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Let’s Talk About Subscriptions

Scott Simmons

Let’s talk about subscriptions. I don’t hate subscriptions. I like them for the right things. Subscriptions are all about value. What kind of value do you get for your subscription cost? If you get more value from the price, that subscription is usually worth it. 

That value might be the income you generate from using the subscription-based product. That value might be the entertainment you get from enjoying the service you pay for over and over again. That value might be the peace and quiet you get from listening to the kids no longer nag you to subscribe to their desired service.

It’s all about value.

With that in mind, it’s always good to do a subscription audit and see what you’re paying in monthly subscription costs. I do this from time to time. However, I haven’t done it in a while. 

For editors and people working in post-production, this might be quite the task as we tend to need a lot of subscriptions since we now live in a subscription-based world. 

I only posted this picture with the car so I could link to this article about BMW charging a subscription for heated seats.

I am not passing judgment on any of these subscription services, nor am I suggesting you, dear reader, subscribe to or cancel any or all of these services. These are just presented for your information only. 

And mine.

Where do you get these numbers from?

These numbers are presented with research from the company or service’s website as of September 2022. These are US prices since I’m in the USofA 🇺🇸. I will round up as no company if fooling anyone with their $xx.99 price bullcrap. These prices will undoubtedly change. Most likely, going up as subscriptions never seem to go down (does anything ever go down?).

Often you can get a small discount on the monthly payment if you agree to a yearly contract, sometimes paying the year all at once. Most of the prices below will reflect that kind of yearly offer. Prices that were a single lump sum for the year, I divided by 12.

Sometimes you can find discounts of you look around the web. You might be able to get a lower price if you threaten or try to cancel a service. And often, after you cancel, you’ll get a discount to start up the service once again. I had been going through some of my subscriptions, but wondering what I might be missing I asked on Twitter what were some products and services others subscribed to.

And boy or boy, did I get a lot of replies.

You can read the replies to get an idea of what post-production pros all over the world subscribe to. I’ll embed some of these below.

I was told there’d be no math in post-production.

Now off to the numbers.

The valuable post-production tools and services you might need to make a living in this business.

These first categories are for products and services that many editors need regularly. These have more of a “freelance-lean” since freelancers tend to have more subscriptions than staff editors. And there’s probably more in here than any one freelancer would need. But then again, maybe not. 

Service or product Cost Comment
Adobe Creative Cloud $55 Love it or hate it
Avid Media Composer $24 For $50 you get everything
Resolve Cloud $5 That’s database storage only
Dropbox $17 actually $16.58🤷‍♂️
Frame.io $13 $15 monthly
Google Drive $3 That’s for 200 GBs
iCloud+ $10 2TB for your iPhone stuff
Motion Array $21 download it all!
SoundStripe $20 $30 billed monthly
Tyme $3 gotta track the time to bill it
Quickbooks $30 gotta bill time to collect it
Amazon Prime $12 Does anyone not have this?
SquareSpace $16 Your website hosting may vary
Zoho Mail $4 Your email may vary
Backblaze $7 Your cloud archiving/backup may vary
Reduct $12 Transcription prices vary widely
1Password $3 You have to have a password manager
TOTAL $225

 

That total is not as much as I thought it would be. For many freelancers, that’s a couple / few billable hours to cover the month.  You monthly total might be more of less but hopefully, it’s not in the thousands. 😬

There are a few other things that are more lifestyle subs that I feel most people have these days.

We do need some services to keep us sane and entertained in the evening when we’re done with work. Or when we need some good background music while pulling selects.

Dan has a good point. It’s great to watch and learn and it might even be a tax write-off (please consult your tax professional as we offer no tax advice here 👍).

Service or product Cost Comment
Netflix $20 Gotta have the Ultra HD teir, right?
Disney + $7 For Star Wars of course (and kids)
Spotify $10 Because music
YouTube TV $65 Man, broadcast tv is expensive
TOTAL $102

 

I know there are a lot more things that could be listed here.

And what about those other, more superfluous things that you don’t have to have but are nice as a release or to maintain sanity in this world, both in work and in play

The number of services one could subscribe to is pretty much endless.

This list is all about the extra things that most anyone could add into their arsenal and get use from.

Service or product Cost Comment
AMC Stubs A-list $22 If ya like movies
PlayStation Network $55 perhaps yours is XBox
Gym membership $35 that can go ⬆️ or ⬇️
Setapp $10 It’s Netflix for apps
Soundly $15 Subscription sound effects?
Vimeo $35 Vimeo is still a thing for many
Postlab $15 For those that love it, they know
Maxon One $92 That’s quite a lot
Boris FX Suite $100 That’s also a lot!
We Transfer $10 Because big files need to be sent
TOTAL $389

 

So that last table really adds up if you were to subscribe to all of those items above. What you might actually need probably varies. If you’re just an editor, you probably don’t need the entire Maxon One subscription and can probably make do with the $50 Red Giant subscription or the $17 Universe subscription. Same with Boris FX, you can probably make do with either the Sapphire package or the Continuum package, depending on your need.

It’s also worth noting that for any one type of service, there are almost always quite a few options that do nearly the same thing. If the Internet has given us anything it’s the ability to shop around. But beware, if you signed up for the cheaper monthly cost of a service because you agreed to keep the subscription for a full year, you’ll most likely have to pay a cancellation fee. So don’t complain; that’s in the fine print.

You could always choose to pay the higher monthly fee for the pleasure of canceling at your leisure with no early termination fee. We know these fees happen with cell phone contracts and cable TV price bundles, so why are we surprised when it happens with software subscriptions

What does all this mean?

Nothing in particular other than it’s a good idea to periodically do a subscription audit to see exactly what you’re paying and if you can do away with something.

These will, of course, vary by person. For example, many don’t need a Media Composer subscription, but they might also have an HBO Max and a Hulu subscription that I don’t have. For the record, we do have HBO Max, but that’s part of our AT&T fiber service, which is another monthly payment. I didn’t even get into utilities and those kinds of monthly payments. That’s where proper budgeting tools like Every Dollar or Mint can come in handy.

And you might do well paying for some online training if you’re just getting into this game. Come to think of it, we can all learn so training is good for everyone.

Are you paying too much for your many, many monthly subscriptions?

Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t mind paying for a service if I get that critical value from it. There’s that word value again.

I don’t mind paying for the Adobe Creative Cloud as there is great value for my $60.

And I make a lot of money from it.

I’m guessing this person doesn’t make much money from their Creative Cloud subscription. 

I stopped getting value from my Comcast/Xfinity service as it kept going up while the service seemed to be going down. That made the value much less, so I got angry and left Comcast for AT&T after they brought fiber to my neighborhood. I pay less for faster and (so far) more reliable service. That is excellent value. 

I got a lot of replies on Twitter from asking that subscription question above. There are a lot of services in there I had never heard of so I have a lot of googling to do. Maybe you’ll find some yourself. Thanks to all those who replied; here are a few of them below.

And finally …

There’s one in every subscription cost discussion. 🤷‍♂️

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