Sign up and immediately cancel/turn off billing, so you aren't charged again next year (again, they'll send you a bunch of notices ahead of the end of your service).
Put a calendar reminder in for 11.5 months out from when you sign up.
In Slack, /remind me in 11.5 months to cancel X service.
But reading suggestions like yours, apparently it's all on people like my poor mom to outwit corporations with multi-million-dollar budgets dedicated to screwing her over. (And yes I'm helping, but precious few tech-noob elders have an engineer in the family.)
Why? That's much worse. If anything is going to do a recurring charge to me, I want it to go through a credit card which offers a layer of indirection.
I never authorize automatic billing directly to a bank account, then the money is truly gone. With a credit card I can always protest the charge and have had to do this with particularly difficult businesses a few times.
Congratulations, HNer — you're more tech savvy than my mom.
Perhaps you're volunteering to help vulnerable seniors like her navigate the Hobbesian nightmare of subscriptions?
I applaud your initiative, but if you're new to this, let me caution you: they don't always understand or follow the advice you give them precisely. Even if they are trying their best.
Use a virtual card from your credit card Many banks offer these now a these days (Capital one does, with all cards, in app or in browser, no need for extension).
These get sold to a collections company. Invalid payment doesn’t invalidate the contract.