Values of online services

Comparative costs (link to sheet)

I had another advert today from Grammarly, offering me a discounted service rate to upgrade from their free tier. Now, I like Grammarly, but I don't like it enough that I want to spend £110 a year to have it at the enhanced level, especially when you read that the discounted rate ends after the first year.

It set me thinking on the costs of online services.

I abandoned Adobe when they went to the Creative Cloud which rocks in at a massive £600 a year. My use scenario was Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and Acrobat, which means that the whole suite is the cheapest way to get this. I used to upgrade every two versions when it was Creative Suite (so £400 to £500 every 2-3 years) and was happy to do that. These days I've have moved to Affinity Publisher, Photo and Designer, with PDFPen Pro filling replacing Acrobat. I don't miss Adobe, especially as the last upgrade I did which left a bad taste (they bounced me into upgrading saying that it wouldn't be possible after a set date, and then - after I did - offered an upgrade to the next version a few months later which would cost me a similar amount).

Dropbox is the most costly service I pay for (I'm ignoring Spotify here as that's a different niche). It's rock solid and a service I trust. I don't trust iCloud (I've never lost data but I have lost access and gone around in circles) and I prefer Dropbox to Google Drive and OneDrive as they're linked to their ecosystems (but I do have accounts on all three of these platforms). Now they've added local sync options it hits all my use needs.

Office 365 feels like a reasonable deal at £80 annually with access (effectively) across all my machines and mobile devices. The fact that Grammarly charges more than Microsoft does for its Office suite is one of those markers that put me off paying for that tool.

Evernote is the odd one; it won me over Apple Notes and Google Keep by being cross-platform and pervasive. Really useful as a scrapbook for ideas. Google Keep is nice, but Google keeps killing its children. Apple Notes is also good but locked in. Evernote feels like a significantly stronger offering. At £60, it's reasonable.

Had Grammarly been priced somewhere between Evernote and Office 365, it would have been tempting. As it is, it's too much.

What're your thoughts on online services?

13 May 2020