Mine is 100% ChatGPT at the moment
SaaS = Software as a Service (e.g. MullvadVPN)
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 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
Just because a service is hosted in the cloud does not mean it is SaaS. The service has to replace a software solution, or be replaceable with a software.
A VPN client is software. A VPN server is software. I can run a VPN client or a VPN server on my own hardware.
But any VPN server I install is going to use my own network connection. Not an anonymizing proxy. No piece of software I could run can replace the anonymizing service that a VPN provider offers. The anonymization feature of a commercial VPN provider is not SaaS.
Gmail (especially as part of the Google Apps suite allowing Google to handle the email for your own domain) could be considered SaaS. I could install my own email servers to handle email traffic in and out of my domain(s), but I’d rather pay for the convenience of not having to maintain my own email server software. Gmail, then, is a good example of SaaS.
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.
ChatGPT 4 (1 month only, sick of “Error in input stream”), Proton Suite, Spotify
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.
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.
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.
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.
