I use Subscriptions. It works well.
I pulled the trigger on the paid version of Octarine and am using the iOS version thanks to your mini review of it. Thank you.
Don’t get me wrong, NotePlan is absolutely wonderful and an extremely well-engineered application. But you’d have to have a use case that requires more automation than what I need, and the finances to afford it.
I also stopped my ars technica subscription, because I just don’t fit with the views of AT”s commentariat. I think that’s the second or third time I’ve started and stopped a subscription with them.
So far, I think I’ve saved roughly $650 from last year‘s subscription stack. The next challenge, once I get on Social Security, is to resist Apple One through Verizon.
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Going to ditch Meta next month. Had Kagi free for three months but I am critical of paying after the trial. I deleted Orion Browser and switched back to DuckDuckGo as default search engine.
So there will be only two subscriptions for digital: iCloud and website. USD$18 (£13) per month.
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It just dawned on me that I never checked Amazon for Prime deals. I plan to cancel Prime, but I didn’t realize how uninterested I was in checking them. I guess I figure I have enough “stuff.” 
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Not sure how it is in the US, but in Spain the Deals section keeps becoming more and more undistinguishable from Aliexpress.
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Is it ever not Prime Day?
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It’s only Prime day on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 11th, 13th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, 29th and 31st days of the month.
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One of the only other people I’ve ever met who uses Hushed. It’s really slick.
Hate to be pedantic, but the 1st of the month is not Prime Day.
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I love to be pedantic and point out that you seemingly don’t hate it. 
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I reallly liked your post. And I’m sure that Bezos can make any day he wants a Prime Day, regardless of mathematics.
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I’m late to this party and to the “let’s trim the subs down a bit” mindset, but something hit me today; an email from Fastmail.
“We haven’t raised prices in forever and we’re now going to bill you in your native CAD as opposed to USD so we’re tacking on another little bit – love you!”.
Okay - not verbatim. But I was already wearing thin on paying to use email, the hike just cemented it. I fancy myself to be somewhat privacy conscious. That’s why I ended up on Fastmail and away from Google. But managing all those email aliases is a bit of a hassle (even with 1Password), and explaining to people my email address is “FAST-MAIL” I always get back a response like “what? What’s that, is that new? – FASTmail you said? Huh”.
At the end of the day, I didn’t notice a major difference between Fastmail and Gmail, and since I already have a YouTube premium account it’s not like they’re not farming my activities anyway. I just decided for the $85 a year it’s now going to cost me and the friction of managing all these different email aliases/masked emails, it wasn’t worth it.
From here, I went on a bit of a mission. I remembered I can’t use Todoist at work now. I have to use MS To Do. Since Todoist also had a price increase this year, I thought “this is a little overkill to store my 20 personal tasks a month”. And then I got really amped up and went in to Bear. “Yeah, I like it and it’s pretty, but I took 4 notes last month. Apple Notes will do that just fine, and if I get into a big thinking session or something, I can fire up Obsidian or a notebook.”
I feel like I often get in my own way with this stuff. What I think I need and what I actually need have not been aligned in a long time.
So I’ll see you all in two weeks when I write the same post but in reverse about how Apple services don’t work for me and I need more flexibility and power. 
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I can totally relate. Over the past two months, I’ve been paring back my subscriptions, which has led me to simplify my setup. I no longer feel like I’m managing my apps.
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Or they managing us. 
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A few years ago when I gave my email address to someone on the phone they spelled it back to me as “FASTMALE?” I thought that was pretty funny but I was glad they checked.
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Owning your own domain, even if only for email, is a big advantage.
The reason I left Google, who I loved functionally, was because they were going to start charging me to use my own domain. They relented, but only a month prior to their original deadline. Too late. I moved to Fastmail.
While I do dislike paying, especially because I had set up two accounts for my sons and have to keep those going, I also do prefer Fastmail functionally. Especially their native iOS app which is far and away better than Google’s equivalent.
But… to everyone who uses my email address, nothing changed.
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I’ve switched my domain email so many times since I started my own business: first Microsoft (using GoDaddy) and then Google Workspace. I left them because their user configuration pages were far too complicated for a one-man business.
After that, I went to Fastmail for a long time. (Gandi, now Porkbun). I’m on Porkbun mail for $36 a year.
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I really like Fastmail.
However, I only really use the aliases via my own domain and with a memorable name of company@mydomain.com etc.
Which with the catchall feature I think that iCloud+ has? Would probably suit my needs as I never really reply from these addresses.
Some food for thought I guess…
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I’ve made significant progress in eliminating nearly all subscriptions or reducing the cost of others.
Over the last three weeks I moved my blog to Ghost from Squarespace (Squarespace increased its subscription price again); changed my Internet, TV, and wireless provider and cut the total bill by fifty percent while gaining faster speeds and more reliable service; canceled Amazon Prime and Ulysses (I have had an on-and-off relationship with the Ulysses app); and moved all writing to two apps, iA Writer and Pages. I also canceled Apple Creator Studio (we will see if I can keep this canceled) and MindNote.
This leaves me only three personal app subscriptions: Arq, Wipr, and Apple One. My employer pays for my AI subscription to Claude.
I am able to get all of my work done with the apps shown in my Dock.
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