FOSS enthusiasts, what SaaS do you currently pay for?

Mine is 100% ChatGPT at the moment

SaaS = Software as a Service (e.g. MullvadVPN)

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Mullvad is the only one, though it's in large part due to me not being in a situation where I have any important software needs in my personal life, meaning I can get away with just free options and cracked versions whenever I need something.
- I really want to switch to Mullvad but it's difficult for me to justify 5€ a month when other VPN services regularly have specials offering US$2 a month if I prepay 2 years
  
  If you just want to change your IP, there is no reason to use Mullvad. If you care about your privacy Mullvad is great. You can pay in xmr or even in cash by mail.
- I don't think a VPN counts as SaaS, it's something that costs the company money constantly to run, SaaS is more like the Adobe apps, which are not a service at all and it doesn't cost them money for me to not uninstall it.
  
  At that rate it just sounds like you're trying to categorically redefine SaaS to just be the crappy ones, while excluding anything with a reason to be a service

I think digital service would be a more appropriate term here as some of that you mentioned is not SaaS.
With that said, I do have a few subscriptions myself:
VPN
VPS (this is IaaS, actually...)
shared cloud hosting (PaaS)
domain name registrations

How is mullvad (or any commercial VPN) considered SaaS? They are providing networking services: relaying your traffic through a pathway other than your direct ISP.
I think of SaaS as something more like Google Docs: a cloud-based suite that replaces a locally installed office suite. Microsoft Office 2021 is software; Office 365 is SaaS.
Alternatively, a locally-installed application that operates without the use of the provider's resources, but still requires an ongoing subscription for continued use. The software isn't owned by the user, it is just a service the user continues to purchase.
I've got several subscription-based services that operate "in the cloud". Webhosting, VoIP trunk provider, VPN, a half dozen apps on my phone. The only one I would consider SaaS, though, is a weather app that seems to pull its data directly from the National Weather Service.
- Why are you paying for weather
  
  You get more sunny days with pro
  
  Hot air balloon pilot. I am not paying for weather; I am paying for a convenient packaging of specific weather factors not commonly reported by mainstream sources.
  For example, a map of the wind forecast at 100' AGL. Any commercial source can give me wind forecast at the surface. Aviation specific apps can give me forecasts at 3000, 6000, 9000 feet. But a forecast map of winds at the treetop level is rather difficult to come by.
  The data is available from NWS, but it's commonly provided as a vertical wind profile for a specific location, rather than a map of winds at a particular altitude. This app seems to compile vertical wind profile forecasts for many locations into a single map.
  That particular map (and several other weather charts) is a premium feature of a commercial weather app for Android. I found it useful, so I subscribed.

None of them are FOSS. Dunno about calling them SaaS.
My email provider, 1 € per month, posteo.de.
My VPS (virtual private server), netcup.de.
Does Amazon Prime count?
- I work in IT, and different definitions of what SaaS means are starting to wreak real havoc on the architecture as a whole.
  We are better served just quitting the acronyms and taking the time to talk about a more detailed description of what the service actually adds in terms of value.
  Amazon Prime is a subscription for shipping, video streaming, gaming benefits and more. Since software is not the primary goal, but a means of delivery for these other services, I will not consider Amazon Prime SaaS.

Bitwarden: I could host it myself, but it's better if it is secretly elsewhere in case I need up...
Backblaze: backups from my server (to which everything else will soon backup to)
Spotify: it's convenient
GPhotos: until I'm done migrating to Immich locally
PIA: yarr, and also avoiding region stuff

Monarch Money
Mint is going away and I need a polished mostly automatic way of tracking my income, spending and investments. Sure there are cheaper or subscription free ways of doing it but I really need something that just connects to all my accounts and helps me visualize things. I'm willing to pay for the service and I get to leave Intuit behind.
Midjourney
I use it to make concept art for characters, places and things in my tabletop game. I'm looking to drop midjourney and do this all locally though but haven't gotten around to setting that up yet. In the meantime it's still pretty cheap and easy to use.
- These might be the only actual SaaS products mentioned in this thread.

SaaS?
- Software as a service. Cloud basically...
  
  Ah, I see. Then it would be Tuta for mail and Mullvad for VPN.
- It's when you complain to your mother about her cooking, and she gives you that look

Posteo for mail and Mullvad for VPN. That's about it.

With Yunohost being a thing, I'm down to nothing.
- I just installed it an hour ago! Small world. I still pay for a small vultr box with next cloud for convenience sake.

Proton mail and AirVPN

Tuta
- Tuta posts blatant misinformation about their competition on their socials. They're willing to lie to potential customers if it gets them money; I wouldn't trust them with any of my data.
  
  That's the first time I hear it, could you share some example / sources?

bitwarden, PIA

I find ngrok useful enough to pay for. When I want to demo some software I can run it locally and set up a temporary tunnel. When I used to have a VPS I would do this with SSH port forwarding, but I'm told that tunneling TCP in TCP can lead to some weirdness.
I used to have a dyndns subscription to get a stable domain name for my home router. It's kind of another way to do the same thing - instead of a tunnel I could forward a part.

This community might call me an idiot for this, but nord vpn. I got a long subscription a while back for cheap. I'm in a good enough financial position that I can afford a streaming service or two without issue plus this vpn to hop regions. I value my time more than that amount of money, and I only watch so much tv, so I'm really not feeling any fomo from this strategy, plus I don't really have concerns about getting into trouble. I'm streaming, not downloading, and using services that I pay for to do so. If it's not legal to do this, I'm not exactly a power user so I'd be surprised if I were a big enough fish to come after.
Another one for me is PlayStation Plus (extra tier, specifically). I initially started paying for the base tier to be able to play Elden Ring with my friends. Then I saw that for a little more than I was already paying per year, I could get access to a pretty impressive catalog of games. I paid for another year of it when it went on sale like a month or two before they raised the price for it lol. Idk the exact cost now, but I figure as long as I'm trying more than like 3 games in a year then it's worth it. But even better is that because I'm not buying individual games, I don't feel pressured to dump 100+ hours into a game I'm not loving, so I can just stop if I lose interest and move on to another game. I played 2/3 of Ghost of Tsushima and just didn't care after that so I stopped.
Idk, maybe I'm fucking weird, but I feel like I'm getting really good value from doing this. I rarely care about watching or playing something more than once, so I'm okay with paying a fraction of the cost of owning these things just to have temporary access, and then not have clutter leftover when I decide I'm done. I want memories, not stuff.
- I just picked up NordVPN (paid for 2 years cause it’s so cheap, relatively) and am loving how it easily lets me pipe into my Plex server that’s on its own network to manage downloads with the VPN on. The mesh network is great. And the VPN is so damn fast. I was using RiseUp and donating to it, but it was so slow and made working with my machine and downloading a huge pain in the ass.

ProtonVPN, Google Drive
- Why not proton drive?
  
  I'm not the person you're replying to, but I'm guessing it's for Google Photos storage. It's the reason I pay for Google One.
- Google Drive is HaaS, not SaaS. It's a cloud-based hard drive.
  
  It’s basically the same as Dropbox or OneDrive or Box and those are all SaaS.
  
  Technically the Docs/Sheets/etc suite would be the SaaS portion of the subscription, but Google Drive is usually accessed as a web interface or app, not as a mounted drive so I think it still counts.

Hardware and hypervisors as a service so to say
3 VPS hosts
- Technically IaaS I guess

SourceHut and Kagi.

Google One and iCloud+
Google Drive makes it easy to collaborate on files with my spouse, family or colleagues. Makes it easy to have my media available where ever without having to host it locally or expose my local network to the internet. And free webhosting for my personal website using Google sites.
iCloud integration with my photo library is top notch. iCloud+ "hide my email" is great for privacy on my personal domain and a lot better than trying to deal with security and deliverability for myself.
I could probably get ROI on infrastructure and storage just by buying a NAS in 3 years or less. But I won't get the time back to get the same level of security, reliability, and buy in for others so spending $99 a year on each is worth it for me.

Adobe via my school, I have no choice

ChatGPT 4 (1 month only, sick of "Error in input stream"), Proton Suite, Spotify

Google One (Google Photos) Backblaze (lots of stuff) Microsoft 365 (MS Office) SimpleLogin (anonymous email addresses)
I want a VPN, but I can’t spend more. I want an alternative to my Backblaze cloud backup. Any cheaper solutions? I have over 20 TB of data.
- If you're strictly doing backup you could checkout Hetzner's "Storage box" (or something like that name). For something more S3-like I like StorJ, but, that might be a lateral move price-wise from Backblaze, I'm not sure.

53 comments