4 ms·
Ask HN: What Do You Pay For?
I was thinking about the number of free services we consume and how in some ways we default to that on the internet. But then the question arises. What do we actually pay for? What attributes enough value to pay for something? So I pose the question. What internet services do you pay for?
- menshiki 3y agoI don't need much. - Apple Music, TV+, iCloud (less than $4 a month) - Xbox Game Pass (probably around $40 a year)
- joenot443 3y agoGame Pass is such a wildly good deal it’s hard to believe it exists. I grew up spending $60 on 360 and GameCube games, $40/yr is such a steal
- moomoo11 3y agoYouTube premium, Amazon prime, chatgpt and mid journey, Instacart plus.
- KomoD 3y agoSpotify, 1Password, Netflix, Domains, Hosting, Discord Nitro, gsuite/google workspace, Mullvad, Tidal. I think that's about it for subscription services?
- theossuary 3y agoTidal - High quality music, good curation too Mullvad - Best VPN service available Midjourney - I'm not an artist, so it's nice to bang out concepts with midjourney Firefox relay - I'd probably recommend anonaddr though. I'm trying to support Mozilla, but their offerings aren't very good Libro.fm - Love audio books, hate breaking Audible DRM to host the books in audiobookshelf YNAB - Best way to track money, hands down Obsidian Sync - I don't think obsidian is a great knowledge based but I haven't found one I like more, and I've tried most
- idontwantthis 3y agoWhy do you prefer Tidal to Spotify?
- DarrenDev 3y ago- Fastmail - LinkedIn Premium - Shield (for LinkedIn) - Canva (every few months, then cancel) - Domains & hosting - Wordpress.com - Plausible - Beanstalk git - Spotify - Disney+ (I change up he streaming every few months, never pay for more than 1 at a time)
- jakabia 3y agoI'm paying for: - Youtube Premium: I travel a lot, often by plane, so downloading songs and videos, often tech-related ones, is a nice thing to have. - Spotify: Same. - ChatGPT: I'm still learning a lot about coding and programming, just started to dive into ASP.NET, it helps me a lot. - Google Photos: I take a lot of pictures, also I like to share them with my friends. In addition, the rediscover aka "look back to this memory" function is lovely. - Netflix: Also to download movies/series, helps me a lot during travelling.
- kingkongjaffa 3y agoiCloud 200gb is worth it imo for the backups I can back up my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro and if I upgrade I basically just login and sync and everything is set up the same as my old device.
- xigoi 3y agoSourceHut and a domain I've bought together with my friends.
- pr07ecH70r 3y agoI pesonally pay for: • Strava - tracking my runs • Fusion 360 - freelancing my designs • Notability - where I keep my notes and ideas • ChatGPT - no comment here :D • Midjourney - also no comment • Netflix - man has to relax at time to time • Play Swiss - as I am swiss, I also watch Swiss movies and shows • GitHub - version control + doing some collaborative projects with friends It is probably not that much, but for me now when looking at this condensed list, seems a lot. :) EDIT: Ah yes, thanks to the guys with the other comments! I also have several domains + SSLs + Hosting.
- edent 3y agoDomain names (too many!) and hosting (pretty cheap). NextCloud hosting - can't be bothered running and securing my own. BitWarden - I like their product and happy to pay for the family plan. The occasional app or game. Mostly when they're on sale. Very rarely one of my personal projects goes over the free tier of an API on Google or AWS, so a few quid here and there. But that's about it. I'm usually happy to sacrifice my time in order to save money.
- torunar 3y agoI only pay for hosting (~1.5 EUR / month). Used to pay for VPN, too, but I don't have much use of it these days.
- brudgers 3y agoYoutube Premium.
- deanmoriarty 3y agoThe only Internet service I pay for is a domain name for my email. I don’t feel I miss out on anything else.
- zeroego 3y agoI currently pay for a few things: Proton Mail - Solid email service. I'm not hardcore about privacy but I do like their ethics. Spotify - Love having instant access to any music, though I wish their app was a bit more intuitive. Two Twitch subscriptions - Both of the streamers are friends, but I do enjoy their content a lot and like supporting them. Laracasts - I'm a new to Laravel/PHP and this website has been awesome for high quality tutorials. Cheapest tier of iCloud for photos - I have other ways to backup photos but the convenience of iCloud is very nice.
- nicbou 3y agoEmail hosting (Namecheap, meh) A VPS for my websites (DigitalOcean) A VPN for torrenting (Private Internet Access) Spotify Wachete (monitors sites for changes) Plausible (privacy-friendly analytics) That's about it
- Spooky23 3y ago- Google Drive - iCloud - Leaf / Plant ID app - 1Password - Fishbrain - GCP - run a few servers as my hobby lab
- p0d 3y agoDropbox Joplin Additional Google Storage Google Sheets add-on Hetzner VPS
- atmosx 3y agoQuite a few: - Software: Paragon's extFS, Littlesnitch, 1Password Family, ClamXav and more. - Services: Fastmail, Spotify, YouTube Family, Disney+ Family (to be discontinued), NetFlix Family, Starlink, AWS (route53, s3, CloudFront)
- jaden 3y agoI used to only use free services. Then a few shut down, so I started paying for services to help support them. - Fastmail - TickTick - Bitwarden family - Dynalist - Personal knowledge management - Several servers & domains for self-hosting - Laravel Forge - server management - Hetrixtools - Uptime monitor - Bunny.net - CDN - Anonaddy - Email aliases - Standard Notes