tech, simplified.

Subscription Sensibility

Take time to think more seriously about subscriptions than signup forms want you to.

Everything’s a subscription these days. You can get Photoshop and Lightroom, all of Microsoft’s Office apps, almost every song ever recorded, a library full of books, a vast catalogue of back TV shows and a handful of movies, a terabyte of online storage, unlimited backup, virtually unlimited website hosting, and so much more, all for the low price of $9.99 or less a month each. You can get a domain for that price per year, and a number of web apps like Evernote for half that price per month. You can support your favorite writers on the web or subscribe to magazines and newspapers for anything from a dollar to $20 a month.

They all sound cheap and harmless at first, but over time, they can add up just as badly as traditional boxed software and stacks of music CDs. Worse still, if you stopped subscribing to everything tomorrow, you’d have little-to-nothing to show for your investment. That’s perhaps not precisely bad, as you could say the same thing for your internet subscription or even the food you eat, but it does put subscriptions in a different light than buying a box set of your favorite artist’s music CDs. Worse still, if you buy a CD, you won’t automatically be charged for another CD next month, but subscriptions will keep charging you automatically even if you forget about them.

Subscriptions aren’t bad. If anything, they’re a natural extension of the internet. Information wants to be free, and having it behind an all-you-can-eat subscription paywall is the most obvious way to set media and apps “free.” You pay for an unlimited internet connection, and then pay for unlimited “libraries” of apps and content. That makes sense.

And yet, it can all get expensive. Add up a few site, app, and media service subscriptions, and you’ll be spending more than a premium cable bill each month—and more than your computer’s value each year. That’s fine if you want and use all of those services, but it’s far too easy to forget what all you’re paying for—which sometimes can be nothing, as I found when iTunes doesn’t automatically kill subscriptions even after a magazine app and its in-app purchases are pulled. A handful of services can go unnoticed on your bank statement for a few months, but they sure add up over time.

That’s why you need to do two things: only subscribe to the things you know you’re glad to spend that annual amount on, and remind yourself to reconsider each of your subscriptions every so often. The first should be obvious: subscriptions cost per month, so think of the cost over time instead of the cost today. Sure, it might just cost $9.99 this month, but it’ll actually cost nearly $120 this year. If it still sounds sensible to you, then go ahead and subscribe.

Then open your to-do app, and set a recurring reminder a few days before your subscription is due—a few days sooner than a year from the day you subscribed for annual subscriptions, or perhaps 3 months later for monthly subscriptions. Remind yourself to reconsider your subscription then, and forget about it. When that time rolls around, think through the first condition—am I getting my subscription’s value out of this?—and if you can still answer it affirmatively, then check it off and don’t worry about it again until the reminder comes back. This will give you a somewhat random list of your subscriptions in a way that’ll remind you to be smart about your subscriptions and give you a chance to reconsider them right before they’re due to charge you again.

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I have quite a few subscriptions, some of which absolutely make sense. Netflix, for instance, makes sense whenever I’m watching a TV show series, as it’d cost far more to buy the series on iTunes when I’d never watch it again. Rdio mostly makes sense for me, but then, I like random radio which iTunes Radio does brilliantly for free, and I listen to the same albums enough times that buying them almost makes more sense. My reading material subscriptions (newspapers, magazines, and blogs) vary over time, so the reminders are the most helpful there. Office 365 makes sense for me right now, as I often write Office-centric tutorials, but it may or may not make sense next year, making it great to review then.

The first domain name I purchased felt like a huge decision since buying it was really committing to paying for it each year for the foreseeable future. Over time, in-app purchases and subscription upgrades get easier and easier to add on, since they just cost this much, and it’s easier to lose sight of the long-term picture.

You wouldn’t have bought a several thousand dollar Creative Suite box set without careful budgeting and consideration years ago. Don’t jump into subscriptions that are just as expensive over time with any less consideration.

Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.