Ask HN: Are you cutting back on subscription services? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you cutting back on subscription services?

46 pointsgardenhedge54 comments

With a recession looming and inflation already here, are you cutting back on any subscription services?

I have recently gotten rid of Spotify, Amazon Prime, my paid email service, Playstation Network.

I still have Google One (I use Photos, Mobile VPN, switched back to GMail, Google Calendar). I am currently on a trial of Youtube Premium (with Youtube Music) but I probably won't keep it.

I still have iCloud extra storage, Dropbox, GoPro cloud, Netflix and Disney+.

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I thought about it recently, and added up what I was spending on Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, Disney/Hulu/ESPN, Spotify, Doordash, multiple cloud storage services, Apple Arcade/News/Fitness, NYT Crosswords, PS Plus and probably a few more. It was all combined less than $100/mo. The amount of enjoyment my family gets out of these is still worth a LOT more than that number. I'd rather cut down on 1-2 restaurant visits or a few cocktails per month instead.

Budgeting is great, but a lot of people end up being penny wise and pound foolish. There are a lot of bigger, more frivolous expenses most of us can cut out of our lives before Netflix starts being a problem.

Same, if anything I am adding subs.

Very much this. I'm still in the process of trying to adopt and becoming a foster family for the licensing, and one of the things we had to do is prepare a budget. I'm nowhere close to being squeezed and still have a ton left over every month, but it really stood out that we were spending in the area of four grand a month on food. I'm not even really trying to save money now so much as cook my own meals so I can track calories as part of an effort to be more intentional with my diet since I started TRT and lifting actually makes a difference now, but just not eating out and not drinking any alcohol has cut that to more like one grand a month. Next to that, what difference does it make if I spend $12 a month or $80 a month on streaming services? I'd rather have the variety available, if anything.

Same. I recently cancelled two subscriptions for services that I wasn't using very often, but for a family of three our total spend for subscriptions has almost no impact on monthly or yearly budget.

It's still annoying when every product wants me to subscribe to something. I'm old enough to remember when you could just buy Microsoft Word.

You can still buy Microsoft Office without any subscription.

Thanks for the correction. I did not realize they still made that available.

> Budgeting is great, but a lot of people end up being penny wise and pound foolish.

It really is a classic move that we see repeated over and over again. Your budget should be unique to you. Someone might look at those same services for $100 and say "to hell with it" and cancel them all, but I think a lot of people are on your side.

Personally, budgeting starts from the top down. Rent, car, food, utilities, etc.

Live in a modest place, own a used car, and cook your own meals are all basic ideas that can really cut costs. That's a very over simplified example, but generally, I think it's a good framework.

The value gain I get out of something like Netflix or a video game absolutely trounces the value of getting take out one night (for me).

I am canceling my BMW heated seat subscription over the warmer months.

Replacing it with the seat cooling subscription?

Part of me thinks you're being facetious, and part of me realizes this exactly the kind of thing car manufacturers would offer. Can you confirm either way?

he is being facetious but BMW is not, and offering it for $13/month. A separate subscription for heated steering wheel at $10/month is also offered.

https://www.motor1.com/news/597376/bmw-heated-seats-subscrip...

I wonder how they're doing financially because in terms of brand the idea has sunk them for me completely.

I have to say, I would laugh in a salespersons face if they told me the heated steering wheel was a subscription service.

at this point they'd need to pay me to get me into dealership so I wouldn't get that far

I can bet they are relying on most customers to find out about the fees only once the car is in their driveway, and at that point rather than fight they just decide to pay it.

Have you considered paying half to only keep one butt cheek warm?

I did exactly this with my indie hacker company: ditched Retool, RDS, MailChimp,Chargebee,Codacy, Azure DevOps CI, Zapier.

All moved to 1 medium size Hetzner VPS with various self hosted OSS services, crond and a custom Flask app.

Everything is so fast and cohesive now. I'm saving close to $2K/month

Can you expand on this? Which OSS tools replaced which SaaS and how long did it take you to do this?

What are the specs of your VPS?

Sure! Here is my self-hosted setup (actually ends up being more like ~$1100/month savings, not 2K. I overestimated it!

1x Hetzner CPX31 VPS: 4 VCPU, 8GB RAM, 160GB DISK (~$15/m)

---

* Mailchimp ~95$/m

-> Listmonk + Mailgun (few $, pay as you go)

---

* Retool ($20/m), Chargebee ($750/m)

-> Transitioned through Appsmith (0$), but decommissioned it in favour of a custom Flask app + local Postgres + Xero API (took 1 month) ($0/m)

---

* Codacy ($36/m)

-> various linters in CI + deps security scanners (free)

---

* Azure DevOps (private repo) ($86/m)

-> ditched Microsoft-hosted agent pool (many slow, expensive "cloud" agents w/ limited build hours) to 1 free, self-hosted agent (my VPS) $0/m. Planning to move to Circle CI Free account with up to 5 free self-hosted agents.

---

* Zapier ($30/m)

-> N8N on my VPS ($0/m)

---

* AWS RDS ($50/m)

-> Localhost Postgres ($0/m): this is so underrated. Hosting the DB on the same server with apps is faaaaast! Cron script to backup it all locally AND to S3 daily.

---

* AWS Cloudfront (IDK, non free)

-> Cloudflare proxied DNS (free)

---

Extra details

* Authentication to all hosted company services happens at the edge via Cloudflare Zero Trust (also free)

* All services are proxied by Cloudflare "DNS"

* Nginx allows HTTP access only from Cloudflare IP range (for security)

---

FUTURE PLANS

* Hosted Wordpress ($29/m)

-> Cloudflare Pages (maybe some workers too) much faster & for free

---

* AWS S3 (~$40/m)

-> Wasabi.com (IDK, much less)

Why did you decommission appsmith?

Because I already had in mind to create the custom Flask app as a self service subscription management portal for my customers, and while I was coding it, I had this a-ha moment when I discovered admin staff could just be using the same app in "god-mode".

That is, I unified the concepts of "customer portal" and back "office tooling". No more need for a Retool replacement.

And another reason: Appsmith is not as good as Retool (yet?) and is a memory hogging Java process. Good riddance, after all!

Hey, I'm the creator of Appsmith.

Thank you for trying Appsmith & apologies that you had a poor experience with the product.

Can I ask if you were pulling a lot of data from your databases to populate the UI? I'm asking because we definitely have our work cut out to handle larger amounts of data.

As you rightly said, Appsmith is written in Java which allocates 25% of available memory by default and expands to 75% memory. You can control this behaviour by adding APPSMITH_JAVA_HEAP_ARG="-Xmx2G" in the docker.env file.

Sorry man, I appreciate your work, and it did helped me when my app was not ready. I would love to give you more detailed feedback, but all I remember is I was trying to use it with previous Retool experience, but there were some differences between the two that caused a minimal learning curve. I did manage to do what I wanted eventually. Back then I was trying to do everything with 4GB of RAM, and when I saw the allocated memory I must say I was very surprised.

Even after you explained it to me now, I still don't understand why the minimum allocated memory (at rest) should be fixed at 25% (or any percent) of all available memory. What happens if I run it on my 64GB M1 Macbook? 16GB for Appsmith? I don't think so. Why not skipping the Xmx option all together? How much performance difference can it ever cause?

Yes, especially recently. My motivation/goal is:

- Saving some money

- Reducing digital usage and increasing spending more time IRL/AFK

- Reducing media consumption, addiction and FOMO (movies, shows, albums)

- Reducing number of service I use and manage

- Reducing digital footprint, attack surface and shared personal data

- Other minimalism and anti-consumerism related reasons

Disney+, but only because their handling of Star Wars properties was so bad I had to send a message (and explained why when cancelling). The worst fanfics I know have better first drafts than the Kenobi series put out.

If Netflix introduces ads I will. Or if they stop account sharing. Or if they get more expensive without making good stuff (or cancel shows like Mindhunter and The OA... Christ.)

Nah. I cut back heavily on eating out though. One meal easily costs the same as a couple subscriptions. My last meal out was a BBQ dinner and a beer for $25 (including tip).

I don't have any, and try to avoid taking on any new ones. They add up quickly.

For hosting I use GitHub pages. No vpn. Free Dropbox plan. YouTube for videos and music. Might buy a few months of Xbox Game Pass if there a bunch of games to play.

OTOH the amount I've lost via index funds this year outweighs the cost of all these subscriptions many times over, so you do you :P

Personally, i've got rid of Netflix, Disney and family Spotify. I really want to get rid of Prime, but the damn next-day deliveries have me hooked in for now (3 birthdays coming up). I will cancel in Aug.

In re to work, we're replacing a lot of tools with self-built versions using budibase [1] (where we work). We're also considering moving away from Intercom [2] to Chatwood.

[1] https://www.budibase.com [2] https://www.intercom.com

Yes, like most of my friends Ive the cost of living (in Melbourne) rise so much I have far less disposable income, add to that the huge number of competing services each wanting their piece of the pie and now I avoid most subscription based offerings.

In the last year I've gotten rid of Dropbox, Amazon Prime, Amazon Audible, Netflix, YouTube premium, Evernote, GitHub Pro, several Patreon pod/vodcasts, A VPS, WhiskyClub and a few other things.

I've kept: iCloud storage, Fastmail, Apple Music, BackBlaze, Overcast

I'm contemplating getting rid of: 1Password, Bear.

Like you and others in this thread I've been cutting back in subscription services. Difference is I plan on keeping my off-site backups (backblaze) and email (fast mail) . Those are important and vital enough for me to pay for and keep them. Other services like streaming music/movies or Amazon Prime, I have already cut back on. Non essentials.

Yes I have kept those as well.

Yes, but not because of money, because the value of them has gone down to me. I don't get as much use out of any one of them anymore as the landscape has fragmented around video streaming. In addition, we have BBC iPlayer in the UK which is free (so long as you have a TV License, which I already have), and All4 which is advertising supported. They have large amounts of back catalog, films, tv series, etc. and I find I use these more than the paid services now.

I have YouTube Premium and Apple Music.

I only use YT for STEM and live music.

I wonder if media talking about recession and now seeing questions like this is intentional; get people to cut their spending, save, actually causing a recession, because people listened to the media and Fed.

Asset prices come down given less activity in the market. Average person can’t save much as it, and the rich buy up cheaper assets.

In no way do I see the media and Fed talking about these things as indicative of their ability to see the future. It’s people using their podium and claim of power to trigger behavioral modification.

They really do not want to raise wages: https://www.marketplace.org/2022/01/26/the-statistic-fed-cha...

I renewed Prime because I received a $100 gift card for getting a Prime credit card. Probably will not renew the service, and will also terminate the credit card and, a few months later, rinse and repeat (they told me there's nothing wrong with doing that).

Except the hit to your credit score.

I am guilty of paying frivolous amounts to VTubers via YouTube Memberships, but I've cut down to just 3 (Amano Pikamee, Hana Macchia and Rosemi Lovelock).

Besides that, I've gone from paying for Apple One Premier to paying separately for 200GB iCloud (down from the 2TB of One), Apple TV+ and Music Family. Didn't make much use out of News or Arcade, and Fitness just made me feel weird. I switch from Ting Wireless to Mint Mobile because it saves me around $80 a year. Switched to yearly Disney+ and Discord Nitro Classic for some price savings.

Grad student, so I'm always looking for open-source or high-seas approaches to things. That being said, I support 2 people on patreon (<$5/mo) and I've got mullvad and the 99c iCloud plan. I've never seen anything I'd consider worth paying $10/mo for, usually because I'm only willing to pay businesses/people that actually could use the money.

I also don't want to invest into some paid service whose terms will likely screw me over whenever they change, when I could be investing into a service that I can control for years and doesn't require an account.

Yes, actually. I’ve cut back several larger subscriptions that I had started during the pandemic. Either didn’t need them anymore or didn’t want them. some of the subs included shipt grocery delivery, talkspace, paramount’s streaming service, wasabi storage, some servers I trimmed down off DO, and a bunch of domains I didn’t use anymore. I have plans to do another round of spring cleaning. I realized my business account bleeds about $2k a year just on tiny bullshit. Death by a thousand cuts or something.

Not exactly an answer to the question but I want to plug Kanopy—use your library card to stream a ton of good content (tv shows, movies) for free.

Yes! I had ~5 Google Workspace subs I wasn't using, cancelled them all. I also cancelled the auto renewal for about 10 domains which I know I'll never really use. Other subscriptions I recently cancelled are Canva, a bunch of VPSs, and I'm also considering if I should cancel Spotify, even though it's a very low cost.

I've always been quite careful with these subscriptions. I've got Spotify and Amazon Prime, which comes to around 15 Euro/month for both.

Friend of mine got Netflix, Sky (for soccer), Audible and some more and comes out at almost ten times as much per month. I find that insane I don't even have time to consume so much stuff.

Halfway —- I’m keeping my subs to indie or inexpensive things (Dropout, CuriosityStream/Nebula) or comped things (Disney Bundle via Amex Plat), and I just recently picked up a couple library cards for Kanopy, Hoopla, Freegal, and PressReader (as well as books). Got rid of Crunchyroll, Apple One, and YouTube Premium.

I've never even started. I only have a handful of subscriptions only for specific and scope-constrained services that can be easily replaced, such as:

* JetBrains (IntelliJ/PyCharm IDEs), with an option to stop paying and still keep the last version you paid for - that integrity keeps me paying for it even though I don't technically need the latest version. Can be replaced with Sublime Text, other open-source alternatives or worst-case scenario, Vim with open-source plugins

* Office 365 (or Microsoft 365 or whatever they're calling it now), only ~2$/month for hosted email and 1TB OneDrive space so worth it, don't need anything else. Can be replaced with a self-hosted server if needed (I already run some for clients).

* Kagi Search, it's pretty good but I subscribe mostly for supporting them rather than any specific benefit - it it was purely about the money then I'd say DDG is good enough. Can be terminated if the value is no longer there or if it start smelling like "growth & engagement".

Any consumer product I don't bother or milk the free trials continuously - Spotify has this nasty habit of "personalizing" everything without an opt-out so I just create trial accounts every couple months to reset my profile and avoid getting into a filter bubble. I also have downloaded mixes from various YouTube/SoundCloud channels (via youtube-dl) that keep me going through the day, are available as local files and don't rely on a shitty, memory-intensive and network-dependent player to play.

For movies/series, the very few times I want to watch something, a friend usually has what I'm looking for, and worst case scenario, that friend can always be "the pirate bay". In hindsight I've got very little time to watch anything anyway and get most of my entertainment from free YouTube content (proxied via Invidious so no ads/etc). Patreon or ad-hoc donations take care of the "paying creators" aspect without giving any penny to Google who couldn't even be bothered to respect the GDPR until very recently so no bad feelings there.

Gaming wise, I still get plenty of value from my fully-paid-for copy of Battlefield 3 and am not interested in anything new if it involves subscriptions, microtransactions or having to grind for months before getting good weapons/ugprades as I don't have time for the latter anyway and would rather spend that time enjoying BF3 where I'm already fully leveled-up. Old copies of Minecraft (Beta 1.7.3 - the real Minecraft, self-hosted servers and friends) also provide tons of value.

Anything else, not only do I not see enough value in it nor am happy with the (usual) privacy concerns, but wouldn't want to commit anyway in fear that they'll alter the deal in the future or change the software to benefit "engagement" at my expense.

The current list of subscriptions above (which is all it is - I don't think I omitted anything) is alright for now but can and will be replaced should they alter the deals in a detrimental way.

Netflix only, and I'm looking to get rid of it.

Actually I guess Hello Fresh counts. Will probably keep that.

Canceled Amazon Music Unlimited.

No, but I dont have that many to begin with: Prime, HBOMax and Fastmail.

I sometimes think about canceling Prime since i dont use the streaming service, but due to some recurring purchases I end up saving money.

I started this cut back already couple of years ago.

I've had Spotify Premium for 12 years and will have it in the future too. The price and the content you get is more than fair and I'll be happy to pay it even if listen barely any music during some months.

Other than that and iCloud, I don't really use any streaming/subscription services.

Regarding video streaming I used to have Netflix, Amazon etc. but due to the endless fragmentation, continuously increasing prices and general decline in Hollywood quality where the focus of directors is in CGI, shoehorning woke-propaganda and hiring same boring overpaid and overused "top actors" to every single movie, it's just not worth it anymore.

Subscriptions can financially sabotage you if you’re not careful. They require you to have money ready in your account. Lately I canceled many subscriptions, since my main focus has now become domain name renewals. My phone carrier is pay-as-you-go and not subscription based but they will kick you off the network if you don’t topup in a two month window.

Also a proud owner of lifetime licenses to various software which is normally subscription based for those who can’t afford a lifetime one off purchase.

I am cutting back on streaming services.

I used to subscribe to Netflix, YT TV, YT Premium, Disney+ and HBO Max

Now its just YT Premium and HBO Max

Definitely. I’m also considering in buying more blurey boxes.

Subscription models are good in general and better as seeing Ads all day. But I had prime, Disney, Netflix, Crunchyroll etc. It was to much and I’m just watching old series again. It’s not worthy.

There was a golden period when the studios hadn't realized the impact of streaming that you could get clearance Blurays for $5-10, but that time is gone. Now any movie I'd want to watch (new or old) costs as much as a couple of months of a streaming service. I have a significant home library (between CD/DVD/Bluray, well over a thousand discs) but don't add to it as much anymore now that the supply has been reduced to return prices to the old high normal.

I do recommend Redbox, however - $2 is the cheapest HD rental around, and I've been on Redbox time delay for years, watching movies a few months after they pass through theaters. They also sell discs for $4-6 (even their 4K discs) which is the cheapest I usually find.

I have dropped NetFlix, now that I've watched Stranger Things (we hardly ever watch anything on NetFlix). I am also contemplating moving email from POBox.com to Apple, since I don't intend to drop my Apple Premiere subscription. I'm dropping Audible (after I use my three remaining credits) and Kindle Unlimited (though I'm still on the trial for that and haven't paid anything). We're keeping Amazon Prime and Microsoft365, since we literally use those all the time, and I'm looking at individual app subscriptions as they come due.

Things will get looked much harder if lose my job or retire, but my employer has never had a layoff in nearly 40 years in business.

No, since I haven't signed up for that many to begin with.

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