[kqr]

- 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...

-----

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.

[rich_sasha]

Re Spotify: I think the greatest value is easy discovery. I wouldn't find 90% of the stuff I listen to in CD shops.

[ejdanderson]

Agreed - There certainly are other apps that provide better discovery, but nothing that is as seamlessly integrated to where I'm already listening to music.

[sloaken]

Nice list, I am going to start using SyncThing. My goal is to link my brother and myself as offsite backups.

Is the reference to org, orgorg.com or something else?

[rhubarbtree]

YouTube subscription is great but very overpriced. Streaming services are much cheaper and they produce original content. I just can’t justify double the price of Apple TV so I can watch content Google hasn’t produced.

[ElCapitanMarkla]

Yeah I begrudgingly paid increase when it went from $19 to $29 NZD a month. My friend in Aus just got an email saying they were putting his up to $39 from $29 a month… it’s not worth that to me. If anything it’s a great excuse to watch less on there.

[rhubarbtree]

It’s not so much paying the cost, so much as the fact that Google charges double for content it didn’t create. It isn’t adding a lot of value.

It’d make a lot more sense if it were Google maps, which adds tremendous value.

[swarnie]

YouTube subscription - Ever since they tied play/pause to the screen lock a subscription is essential if you want to use it as an audio only app.

I hate it.

[microsoftedging]

If you're using a Samsung device then you can use Screen Curtain within Samsung's Good Guardians application on the Galaxy Store, which allows you to play media with the screen turned off.

[kqr]

NewPipe.

[rpdillon]

Brave fixes this.

[theshrike79]

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

I've spent $260 worth of API credits on my $20 Claude Code Pro subscription so far.

[techjamie]

Agentic stuff is probably the exemption to this because it chews tokens like nobody's business. For average prompting, API is the way to go. I've spent an average of around $7.50/mo between OAI and Claude, and that's using o3 and Opus for most queries.

[southernplaces7]

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

And if your house should be robbed or burned in a fire?

[southernplaces7]

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

Who do you use, or recommend for server rental.