Ask HN: What software subscriptions are worth paying for?

I pay (personally) for Postico and ChatGPT.

I pay for Mullvad for my VPN of choice, and Eweka and Drunkenslug for newsgroups (i.e. every media ever invented downloaded at maximum speed)

Bitwarden for personal password management

x.com sub to get rid of the ads

youtube pro to get rid of ads

Obsidian

Google (for Deep Research, Gemini and NotebookLM)

ChatGPT (For ChatGPT and Codex)

GitKraken

CodeRabbit

Novelcrafter (for fiction)

Wondercraft (wrapper around Elevnlabs and Googles TTS)

Seriously considering Elevenreader as well

Raindrop (bookmarks)

OutdoorActive (maps for hiking)

YouTube Premium

Sanebox (Email triage)

intellij, proton, ps+, youtube premium

Proton,Mullvad

mathacademy - learn math chatgpt - make problem sets and personal tutoring mullvlad - vpn

Mullvad, tailscale, bitwarden

Used to pay for a VPS, besides that nothing.

mullvad, 1Password, fastmail for me

Personally nothing - a one off payment for software is fine.

Subscription based software - it's what I do for a day job but I'm not interested in any more monthly money drains than the bare minimum - ie mortgage, rates and utilities.

Usenet

People are commenting services as well, guess I'm adding to it. These are the only services I pay for.

Google One. Google photos is just magic, cheaper storage elsewhere just doesn't cut it. Also why I won't be switching to ios anytime soon. First party solutions always feel better.

Youtube Premium.

Personal: 1Password, Google One, Chatgpt

For work: Snagit, Aptakube, Jetbrains

Sublime (contribution rather than subscription)

Excalidraw

ChatGpt

ExpressVPN

nord/mullvad, bitwarden, claude code (max), openai, youtube music, google drive (for the storage space).

Got a few lifetime payments too for various desktop utility apps

I pay for other ones on an as needed basis, but my tools change based on what i'm working on. Usually always have a render and supabase plan going for various hosted toy apps.

Kagi, an absolute must for me these days.

For my life workflow, I pay for these because they add a lot of value for me:

• Infuse, from Firecore (probably the best video player on Apple TV, iOS, iPadOS and macOS — you can throw almost any format at it)

• Owl, by Beonex (it’s a Mozilla Thunderbird extension that connects to MS Exchange and costs $10 a year)

• Bvckup 2 (Windows backup software) — this gets cheaper on renewals

On services:

• Apple Fitness+ (annual subscription is a lot cheaper than monthly), one of the best things that keeps me working out regularly

• Posteo.de for emails

root server and mullvad. everything else i buy perpetual or I look for alternatives if that option doesnt exist

- FastMail for email, calendar, and contact book.

- Kagi for search and translation.

- rsync.net for backup (although I took their lifetime subscription offer so I no longer actively pay them).

- Self-hosting related costs (rented servers and domain names).

- Buttondown for sending out blog updates. (I was generously gifted a lifetime subscription, but had I not been I would likely have paid for it eventually anyway.)

- The Economist for moderately-biased news spanning the entire world.

I also pay for Spotify, though I increasingly doubt whether it is giving me more value than purchasing the music I want directly. I suppose I do it out of convenience rather than economic gain.

This feels like a very HN set of subscriptions...

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Things I don't pay for:

- Excalidraw: I didn't even know that was possible.

- Google Photos: it keeps bugging me to, and I keep intending to exchange it for Immich.

- YouTube: I'm not a heavy YouTube user, but NewPipe and adblocker goes a long way.

- LLMs: I find API credits to be better value.

- VPN: I run OpenVPN on the closet server. That said, I have moved and I don't trust the new home ISP as much so this might change.

- Password manager: KeePassXC and SyncThing is sufficient.

- Notes: Org and Orzly and SyncThing is sufficient.

- Cloud storage: SyncThing and a closet server is sufficient.

Anything you rely on.

Mail (Fastmail), search (Kagi), storage (B2), and a few vps.

Kagi, PurelyMail, and a VPS of your choice to host everything else you might need (I’ve settled on SSDNodes [1], good performance and pretty cheap). Probably also something for backups (Backblaze B2 or rsync.net seem decent).

[1]: https://ale.sh/r/ssdnodes (affiliate link)

I pay for GH Copilot, but mostly because I haven't bothered to stop. I'm probably going to switch to paying for Cursor.

I used to pay for the following:

  * Home Designer Pro (upgraded to fully purchased at some point)
  * JRebel (circa 2010ish)

I will never pay for

  * Youtube Premium

Obsidian Sync

Fastmail, Mullvad, a VPS

Open source projects and their maintainers.