Linode ($20/mo)
    Cloudflare ($20/mo)
    Freshbooks ($20/mo)
    DreamHost ($8.95/mo)
    GitHub ($7/mo)
    FastMail ($40/yr)
    Tarsnap (some bucks/mo)
    Pinboard ($25/yr)
    Amazon.it Prime (10€/yr)
    Instapaper ($12/yr)

    AWS (???)
    Gandi (???)

    1Password ($50 + $18)
    Sublime Text 2 ($70)
    Dash ($20)
    Tweetbot

Thanks for asking, it made for a good reflection on what I pay for, and what value I get.

So for example: Linode ($20/mo) + Cloudflare ($20/mo) + Freshbooks ($20/mo) + DreamHost ($8.95/mo) + GitHub ($7/mo) = 27,360$. Which could easily be worth it but just another way of looking at things.

Out of curiosity: How much value do you get out of each of the above services?

(Patrick, Thomas: Please don't turn this into a discussion about Tarsnap being underpriced. I'm asking because I want to hear FiloSottile's opinion about all the other services he uses.)

Linode gets me a box with a clear, clean, full-featured control panel, good specs and network, and every year or so, I'll magically get upgraded, so that I feel I'm always getting the best for my money (even if other services are cheaper). Problem solved: "I need a Ubuntu box".

Cloudflare will cache my site -- making it faster for clients and lighter for me --, handle DNS and get me A+ TLS (and other services I don't actually use) at the turn of a button. Problem solved: "My site is slow" + SSL as a bonus.

Freshbooks lets me track my time, invoices and payments with 0 learning curve, I'm busy working after all. Big colored buttons will tell me what to do, and if I can't still figure it out, support will do that for me. Problem solved: "I need to send clients invoices".

DreamHost hosts anything, unlimited. Power-user friendly, I never thought "I wish they allowed/supported that". For small websites, obv. Problem solved: "I need to host this sites/domains/DNS/mailboxes for my clients".

GitHub is how I'm trained to manage projects, for my private ones. PRs, Markdown, clear git views. Also, GitHub Pages is the best static hosting platform I ever used. Problem solved: "I need manage my project" + static hosting as a bonus.

FastMail simply handles my mail. Mail is a horrible thing to deal with on your own, but I rely on it, so I want to pay for it. I get my domain with TLS delivery, a support line with devs, and nice power-user tools. It's fast, compatible, reliable and has a nice web interface, I don't need anything else. Problem solved: "I need to receive and send mail".

Pinboard just saves my favorites, and lets me search through them when I need (full-text search). No useless social stuff on top of that. Also, it will store a copy of everything I bookmarked, so that it does not get lost. Problem solved: "I remember reading about that somewhere, let's look it up".

Amazon.it Prime is just the free shipping part, it makes shopping oh-so-much-more enjoyable. Problem solved: "I want that item".

Instapaper... well I don't actually NEED this one, but it's a nice way to read articles and they will store/index them for me once I read them (see Pinboard) and it's dirty cheap.

AWS works. I have 25.000 req/min on my Heartbleed test API? Fine, spin up that Elastic Load Balancer in front of 15 of those EC2 machines, store logs in that S3 bucket, use that DynamoDB as cache. Or, I have this blockchain to analyze, let's spin up that 3 big EC2 machines. Problem solved: "I need to scale this service".

Gandi sells me any domain for a reasonable price, without bugging me with those AwEs0m3 Features!!!1!!1 I could buy for just 9.99$. "No bullshit" indeed. (Maybe they should drop those web hosting offer emails, they are on the edge of annoying, but being plain text and one-off makes them bearable.) Problem solved: "I want that domain".

1Password stores and generates my passwords and identities safely, with a native easy-to-use interface that is not too intrusive. I used Lastpass for a while but I closed those ugly bars that screw up the page layout too many times, and they like HTML too much, the 1P native interface is much more smooth. Also, you can't trick 1Password to autocompile unless I trigger the hotkey, it feels safer. Problem solved: "These bloody password".

Sublime Text is a nice editor with a good community, and I'm a programmer, I spend most of my time inside it, possibly making money. It's a no-brainer to get the best available. Also, it's easy to use to the unexperienced, and you can get fairly productive going on. Problem solved: "I want to write code, TODAY. And be faster tomorrow."

Dash. Oh my God I <3 Dash. Can I pay it more? Double? 5 times more? Programming is looking up docs, some of us get entire vertical screens for that. Dash will get me any docs I want for any language (or Go package, since Beta!) with a single global hotkey and blazing fast fuzzy search. Did I mention "offline"!? I would not be programming on this airplane without it and it makes me much more fast and focused (since there is a separate space for docs, I get less distracted) in what I do every day. Problem solved: "How do I use that function again?"

Tweetbot is Twitter done right: 140 characters, images. Simple gestures and good feedback; offline tweets. No fuss, just... tweets. If I have to waste time, at least let's do it efficiently!

Finally, Tarsnap. Tarsnap makes archiving (I keep there old clients' data, too) and backing up data feel as if it was local, with the peace of mind of knowing that it's being compressed, deduplicated (I don't have to figure out what synchronized or incremental means, and I get to backup stuff as often as I want, yay!), replicated on the "cloud" (on S3 I mean) and encrypted at the state of the art, by open source code. Also, key management is so clean: printable text files, tiered permissions and no account management after key generation, I love that. Btw, yes I would pay some more for it, no I like the geek-to-geek feel even if I understand the business fuss, yes I'd LOVE auto-refilling, please take my money if I run low. And thanks for it!

Did I address your question or did you mean something different?

P.S. A problem I'd like to see solved by a single service (instead of HipChat+Hangout+Flowdock+IrcCloud+Skype+Viber) is "I need to chat/speak with this person (that might not use the service already) and I want indexed logs/recordings".

What I was thinking of was a dollar value, e.g., "I spend $7/month on GitHub, but it's worth $100/month to me". But this was also very informative too!

These help me stay sharp and up-to-date: Audible (app on iOS, books on tape) Podcasts (app on iOS) Pluralsight (video training on iOS and Surface and desktop) Meetup.com (I run a user group, bostonazure.org, and attend many)

Coding: GitHub (code, mostly free, but use a few private repos at $7/m) Azure cloud (various storage, VMs, Websites, databases, ...) Sublime Text (programmer-friendly customizable editor) PyCharm (Python development environment)

Fitness: Fitbit (paid for device, app came free)

    Spotify (7 eur/month)
    VPS (12.50 eur/month0
    flickr pro (40/year although I dont use it yet)
    Skype (subscription 6 eur/month, calling Greece landlines ulimited)
    Tarsnap (low amount, ~20 USD in 3-4 months.)

    - 1Passwd (both iOs/OSX versions)
    - iCompta (I didn't like v5 that's why didn't upgrade)
    - iWork suite (both iOs/OSX)
    - Littlesnitch (monitoring outgoing connections)
    - ExtFS for OSX (paragon)
    - iStats (display usage mac stats)
    - Acorn (simple photo editor, enough for me)
    - Alfred (application launcher)
    - SpamSieve (spam filtering)

One-off (paid or freemium):

  Pleco (Chinese dictionary with paid flashcard functionality)
  Groundwire (SIP client for iOS, including Push notifications)
  GoodReader (PDF reader and organizer for iOS)
  Pushover (trigger iOS push notifications from email, IFTTT etc.)
  MindNode (iOS mind-mapping)
  BubbleUPnp (Android DLNA server)
  SnappyCam Pro (iOS camera)
  Cycloramic Pro (iOS camera)

  Pandora (streaming radio)
  Several different virtual servers (for web apps and VPN)
  Newsblur (RSS reader)
  DIDLogic (monthly fee to get an inbound local phone number)
  The Economist (print subscription includes online/app access)

  Rebtel (outbound phone calls)
  DIDLogic (outbound phone calls)

It has its flaws, but it's made a big difference as a catch-all brain bin for me.

I also use RescueTime and OmniFocus. There are plenty of paid apps on my phone / tablet / computer, but those are ones that I would struggle to replace.

The paid app I would love to get rid of: Quickbooks.

I run a business without Accounts Receivable and just need a reliable way to keep books. However, it is not a simple business. We have multiple revenue centers (departments or classes), multiple bank accounts, and multiple cash accounts. Intuit seems to be moving away from companies like mine (oh, and I use a Mac).

I was really excited when they moved Quickbooks Online to a more modern interface. Unfortunately they made some frequent tasks (browsing our chart of accounts) much more difficult that it used to be. Invoicing is much more prominent though.

Hosting/Email:

  Prgmr.com ($8/mo)
  AWS (~$0.60/mo)
  Hover.com (bunch of domains, ~$120/year)
  Fastmail.fm ($80/yr for 2 family users)

  Netflix ($8/mo)
  Hulu ($8/mo)
  Amazon Prime ($100/year)
  Spotify ($10/mo)

  Pinboard.in (~$9 one-time payment)
  Draftin.com ($36/year)
  Backblaze ($100/year for two pcs)

  - Pandora
  - Amazon Cloud Player
  - Google Music All Access
  - Easynews (NNTP)
  - Ghost.org

* Linode - for hosting

* Namecheap - for domains

* CrashPlan - for one layer of our backups (other layers are timemachine, dropbox, and disk imaging)

* Pinboard for links.

* Office 365 - because the £8 per month is worth it for dealing with the MS files that other people send us and expect edits on. No - OpenOffice isn't good enough at conversions.

* Google Docs - for shared editing

* Dropbox - for sharing files + another layer of backups

* ScreenHero - for screen sharing

* Slack - for chat

* Trello - for organising everything

* CloudApp - for random sharing of screenshots

* Buffer - for social account organisation (suboptimal - but best of the bunch that I've played with.)

* Until recently Adobe CS subscription, but our usage dropped so much we've swapped for Pixelmator & Sketch as an experiment...

* Sublime Text 2 - editing on desktop

* Editorial & Writeroom - writing on iPad & iPhone

* OmniGraffle - wireframing, but very rarely used now

* aText - text abbreviation expansion on OS X

* Carbon Copy Cloner - backups

* Air Display - so I can use the iPad as a second screen when I'm on the road

* AntiRSI - reminds me to take screen breaks

* Skype - conference calls

* Transmit - [S]FTP client

* TunnelBear - UK/US tunneling, useful when I'm not in UK for some foolish things

Play:

* Have a subscription to the excellent PseudoPod, EscapePod & PodCastle podcasts

* SMBC comic patreon subscription

* Whatever the amazon streaming video thing is called

* Amazon Prime

* Downcast - Podcasting app for iOS / OS X.

* Steam - games (barely use)

Otherwise, for fun non-worky-type stuff: Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime are the most prominent ones coming to mind.

Services:

Fastmail.fm (for personal email), Office365 (for more legitimate email), Evernote (had a paid account for a few years, although I never use it), 500px (for non-professional photos), DigitalOcean for VPS, Netflix (not sure if you mean consumer services), Amazon Prime (I only use it for the shipping), Hulu+

Apps (a subsection at least):

Mathematica (I'm happy to pay for the Home version), 1Password (although I've stopped using it since iCloud Keychain Sync), Pixelmator, Capture One, NI Maschine, NI Tracktor, Pretty much every audio app for iOS (iMaschine, Figure, iKaossilator, iMS-20, SampleWiz, Lemur, Vogel CMI Pro, Animoog, Scape)

->Whenever I auto-generated a password in the browser extension, and submitted it, 1Password would occasionally (like 1 in 20 times, but often enough to be infuriating) lose the new password into the ether. Like it wouldn't be saved in the "recently-generated passwords" field in 1Password, or update the password field under the "Logins" entry.

So when I got a new laptop, like a month ago, I didn't even install 1Password, but the first time I'd go to any site, I'd manually look up and copy the password out of my backed-up 1Password web page, and then let Safari save the login in the keychain. Over time, I migrated all of my passwords into the Keychain, and now I also have access to them from within Safari on my iPhone and iPad (which having to previously open the 1Password app, unlock it, copy the password from the login, and then switch back to Safari and paste it in), was a pretty big win.

So I'm really happy with iCloud Keychain so far. It restricts my ability to log in to only Apple devices (which for now at least, isn't an issue for me), but I've found it a much better experience than using 1Password.

It can autofill credit card numbers and passwords on my iPhone/iPad.

Thoughts?

https://twit.cachefly.net/video/sn/sn0446/sn0446_h264m_1280x...

https://twit.cachefly.net/video/sn/sn0447/sn0447_h264m_1280x...

https://twit.cachefly.net/video/sn/sn0448/sn0448_h264m_1280x...

They also allow flexibility of storing the password database, which I prefer over the services that store your passwords with them, as you are now reliant on their own security implementations. If you want to, you can store it in dropbox, so that you can access the web-based version anywhere you can log into the Dropbox website. You're now putting an awful lot of faith in the security of Dropbox, but it's an option at least.

But fundamentally, this is a problem which should be solved by the ecosystem providers. Windows, Mac OS X, Firefox syncing, Chrome (I assume Chrome has a way to sync passwords to wherever you're logged into, I don't use Chrome).

I'm comfortable enough trusting Apple to secure all my login credentials that I'm willing to use the built-in functionality. Much like how I use "Reading List" instead of any of the "article saver applications". It works fairly well, I don't have to mess with it, I don't have to give my data to some other company, it just shows up in all my browsers on all of my devices.

Netflix

Spotify

AWS (at work)

LastPass (at work)

Alfred 2

Namecheap

Dash

Trello

Destroy All Software (not an "app", but a fantastic purchase)

---

The most valuable (in order) have been:

Alfred 2 (easily worth 10x the price)

Dash (would have paid double)

DigitalOcean (simplest VPS I've ever worked with)

DAS (still getting value out of this but loving it so far)

Namecheap (great domain service, been with them for years and had 0 problems)

I would cut Spotify but I have a visceral negative reaction to commercials. Can't stand em. I'd cut Netflix, but it's faster than torrenting and the time it saves me is worth it.

This has been a really interesting thought exercise, thanks for posting this!

Some of these will not survive the earthquake.

Paid for once: Threes, Clear, Convert (for all of my unit conversion needs)

I use but don't pay for: Dropbox, IntellijIDEA, Sublime Text 2

I've also spent a shameful amount of money on Candy Crush...

Funny enough, my home machine is Windows and I spend far more money on productivity tools for my work (OSX) machine. I'm not counting Steam.

  DigitalOcean ($5/mo)
  Gandi.net ($200/yr)
  Tarsnap ($3/mo)
  CrashPlan ($6/mo)

  Services
  --------
  Spotify
  DigitalOcean
  AWS Glacier
  Dropbox
  Evernote
  Mykolab.com

  Apps
  ----
  1Password
  aText
  Airmail
  Alfred
  Bartender (awesome!)
  Boxcryptor classic
  Boom
  Fantastical
  ForkLift
  OmniFocus 2
  Parallels
  Sublime Text

Netflix

Spotify Premium (Thanks mom!)

Sirius XM (Thanks dad!)

The only service I pay for personally is Amazon Prime.

I have not bought any iOS Apps (ever).

I have not bought any Mac Apps recently (this year).

The occasional Blu-ray and Nintendo game.

    Spotify
    Amazon Prime
    Netflix
    Lastpass
    Wolfram Alpha
    DigitalOcean
    Amazon EC2
    OVH (Dedicated server)
    Sublime Text (not really an app, but I still count it)

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lsdroid.ce...

At work: HipChat, Propane (client for Campfire), Sublime Text, Github.

* Transmit (FTP/S3)

* Sublime Text 3

* HipChat (Team Communication/notifications)

* Dreamhost (hosting)

* Cloudfrount (caching)

* Amazon AWS/S3

* Heroku

* Codeship (CI)

* Honeybadger (error monitoring)

* MS Office for Mac

* Crashplan (backup)

* Steam (games)

* Dropbox (pro for business)

* Asana (project management)

* Sprint.ly (project management)

* Netflix

* Amazon Prime

Non-work: Rdio, Amazon Prime, Dropbox Personal, Lastpass

Thinking if I should probably get Intellij since I've been doing a lot of Java these past few weeks.

And somehow I forgot Netflix, Xbox music and Xbox Live. Guess they just fade into the background.

I'm still evaluating crash reporting/analytics services for iOS apps.

Netflix

Spotify, used to pay for it before they brought mobile to the free tier

Xbox Live

115GB Google Drive and ~52GB Dropbox that I haven't started paying for yet

Github student account that will expire next summer

BiteSMS

Probably more apps on iPad/iPhone.

I also use AWS for some personal hosting.

That's why I pay for personal use.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z1mljWkxjTCoj5BfqW40...

Wolfram Alpha

You can't imagine how much value this services provide for me, they are worth every cent.

[1] - http://sync.club/#electronicmusic

That's one product i'm absolutely looking to get rid of - problem is lack of _suitable_ alternatives (i.e. comparable performance in 3D apps)...

chat with phone notifications: irccloud.com

hosting personal projects / testing things: digitalocean

music: spotify (seriously, how I lived before spotify is a mystery)

Newsblur; RSS feed reader

Spotify

Evernote

FeedsAPI.ORG Professional

Yesware.com Team

DreamHost

If I was to pick a favorite, it'd be Deezer. I derive so much use and enjoyment from it. Huge value.