tons of things I don't need. And with how I don't like where Discord is going, it might be time to cancel..

(and free VPN options...) 

Careful with those - many of them use the free users for cryptomining, scraping proxies, or as botnets or exit nodes.

[deuil]

i'm subscribed to spotify premium - i consider this way overpriced, but this is also the only subscription i have really, and the most important one. i'm listening to music 24/7, and can not imagine going without spotify's services unfortunately.

[Melooon]

Oooog 

Active subscriptions at the moment:

• Neocities - I don't really need this but I feel like stopping this would be the end of an era (Also it would break so many sites  )
• DigitalOcean - I pay a different amount depending on usage so its only KINDA a subscription (All other site hosting)
• SmartGB - Guestbook over HTTPS?? this is dumb, but I guess my $10 a year covers half of neocities guesbook costs 
• PebbleHost - For Minecraft server stuff 
• Amazon Web Services - again changing values each month for auxiliary hosting stuff!
• New York Times - This is my main newspaper for global news and things to read in the morning!
• Amazon Prime - Mostly because of Prime Video which has some good shows/movies - though may quit now that Mrs Maisel is over.
• Criterion Channel - This is for fancy or arty movies, I don't watch it super often but I like that it exists
• WFMU Swag For Life Membership - I really like this radio station  They send me cute postcards every few months.
• IWW - Union membership
• Wikipedia - I make a monthly donation to Wikipedia
• Apple Music - My main music streaming although I also have a HUGE library of files too.
• iCloud+ - Just the 50GB tier, useful for getting files across devices and sharing things
• Arts Collectives - Im in a bunch of semi-online/remote collectives/groups that offer help and events to members working in the arts.
• FastMail - E-mail hosting for all my sites and newsletter!
• 1Password - Password manager, its pretty good, I have no plans to change
• Vimeo Plus - I use this for hosting any videos I put on my sites
• Domains?? Do they count

Past Subscriptions:

• Apple Fitness - I actually liked this service a lot, but it was too expensive for what it offered
• A bunch of Newspapers ended up having bad interfaces
• A LOT of VPNs, I change almost every year
• Spotify - I left when they started funding creepy podcast hosts
• Netflix - Who watches netflix anymore??
• Tidal Music Streaming - It was ok, but it had issues and you don't need it anymore for lossless music
• Pandora Music - This was actually my fav music service, but it became too difficult to access it from Ireland (US only)
• Disney Plus - I only subbed to watch all the old movies, but then I watched them all 
• Apple TV+ - I will sub again when the next season of Foundation comes out, I really enjoyed that!
• Apple Developer - Not worth it as an indie game dev without the oomph to get app downloads
• Nintendo Online - I just don't play switch enough
• Microsoft Game Pass - This is good, I will prob sub again when Im in the mood to GAME!
• GeForce Now - This was super useful when I didn't have a gaming system for a few months.
• Dropbox - I once considered this essential, but they kept giving me more storage than I wanted and making me pay extra for it.
• Curiosity Stream / Nebula - It was hella cheap for a year, CS is really bad, but Nebula has some good creators on it
• Settapp - Its like an app subscription, you pay a fee and get access to like 200 handy mac apps, also provides my VPN - I quest when they added AI
• YouTube Sub: David Hoffman - I'm a paid member of this youtuber to support them, we get exclusive live stream chats ^^

I think that's everything I can remember 

[shevek]

Finally someone who beats me in subscriptions! I was starting to feel insane

Domain is something that's gonna be put on my list soon too.. when my porkbun domain purchase is finally through. I don't like credit cards, so I always gotta force some services into letting me use other methods.

Apple Fitness really increases its worthiness to me each week. The growing backlog of content, something new each week, the additional modes and changes, more kinds of sports. I just wish their starting page wasn't so convoluted and you didn't have to scroll 500km to the bottom for your saved library. In general, I wish I could sort the saved library. And the previews of the exercises say nothing about them

I use mainly Pilates, Meditation, Dance and Cycling, but also Core and HIIT when I have a good week. I rarely use their Yoga, usually because theirs is more exercise-focused and fast paced, and I prefer the control I have over my Yoga workouts at Down Dog, and I usually do them to cool down or warm up.. (restorative), so I rarely ever wanna do Apple's fitness yoga
My favorites are Darryl Whiting for Pilates, Ben Allen for Dance, Christian Howard for Meditation and Bakari Williams for cycling

[Melooon]

My favorites are Darryl Whiting for Pilates, Ben Allen for Dance, Christian Howard for Meditation and Bakari Williams for cycling

From what I remember, Meditation with JoAnna and Core with Gregg were two I went back to most often - though I also really enjoyed the guided walks - the Jane Goodall one was really great and the Prince William one was sad but nice. I was trying it all out in Dec/January and Iv got this intense mental association between the fitness app and misty cold January air and darkness; its a mood

[Daryl Sun]

Current subscriptions:

• Bitwarden: password manager
• Mailbox.org: secure email service, Light plan
• AnonAddy: temporary email address service, Lite plan
• EteSync: encrypted calendar and contact sync service
• Standard Notes: encrypted notes service, Productivity plan
• sourcehut: software development suite
• omg.lol: assortment of web services
• Porkbun: domain registrar

Previous subscriptions:

• miniflux: RSS feed service; I stopped using it because articles were always delayed or fetched late.
• wallabag: read-it-later service; I stopped using it because I realized that I wasn't reading any of the articles I'd saved.
• Mullvad VPN: VPN; I stopped using it because it often gave me issues accessing some websites.

UPDATE (2024-01-01): I'm using wallabag again, because I found myself looking for old articles as references, and my bookmarks had become messy.

I also subscribed to bunny.net for their CDN and file hosting services.

[Memory]

my $5/m vps and $10/y domain for igloo cafe