HN Explorer

Ask HN: What SaaS or apps are you paying for?

54 points by busymichael ↗ HN
I am curious to know what saas or apps are HN user's paying out of their own pocket for? Not business apps, but for your own personal use.

Personally, I pay for feedly (rss reader), G Suite domain (for my personal email), beyondpod (podcast app for android), mighttext (syncs sms to gmail), todoist premium (task/to do app).

72 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] thread
scarface74
Evernote, Resharper, Backblaze, Office 365
handbanana
Have you tried not using R#? The only reason I ask is that a lot of its utility now exists in Visual Studio.

R# actually overwrites many default VS key bindings and provides the same functionality, just with a different UI. So people are like "hey look what I can do!", when in actuality they could have done the same thing without R#.

Also, it's a resource hog. I've only met a handful of people who contest this - and they are long time users, who haven't gone without resharper recently (full uninstall) for a meaningful period of time.

scarface74
VS doesn't have any of the functionality under Generate Code:

- create delegating methods

- create equality methods

- create formatting members (ie override ToString() and just click on the properties - mostly for debugging)

https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/features/code_refactorin...

This list doesn't include things like converting some patterns back and forth to Linq expressions, converting foreach to for, better extract method that takes advantage of local methods and lets you choose which variables you want to capture, and various other code hints.

It also doesn't include safely adding and removing parameters, intelligently knowing when a class is used via DI when you are looking for unknown classes.

The unit test runner is also much better than the built in VS Test runner.

handbanana
Interesting that you need/use all those things
scarface74
I'm usually hired to fix existing code bases/departments. I trust automated refactors to get my head around really bad huge classes.
ajb413
GitHub and Laracasts
feelepxyz
GSuite, 1Password, NewsBlur, Mullvad VPN
ta848347
Office 365, Spotify, Netflix, Prime, Patreon, Cricket Stream, NFL Stream
scarface74
I didn't add streaming services.

In that case DirectTV, Hulu no commercials, Netflix (not really its free with T-Mobile) and everything I said below.

allenbina
I found myself paying upwards of $100 monthly in these small incurring charges until my credit card was lost and they were all cancelled. I'll answer with what main services I used to pay for and what I replaced them with. Evernote got replaced by OneNote. It's not an equivalent, but it gets the job done. I moved from lastpass once they changed their subscription model to the free tier. I'm considering moving to bitwarden's free tier. I'm somehow unable to get together the few hours it will take to migrate a handful of sites and email accounts from my 1and1 site to something less painful, but every time I try to move, it becomes a small nightmare.
danvoell
I actually get really excited when I need a new credit card, for just this reason. We should start some sort of service that just denies payment to every monthly subscription once every six months.
cascom
I have a separate credit card that I put all recurring charges on - it keeps it so much easier from some of them getting lost in the mix of your regular transactions - also let’s you get a sense of just how much you’re spending on that stuff
ah-
runbox.com
amorphid
Google Play / YouTube Red: ad free streaming music, ad free YouTube

G-Suite: mostly for email for my personal domain

Netflix: streaming video

101domain: domain registrar

Amazon Prime: faster free shipping

DigitalOcean: virtual machines

AWS: cloud stuff

busymichael
I forgot YT Red -- I pay for that too for music and ad free YT.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
vis52
Additional Gmail Space and 1Password
poidos
Linode hosts my website

FastMail for email from said site

Dropbox for storage

Spotify for music

And the $1 icloud upgrade (for ios backups)

laken
In order of amount I pay for each service:

Atlantic.net (Hosting), Fastmail, Discord Nitro, Todoist, Private Internet Access, Twilio

Some that I paid for in excess of 1+ years (or Lifetime):

Freedom.to, Brain.fm

Couple that I'm using premium plans, but not currently paying for (prolonged trial offers, etc.):

Reddit Gold (still have several years left), Todoist

wpasc
Have you liked Brain.fm? I used to use it, but started to think it wasn't really worth it/much more useful than regular whitenoise
moltar
Not OP. But I’m using it for 2+ years now almost daily. Love it. I use focus and nap modes primarily.
laken
I use it on and off. I've only primarily used the focus mode, and it's a decent way to help get "in the zone" if there's a really deep task I need to do.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
Arqu
It is interesting to see that most people only pay for some large brand name services, would love to see more people paying for SaaS solutions from smaller businesses/startups and for more technical resons (I guess SME's would better qualify for this than individuals)

As for my spending I guess I also fall short of the above point: Play Music - music streaming, Netflix - chill, Github - Private repos, GSuite - mostly emails, GDrive - storage, Namecheap - Domains, Google Cloud and AWS - cloud stuff, Asana - side project management, AdWords - side project marketing

saganus
Numerous comments here on HN suggest that this is due to lack of confidence in the startup/small business survivability.

If I am going to build a business, I would like to be reasonably sure that the tools I'm using to build it won't suddenly close if they lack funding.

Of course, this is by no means any guarantee, as there's also the case where a startup is so successful that some bigger company will buy it and close down the service anyway.

SimbaOnSteroids
How does one utilize the chill functionality of Netflix?

Also: Netflix, Prime, iCloud, and CrunchyRoll.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
greatamerican
AWS, Soundcloud, Github, Namecheap, Google Apps Suite
mrweasel
Kolab for email, and tarsnap for backup.
synapse0
I pay for laracasts.com and apollohq.com
josteink
LWN, Wikipedia, FastMail, Digital Ocean, Google Play Music, Plex, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

I buy music at Bandcamp, bleep and direct at artist pages. I buy movies at rifftraxx.

I donate to various FOSS projects with money and time.

_corym
Bear: the best note-taking app I’ve ever used, with a great tagging system

Spotify: music subscription

Github: private repos

1password: password manager

kreeWall
Spotify Family, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Backblaze
jryan49
Spotify

Donations: Wikipedia, Firefox

adorable
GSuite, Mailchimp, Sendgrid, Github, Sightengine, Travis, Twilio
thepumpkin1979
Backblaze business(two computers), Spotify, Github, Amazon EC2 and RDS(Rancher DB and Master), Digitalocean(Rancher Workers), Circleci, Buddybuild, Google Business (three seats), Name.com( one IO, a dozen dot coms), Netflix, Amazon Video