News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself?

Spawned off from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=288231

It'd be interesting to know what people in the YCNews demographic actually pay for online. Which paying subscription services do you actually bother spending money on?

The question is open to you both as a consumer and as a business. If you are both, please split your answer into two parts, e.g.:

As a consumer, I pay for: Flickr

As a business, I pay for: Bug tracking software,...

Note 1: Please feel free to use specific product names.

Note 2: Please don't include things that everyone pays for online, e.g. Amazon books, electronic odds and ends, hosting - unless you feel your particular version is special.

Thanks for sharing!

( 79 comments | 32 points | on HN )
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by vaksel on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:21PM (#288320)
Well you said no hosting, so besides that I'd say nothing really. I'm a cheap ass.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by notauser on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @04:26PM (#288439)
Are you sure?

I physically hand over money for hardware, and that's about it. Everything else I like is free...

...except that in return for some of that free stuff I give demographic information. Oh, and in return for some of the other free stuff I give coding/testing/bug fixes. And I guess some of the free stuff I pay for via being temped into buying their real-world/physical products. Then some of the rest I suppose I pay for by validating someone's ego through the mechanism of pushing up their numbers.

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by j2d2 on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:48PM (#288349)
I pay for hosting from linode.com. I freely host a project with google code (java chat client/server xkasperx.googlecode.com) so I don't need a pay service like github. With the $30 I pay a month to linode I can host and write most of the software I need. Google seems to have something for everything else.

I'm a cheap ass I like to call it being practical. :)

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by shafqat on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @05:28PM (#288509)
Holy cow - didnt realize so many people pay for Flickr! Thats seriously surprising to me.

I pay for Yahoo NFL Gamepass (all NFL games streamed live via internet!). I pay 200 bucks a year for that. Would pay >1000 if they wanted to really push it. I'm obssesed.

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by walesmd on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:55PM (#288354)
Skype

I used to pay for the Zune Pass but the service became so utterly worthless plus my Internet connection times out quite often here in Kuwait that I just said forget it. Back to torrents, which will automatically resume the download, when my connection wakes back up (without locking up the entire system, might I add).

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by bestes on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:01AM (#288872)
Startup:gitHub, S3 & EC2 (just experimenting, so minimal actual charges), zonedit

Personal:eRobertParker, MyFoodDiary, eMusic, iTunes (mostly for TV Shows and kids movies), callcentric (VOIP line for my house), .mac/mobileMe (I know, I know) *just recently canceled so I can afford my startup.

Business:Safari (as part of my Komodo/ActivePerl Studio license)

Looking at soon: a slice at slicehost, Balsalmiq (an app, really)

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by swombat on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:04PM (#288300)
I'll start the ball rolling.

As a consumer, I've paid for: peepcode screencasts; a flickr pro account; an account to freshlymixed.com while it was still up; That's about it over the last couple of years. I'm not a prolific purchaser of consumer services.

As a business, I'm paying for: EngineYard hosting, Fogbugz, and we paid for Basecamp for a little while. That's it.

Almost everything else seems to be pretty much free.

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by fallentimes on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @04:17PM (#288430)
Things I pay for:

1. ESPN Insider

Things I would pay for (but are free):

1. Hacker News 2. Yodlee 3. Feedburner 4. Google Alerts

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by mattmaroon on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @07:10PM (#288613)
Is ESPN's insider content that much better than what you get for free elsewhere? If so, that's really saying a lot, since the bar for sports content has risen faster than the price of gas over the last few years.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by utnick on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @10:57PM (#288772)
At least for the Rockets, the one team I follow religiously, the insider stories are stories just ripped from the Houston Chronicle.

It would be useful though if you care about a bunch of teams and don't have time to read the hometown newspapers of all your teams.

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by fallentimes on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @11:43PM (#288814)
Yes it really is. People like John Hollinger and KC Joyner are must reads for my line of work. Chad Ford has gotten a ton better as well - he used to be a hack.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by mattmaroon on Thursday August 28, 2008 @12:44AM (#288862)
There's been an all out bidding war for sports writers lately. I guess that must be why.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by unexpected on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @07:17PM (#288617)
yea, I seriously miss insider. It was pretty good, especially for the NBA draft. I miss all those mocks :( As an aside, ESPN basically has the lamest security ever. So we were splitting an insider subscription amongst 4 people. The $12 a year became $3. Woohoo!
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by fallentimes on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @11:44PM (#288815)
Careful with that. I took it to the extreme and almost got permanently banned.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by asif on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:37PM (#288334)
Fantasy football real-time stats on Yahoo!
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by mattmaroon on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @07:09PM (#288611)
Interesting. Those are free on ESPN now. And, of course, Draftmix :)
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by asif on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @09:20PM (#288707)
We've been using yahoo for 5 or 6 years now and we're just used to it. I think it costs about $10/season and given how seriously we take this thing, it doesn't feel like a lot of money.

Incidentally, we tried to run a league on fleaflicker last year (for free) in parallel with the yahoo league, and the experience was severely lacking.

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by hooande on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @05:03PM (#288482)
I knew we could count on you, asif
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by asif on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @09:20PM (#288708)
Holla!
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by blogimus on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:32PM (#288331)
For business and professional development, I pay for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) digital library, which includes a lot of material including a couple of online books selections: One large run by Books 24x7 and a somewhat limited subscription to Safari Books Online.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by larrykubin on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @03:59PM (#288410)
1. Freshbooks for time tracking and invoicing clients

2. Flickr Pro account for easy photo management

3. Dedicated server with LayeredTech for hosting projects

4. EasyNews account for newsgroups

5. Netflix for movie rentals and streaming

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by agotterer on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @05:55PM (#288544)
I pay yearly for mozy and rapidshare.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by culley on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @04:38PM (#288454)
Consumer:

Cook's Illustrated (for access to Solid Tested Recipes)

NetFlix

Consumer Reports (big purchases)

Mozy (Online Back Up)

used to pay for WSJ but dropped that due to News Corp content degradation.

Work pays several Online Journal and Library Access fees for me.

This was actually harder to come up with than I imagined because several of these only bill yearly or every two years and so the pain of paying virtually disappears...

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by noodle on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:45PM (#288344)
i pay for a slice at slicehost, and a pay for supportive subscriptions to some community-based forums/sites. oh, and skype.

thats it. i'd pay for other things if i had more disposable income and/or profitable startup, though. i'm making do with what i have, for now. i'm considering paying for something like an automatic cloud backup system, too, but am not currently.

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by iamelgringo on Thursday August 28, 2008 @04:45AM (#288969)
Rhapsody (2 subscriptions one for the wife, one for me). Safari unlimited. AWS: I just used Mechanical Turk. It's an awesome service. Safeway online grocery delivery. It's only 10 bucks! Neflix, of course. GoToMyPC for servicing the family's computers back home. Basecamp for a short time. Launchsplash. Moo : Killer business cards. Just got them today.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by LogicHoleFlaw on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:47PM (#288347)
I'm going to limit myself to online services, as opposed to more mail-cataloguey applications.

Video Games: Xbox Live Gold Account, Xbox Live Arcade Games, download tracks for Rock Band, and FFXI (think WoW.)

Movies: Netflix

Hosting: In the very near future, Amazon Web Services

Finance: Credit score tracking

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by callmeed on Thursday August 28, 2008 @12:49AM (#288865)
Personal: Backpack

Biz: Basecamp, Campfire, PBWiki, AWS ... and hosting from Slicehost, Rackspace, and EngineYard

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by mtoledo on Thursday August 28, 2008 @08:11AM (#289052)
One thing I pay for and I don't think anyone mentioned is "O'Reilly Safari Bookstore". US$ 22,00 month (I think?) and quite some nice books: the Javascript Rhino book, Obie's the Rails way, the Ruby way, the Pragmatic Programmer, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, and Hackers & Painters, to name a few.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by bokonist on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @03:09PM (#288371)
Skype, NetFlix, Rhapsody, Peapod

Used to pay for VirtualPBX, Experts Exchange, and Wall St. Journal

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by PStamatiou on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:09AM (#288875)
Consumer: Flickr, Giganews.com, Amazon S3 (personal docs), DirecTV +HBO +HD, access to a private tech forum, Wufoo for my blog's contact form, Google Apps Premier, misc iTunes Store purchases

Startup: Campfire, Basecamp, Amazon S3, Pingdom and soon Liquid Planner

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by cellis on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @06:44PM (#288598)
consumer

  Napster - 15/mo - i like to support the musicians i listen to
  Netflix - 15/mo 
  Rockband songs - 25/mo something around that although not anymore as I'm now boot strapping

  Come to think of it, i could easily give up all of those services
business

  TollFreemax - 9/mo
  ProjectLocker - 5/mo svn repository
  Authorize.net payment gateway - 30/mo (not really special, but people *can* use paypal/gpay/aws/ccnow etc freely)
 
used to run a clothing store (long ago when i didn't know how to build my own ecommerce)

  prostores 30/mo
I've also purchased software for my business

  boxshot3D - 60
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by mattmaroon on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @07:11PM (#288615)
Paypal's merchant services still have a montly fee.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by warwick on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @10:46PM (#288765)
As a consumer, nothing.

As a business, hosting/mail/sourcecontrol accounts, and the big one is the ADC membership. Sure, you can get the devtools for free but the WWDC videos make it worthwhile around a new OS release.

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by calvin on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @03:37PM (#288393)
JungleDisk (for backup via S3), hosting (Dreamhost for shared, Slicehost for more power), Amazon MP3 for music. I've been trialing Pingdom for site monitoring and will probably sign up once trial is over. Netflix.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by blender on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @04:42PM (#288460)
I forgot, I too pay for Jungledisk
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by aschobel on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @05:50PM (#288538)
Personal: TWiT subscription. FLOSS weekly is awesome, http://twit.tv/FLOSS

Business: Pingdom. Easy peasy way to make sure your site is up. Amazon S3.

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by ninjaa on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @05:02PM (#288480)
Subscriptions I have

Business: Basecamp, Zoho

Consumer: O'Reilly safari - safari.oreilly.com - browse their entire library (including books in pre-publication) for $42.99/mo

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by tptacek on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @05:39PM (#288523)
Office space, a managed colo from a provider in Canada, 2-3 slicehost VMs, DSL from Verizon and AT&T, 37Signals Campfire (excellent), 37Signals Basecamp (not excellent).
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by shabda on Thursday August 28, 2008 @06:58AM (#289009)
Freshbooks(19USD/pm) for Billing Clients. Unfuddle(9USD/pm) for Repo+PM Seobook(100 Usd/pm) for learning marketing.

Ebooks , Domains(Godaddy), Hosting(Webfaction)

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by dhimes on Thursday August 28, 2008 @07:19AM (#289021)
Is Seobook any good?
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by shabda on Thursday August 28, 2008 @09:24AM (#289088)
Yes, very!
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by Tichy on Thursday August 28, 2008 @06:57AM (#289008)
I only paid some MMORPG subscriptions so far. Ultima Online and WoW - never longer than a month, though.

Also spent 20$ on Linden Dollars (Second Life).

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by ComputerGuru on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @05:04PM (#288486)
As a consumer? * Flickr * Amazon Prime * NOD32 subscription * S3 * NewsDemon

As a business? * JIRA * Confluence * Fisheye * vBulletin * JungleDisk * S3

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by ComputerGuru on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @05:04PM (#288485)
As a consumer? * Flickr * Amazon Prime * NOD32 subscription * S3 * NewsDemon

As a business? * JIRA * Confluence * Fisheye * vBulletin * JungleDisk * S3

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by ibsulon on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @04:28PM (#288440)
Rhapsody, and my partner pays for NetFlix. I was paying for Oreilly's Safari but I wasn't using it enough. I pay for Espn.com insider as well.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by imp on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:15PM (#288316)
Skype, Amazon MP3s. For web analytics I pay for GetClicky.com Even though there's Google Analytics, Clicky is well worth the money.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by dhimes on Thursday August 28, 2008 @07:38AM (#289031)
Does it bother you that you can't host Clicky? I'm using Mint (thanks to a rec on #startups), but Clicky seems to have more data by far.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by edw519 on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @03:53PM (#288408)
Amount spent personally = 0.

Amount spent through business = 0.

Amount that could have been earned if I had been billing instead of on hacker news > 0.

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by LKM on Thursday August 28, 2008 @07:58AM (#289044)
flickr, mefi, FogBugz, used to pay for O'Reilly's Safari. Bought the Instapaper iPhone client, if that counts. Made donations to a ton of services and people, mainly open source projects, web comics and such. Also donated to wikipedia, wikileaks, eff and a few others. That's all that comes to mind right now.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by attack on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @10:51PM (#288768)
Skype phone number and skype-out.

Tax preparation software.

Everything else online is business related.

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by bootload on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @10:37PM (#288759)
"... What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? ..."

Thrifty: consumer/biz: flickr, domain, adsl

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by tstegart on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:05PM (#288306)
Flickr and blogging software (Typepad).
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by tstegart on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:17PM (#288317)
I should add that I'm about to pay for Balsamiq's Mockups (for business).
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by iamdave on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:51PM (#288353)
Honestly? Nothing outside of the everyday stuff, but even Amazon I only buy books every now and then.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by rudyfink on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @04:32PM (#288448)
Consumer: netflix, amazon prime, ACM, cook's illustrated

Business: shoeboxed, earthclassmail, MSDN

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by aichcon on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:24PM (#288322)
I pay for Backpack and Basecamp, and will start paying for GoToMeeting once we have more use for it.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by moonriver on Thursday August 28, 2008 @07:03AM (#289013)
Flickr and until very recently, Last.fm, although I may subscribe to that again in the future.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by blender on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:51PM (#288352)
Consumer: iTunes, Club Penguin (for my daughter)

Business: CVSDude (VCS hosting), Highrise

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by yaj on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @05:28PM (#288510)
Nobody uses Smugmug?

Consumer: Smugmug, S3, JungleDisk

Business: GitHub, AWS (soon)

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by scumola on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @03:07PM (#288369)
Amazon S3 & UnBox. Google Adwords. Playstation Network. GoDaddy. Tivo.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by gizmo on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @09:31PM (#288720)
Consumer: - ACM membership - Skype

Business: - Google Email - Skype

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by waldrews on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @11:37PM (#288801)
Rhapsody, Audible, GoToMyPc
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by terpua on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:08PM (#288308)
I pay for: unfuddle, itunes
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by initself on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @10:55PM (#288770)
I remember paying $.99 for a Google Video once. That's laughable now!
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by pyroman on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @06:06PM (#288556)
I didn't see anyone mention Pandora. I pay for that and flickr pro.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by inovica on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:58PM (#288357)
Flickr, iTunes, a backup service, host/server/domain monitoring
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by kapitti on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:28PM (#288326)
Business: Freshbooks, Github, Vonage Consumer: iTunes, Peepcode
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by pjackson on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @10:12PM (#288748)
I pay for GitHub and AWS. Total cost: under $10/mo
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by rickd on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @04:20PM (#288432)
consumer: xbox live, netflix (if you consider that "online") for business: skype, pingdom.com (lets me know my clients' sites are up!)
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by dmnd on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @11:07PM (#288780)
BoardGameGeek, although it's more of a donation.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by aggieben on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @04:20PM (#288434)
Consumer Reports ACM iTunes CovenantEyes
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by barrym on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @06:04PM (#288554)
I pay for Flickr, Last.fm and Github.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by gsiener on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @03:02PM (#288361)
consumer:

flickr

tasks (by Crowd Favorite)

business:

Highrise

Quickbooks online

Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by Lally on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:34PM (#288332)
rsync.net (solid backup) .mac (hey, it has a few uses) motionbased itunes
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by sonink on Thursday August 28, 2008 @04:18AM (#288961)
notebook backup, website uptime monitoring service
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by rokhayakebe on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @06:39PM (#288595)
Paypal fees.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by simianstyle on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @06:36PM (#288591)
My domain.
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by bjclark on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:55PM (#288356)
Lighthouse
Re:Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself? by santacruz on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @06:02PM (#288550)
todoist