🌶️ Chilli

Subscription Changes and saving money

I've not written anything on my blog in quite a while - apologies for that! I've been making some changes to my IT subscriptions recently. Some of it is simply pruning out software I no longer use (cost savings), and some involves merging providers to avoid paying twice for the same service.

Microsoft Office - £79.99 pa → £0

Recently Microsoft announced they would be including AI in their Office 365 subscription at an additional £30 p.a. While I still have mixed feelings about AI encroaching on our lives, I simply couldn't justify the extra expense. I don't use Office very much anyway, and I realized I could simply use the Apple Suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) for the odd times I need an office suite. The Apple suite is free, and as I'm heavily ensconced in the Apple ecosystem, I can use this on all my Apple devices without issue. I also have all the AI access I need via my Kagi.com subscription. This was primarily a cost-saving initiative.

The biggest thing I used on my Office 365 subscription was OneDrive. I could have simply copied everything to Apple Drive, but I decided against that. Instead, I signed up for Proton - more on that in a bit.

Norton/Symantec Anti-virus - £80 pa → £0

I decided I no longer needed or received any real benefit from having Norton Antivirus on my Mac. From a purely cost-savings perspective, I chose not to renew my subscription. I was initially slightly concerned about potential viruses, but I can't remember the last time I actually had one. I'm keeping an open mind - if I need antivirus protection in the future, I'll resubscribe or look at alternatives like Webroot.

Cloudflare - Free → Free (Different Provider)

I've been trying to consolidate everything to a single DNS provider and chose desec.io. Desec.io is a free DNS provider based in Germany that requires DNSSEC for all domains - it's non-negotiable. I've been gradually migrating my domains and am happy with the service so far. I also signed up for Exoscale (a Swiss DNS registrar who also offers VPS services), which seems good too. Since Cloudflare only hosted my email DNS for my personal domain, it made sense to have everything in one place at desec.io.

Proton - £8.50 pcm (New Service)

Initially, I just wanted to use the Drive and VPN functionality included in Proton's standard bundle. However, with Apple recently deciding to switch off Advanced Data Protection (ADP) here in the UK, I needed another place to store my documents. I decided to move all my OneDrive documents to Proton Drive for future storage. This transition went mostly smoothly, with just a couple of folders still pending transfer due to sync issues within OneDrive itself. Once resolved, everything will be on Proton Drive.

I was also surprised to find that Proton Email had a Linux email client available as a flatpak. So, this also makes me happy, as I was looking for a decent Email client on Linux for a while now.

Migadu.com - $90 pa → £0

I hadn't planned to move my email to Proton, but then I realized I'd be paying for Migadu.com while also paying for unused functionality with Proton. I regretfully decided I could no longer justify the Migadu expense. At $90 annually for email hosting (about what I'm paying Proton), but getting much more with Proton, the choice became clear. Migadu only offers email hosting, but they do an excellent job, and I'm genuinely sad to leave them as a provider.

I've therefore spent time recently migrating all my emails to Proton Mail and setting everything up on my Linux laptop, Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

S/MIME Certificate - £30 pa → £0

I currently use an S/MIME certificate for my personal email address, not to encrypt emails but to prove messages come from my actual address. Since Proton doesn't support S/MIME, I'll save more money here too. I believe Proton's "Sign External Emails" setting is their built-in equivalent.

In the future, I want to consolidate all my domain names with one provider. I currently use NameCheap and PorkBun but would prefer having all domains under a single provider/reseller.

Still on the Radar for review later on - Minecraft Realms

I recently bought a mid-range Chinese mini-pc from Amazon (£280 for an AMD Ryzen 7, 36GB RAM, and 1tb nvme drive), and installed openSUSE MicroOS on it. It will help me to spend time learning immutable OS, and also containers - yet another personal project. So, why am I telling you this, I hope to host my own minecraft realm on it, saving £60 pa.

Other IT subscriptions that I Still Pay For:

Financial Summary

Adding up the savings, I'm currently saving approximately £270 pa by discontinuing Office, S/MIME certification, Norton, and Migadu.com. However, I'm now paying £98 pa for Proton, so I'm still approximately £180 ahead while using fewer services, which should keep things simpler and more manageable going forward.

It's never a bad thing to review personal subscriptions, and re-asessing what it's important, or provides better value for money!

#IT