Re: Black Friday Is the Best Day to Review Subscriptions

2024-12-01 10:34

I had no intention of being swindled into the Black Friday sales, but after reading Matan Abundy's Black Friday Is the Best Day to Review Subscriptions post it triggered my recent departure from Windows and hopeful disbanding of OneDrive, so I decided to look into cloud storage and VPN (for linux) sales. I found two absolutely cracking deals.

If you read this in time the deals are still running, so have a think of your situation.

$ are in NZD.

Cloud storage

• Current setup: Microsoft 365 Personal | Office suite + 1 TB cloud storage | $90.30 / year

• Current usage: I am only using ~100.3 GB of the 1 TB available. I'm on Linux now so use the LibreOffice suite.

• Purchase: Filen.io 200 GB cloud storage lifetime subscription | $66.22 | I really like the look and feel of this service. It has CLI capability, sharing, and some nifty bonuses like integrated notes (markdown included) and encrypted chat. Also visibile activity in their GitHub repos.

VPN

• Current setup: Kaspersky | Internet Security + VPN | $89.95 + $39.09 / year

• Current usage: Kaspersky is not compatible with Linux so am not using it at all. I'm also just using built in firewalls and things for Internet Security so I don't need that anymore.

• Purchase: Surfshark VPN $3.77 / month | $45.27 / year | Paid an outright fee which covers 28 months | Again has Linux and CLI capability and easy to use. Aware I could use Debian's built in OpenVPN, but I want a simpler solution.

Conclusion

With my current MS and Kaspersky subscriptions about to end, I'll be making huge savings. Essentially no more annual fees for both ($90.30 + $89.95 = $180.25/year saved). The once-off for 200GB should cover me a while, and I am paying an extra $6.18/year for Surfshark, however I would anticipate Kaspersky's fees would go up over the 28 months I'm now locked in for, so likely there'll be a savings in the future.

I need to copy out my OneDrive files by 8 Jan so I can discontinue the subscription. I still use my email via Outlook so won't be leaving completely, so I will continue with the free account.

I will time this subscription review with Black Friday each year going forward. Really appreciate Matan's post prompting me to do so. Yay for RSS.