Mine is 100% ChatGPT at the moment
SaaS = Software as a Service (e.g. MullvadVPN)
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.
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.
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.
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
- 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
bitwarden, PIA
How is mullvad 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.
Or, 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.
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.
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.
That map is a premium feature of a commercial weather app for Android. I found it useful, so I subscribed.
Posteo for mail and Mullvad for VPN. That’s about it.
Hardware and hypervisors as a service so to say
3 VPS hosts
Technically IaaS I guess
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?
They’ve since deleted it, but I pointed out that they posted a fake screenshot of an email claiming that Gmail was shutting down. They did reply to me, saying they “didn’t fact check before posting”, but it’s Gmail; if it was shutting down, that would have been the easiest thing in the world to verify. Zero attempt was made to verify what they posted. A cursory glance through their Mastodon account shows a lot of other provocative and misleading headlines.
SourceHut and Kagi.
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.
More than I would readily admit. A VPN, some professional development services (primarily chatGPT), a resource library. Arguably some of the other tools I use too, but they aren’t pure SaaS - you mostly just have to pay if you want major updates which are unnecessarily frequent. (I typically chose not to.) I’ve also been the person in charge of deciding services to use for businesses, so in that regard you could tack on CRM PM services. Currently I am enjoying my burnout-phase and not being responsible for such decisions anymore (but still not finding enough time for proper sleep…).
No games, no streaming, as few business needs as I can manage. I’m willing to subscribe to SaaS, but mostly only where other payment models are honestly non-viable for competitors.
I don’t like the idea of committing payment when I don’t know whether I’ll like the next update more than the current one; or even if it is better, that it will be worth the price tag.
SaaS at its best pays for maintenance and development and I’m willing to go that route if it’s truly valuable to me and the service maintains and develops effectively. I’m hesitant to encourage its adoption where it doesn’t make sense so I do avoid SaaS as a primary factor in my decision process - if someone is doing it right without SaaS, I would rather chose that option.
Altogether, it’s probably less than the standard cable TV package. But I’m not entirely sure because I’m not willing to subscribe to one of those, either!
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.
ChatGPT 4 (1 month only, sick of “Error in input stream”), Proton Suite, Spotify
