I’m planning to do a poll to reveal more about how we use and think about digital subscriptions, and I’m hoping to get some suggestions and feedback.
One thing I’m struggling with right now is how to separate personal from business. For instance, I subscribe to Xero, ChatGPT, Lex, and more, plus pay hosting fees. Do I include those, or are business expenses really quite different?
Another thing is that it doesn’t feel appropriate to include what are essentially non-optional subscriptions, such as cell plans, Internet access, email hosting, and the like. There’s also no non-subscription way to get these things.
Here are the questions and answers I have so far.
How many active digital subscriptions do you pay for?
0
1–2
3–5
6–9
10–14
15–20
More than 20
About how much per month do you spend on these subscriptions?
$0
<$10
$10–$24
$25–$49
$50–$99
$100–$149
$150–$199
$200–$299
$300 or more
How does that amount split between productivity/utility and entertainment/content?
Mostly productivity/utility (≈80/20)
Slightly productivity-skewed (≈60/40)
Balanced (≈50/50)
Slightly entertainment-skewed (≈40/60)
Mostly entertainment (≈20/80)
Not sure
Which of the following categories contain your subscriptions?
Cloud storage/backup (iCloud+, Google One, Dropbox, Backblaze)
I agree this is a challenging topic for a poll, but very worthwhile imho!
Cell plans, you can get month-to-month ‘prepaid’ plans, which is still sort of a subscription but not long term (can you still get these in US?).
Email hosting, you could try yourself as I understand, if technically and hardwarily capable.
The topic is really making me think about what I pay for on long-term basis. I thought very little but now you mention it…
It might be easier to limit this to personal subscriptions, as one might generally have more decision making power over those, vs. business required ones, and that might get more to what I suppose is the essence of the poll, TBers’ personal choices on subscriptions…
Maybe a yes/no question on whether users prefer the earlier model of buy once and pay for updates.
Your starting questions seem reasonable. I suspect they’ll trigger considerable discussion and reflection.
Maybe some sort of question regarding preference of subscribing over outright purchase? There’s a few (app) subscriptions I’m cancelling when they next expire because I don’t use them enough - I would however keep them if I could get a perpetual license and update as needed.
Perhaps whether they are considered good value, over-priced, cheap?
I would include email in the list. I’d say that people who pay for an email subscription are in the minority, and most get their non-business mail from free services
Are you counting TidBITS and Ars Technics subscriptions as “News/magazines”?
Where I’d draw the line is to exclude subscriptions that are required to use hardware. For example, my ReplayTV had a subscription cost, as did the traffic service for my GPS. I wouldn’t call those “digital” subscriptions, even if they’re optional (like AppleCare).
Another question: Given a choice, what is your preferred payment frequency? Monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual, multi-year, lifetime.
For example, if I subscribe to the family package but only use iCloud, Music, and TV, should I answer yes to subscribing to other included components like fitness, news, and game services? Or should I only answer yes for the components I use regularly?
If the survey goes according to @ace’s initial idea, it shouldn’t be a problem. You subscribe to all the services and your cost per-month is the price paid for the bundle.
I have a more interesting case, however. My Verizon wireless data plan includes a subscription to a Disney bundle (Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+). I don’t pay anything for the bundle and it’s not a trial subscription (the bundles they’re offering today are 3-month trials). I’m sure some of my Verizon bill goes toward it, but there’s no separate line item and my bill didn’t change when I activated the bundle (and won’t change if I choose to deactivate it).
Given the proposed survey, I would say that I have three subscriptions and they cost nothing. But it does seem weird, because these are absolutely not free services.
So I think it would make sense for the poll topic to contain guidance on where users can find this information (at least for subscriptions from the App Store, Stripe Link, PayPal, etc)
My family divides up the subscriptions; we have each got about three entertainment subs, so we end up with varying uses of nine. So perhaps in the question “as a family…”. I’m perhaps making too much of it.
I think a separate question about Apple One and its tiers is needed; it’s the one sub which blends multiple categories.
Perhaps a question about number of annual subs vs monthly
Another idea… if the poll should show feelings about the trend to subscriptions, maybe a question on which and/or how many apps/services users have quit or stopped using because the developer/seller changed to subscription model.
A question on how long the poll responder has been, ah, ‘computing’ or similar term, could reveal a link between length of use and attitude toward purchase vs. subscription.
This is a strange one as we sort of partially share. My wife and I share Apple Music, whilst the kids use Spotify. I use News+, no-one else does. We all watched Ted Lasso and Shrinking on Apple TV but nothing since, and none of us has ever used Fitness+ or the Game thing. I probably should cancel and look at Spotify, given how much Apple Music irritates me.
I was probably unclear (my usual issue…) My two sons are long moved out at this point so their own choices to subscribe to they share with us. I’m still sharing out a 6Tb Apple One and associated Apple services as well as a couple of streamers.
While everyone was at home, the situation in our house was much as you describe.
@ace I think you’ll need to be clear on what “subscription” means in the context of the poll, as others have pointed out. For example, when I read your first post, software “subscriptions” didn’t even occur to me, but other commenters assumed they were in scope. I can’t pull a name out of my hat this instant, but I believe there are some software publishers that give you options for either a license or a subscription.
This would be tough for me. If it’s a service I know or expect to continue using, then annual. If it’s something I’m just trying out to see if I really want to continue it, like a newsletter, then I’ll start with monthly. Plus, there’s the occasional service where I choose monthly over annual because I want to give the provider a little more money.
I think I would try to do multiple surveys by category.
For example, one survey could be about entertainment subscriptions only, like video and music subscriptions. Another survey could be about software and productivity apps.
There might be one for Internet access, phone service, etc. It may be difficult to separate business from personal use for some subscriptions, though the tax services expect us to do that. I imagine there may be other categories of interest.
Thanks for all the suggestions! I’ve tried to reply to most below, and please don’t take a negative answer as being dismissive. Polls are very challenging to conduct effectively, and I prefer to infer opinions from actions rather than asking for them directly.
I’ll have to think about that, but I’m not sure it will tell us much. My guess is that most people here will say that they preferred the old system, but many developers will simply respond that they can’t afford to do business that way. If the choice is between the old system and vastly less available software, is that what people would really want? Additionally, people may not recall just how expensive software used to be in the past.
Yes, definitely! Those are content subscriptions.
This feels tricky because it often isn’t an option. Everyone would prefer to have everything for free, but that’s not feasible.
Perhaps too much granularity? Some yes, some no for everyone?
Fair point. Email can be free, so those who pay for it are choosing to do so.
Absolutely.
I’ll have to think about how to thread that needle, since a lot of devices are cheaper than they would be because the company has explicitly required a subscription to make them work.
Are there many subscriptions that aren’t monthly or yearly? I’m not sure I’ve run into any, so as much as people might want a different periodicity, I can’t see it happening. And I fear that putting in lifetime will just take us back to the buy-once approach.
I think you’d use the Apple One cost but break out all the individual services in the number of services and category questions. If you’re paying for something but not using it, you’re still a subscriber.
Ugh. I’m not sure how to quantify that—perhaps compare against today’s Verizon plan to see if you can tease out the cost of the services?
Yes, I’ve already conducted some research on that and will share my suggestions. Apple makes it easy for subscriptions through the App Store, but for others, searching through credit card or PayPal statements (I fed a bunch to ChatGPT and asked it to look for repeated items) would seem to be the best approach.
You can probably figure out how much those are by looking at standalone subscription or using the cutoff amount above which you get the subscription.
I think we should just assume that the person answering uses the shared subscriptions—again, they’re the subscriber. Yes, I have Apple Music Family so Tonya can use it too, but it’s too complicated to try to pretend I could instead pay individually.
We did Apple services a while back…
Too complicated, I think, since it’s unusual to be given a choice of which period to use.
I’ll try to be careful with the wording, but it’s basically any software or digital service that you pay for on a regularly recurring basis.
What about a final question that asks about the trend? That might reveal the direction in which we’re moving.
Fotomagico has what they call a ‘pay per use’ subscription model and Panorama has their hybrid licensing based on hours used (IIRC). I quite like the Fotomagico plan, I don’t use it often but I’m happy to pay when I do.
Then there’s the commonly seen model where you’re charged a lower monthly fee but have to pay annually in advance (Adobe) - cancellation invoking a very substantial penalty.
