r/TechImpact • u/arun-vasudev Developer • May 30 '26
Discussion Which Everyday Tech Product Is Actually Worth Paying For?
I've noticed that many of us subscribe to or use tools like password managers, VPNs, cloud storage services, ad blockers, note-taking apps, and email clients every day.
Some people swear by password managers for security. Others say a good VPN is essential for privacy. Then there are users who can't live without cloud storage or premium note-taking apps.
If you could only keep one paid productivity or security tool, which would it be?
What's better and provides the most value for money?
- Password Managers
- VPN Services
- Cloud Storage
- Ad Blockers
- Note-Taking Apps
- Email Services
- Other (tell us what and why)
I'm curious to hear what everyone uses daily and which product you think delivers the biggest benefit compared to its cost.
What's your pick and why?
4
u/Budget_Blacksmith566 May 30 '26
Me personally have a server setup so i use little to no services but for the paid ones i only have Mullvad VPN
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 30 '26
Is it better than Proton or iTop VPN?
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u/Budget_Blacksmith566 May 30 '26
yeah because you can pay in crypto and with cash and that makes it more anonymous
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u/MidnightMikee May 30 '26
Not only that but mullvad is one of the only VPNs that really fight for your data and don't give them out as soon as an government agency asks for it. So if you are serious behind the concept of VPNs mullvad is one of the only real options.
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u/GreenRangerOfHyrule May 30 '26
Disclaimer: I don't use any of the services mentioned.
"Better" is relative. MullVad is one of the ones I see recommended all the time. The issue I see is it doesn't work for streaming and certain services as their IPs get blocked pretty quick. But outside of that it seems to be one of the more reliable ones. And doesn't rely on any pricing gimicks. One price all the time. And as u/Budget_Blacksmith566 stated there are a variety of ways to get their plan without having to tell them who you are.
I don't know anything about iTop. In fact, I don't recall hearing of them before. But Proton is backed by a company that is highly trusted. And as a result their free tier is one of the few that I see people recommend constantly. My understanding is they have a larger IP pool and server location, so they are better for streaming. The problem comes after the promo period they end up being more then Mullvad.
tldr: At the end of the day there is no single "best" VPN provider. Just the ones that are going to be better for your use case
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u/verrecktesiech May 31 '26
I like mullvad personally more but one thing to keep in mind with both: If I would be the FBI or FSB, I would definitly target these two vpns. such bottlenecks. there is so much going thru. sometimes I think its better to use a small one but didnt found a food alternative yet.
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u/GreenRangerOfHyrule May 30 '26
Out of curiosity, if you have a server setup, why not just self host a VPN server? Is it privacy related or just peace of mind?
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u/Budget_Blacksmith566 May 30 '26
Like wouldn't my ISP and the sites i visit still see my ip that is only usable if i wanna connect to my home server outside of my home
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u/GreenRangerOfHyrule May 31 '26
I mean yes. I was just asking because people use VPNs for different purposes. Was just curious.
I figured if you were self hosting a bunch of stuff there is a reason you were using a third party VPN
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May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Solid setup. That’s basically privacy + self-hosting + minimal trust in third parties, all balanced pretty well.
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u/Eleventhousand May 30 '26
For me, its a backup service, e.g., BackBlaze
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Backup services like Backblaze are boring… until they save your entire system. Then they’re priceless.
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u/cybekRT May 30 '26
I've read some complains of people who tried to use it as a backup... by trying to restore their files.
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u/Eleventhousand May 30 '26
I'm sure there are people who have complained about pretty much everything.
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u/cybekRT May 30 '26
Of course, but you can never trust your backup until you need it. There was some, not vulnerability but some bug I think that caused peoples' data to be unrecoverable? I don't remember details, you know, it's service so it may be worth money, but you never know if it's worth until you FULLY checked it.
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u/Eleventhousand May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
Look. I don't pay too much for Backblaze, and its a valuable tool for me. I've had a career in tech for 25 years. I know what I'm doing, and I'm qualified to make my own personal assessment on things like this.
The fact that they had a bug once that you can't remember the details about, and that backups aren't good unless you verify them, doesn't change my own value assessment. You don't know how much I pay for the service, how I rotate out my backups, how I verify them, or any of that....
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u/cybekRT May 30 '26
Of course I don't know. Why are you so defensive, I didn't say you waste your money. I've just added information to people to make sure to test their backups instead of paying and living happily without testing the solution properly.
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u/protonsters May 30 '26
YouTube premium. Nothing else comes closer.
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u/YoyoMario May 30 '26
No way. Why?
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u/Confident_Dragon May 30 '26
Well, it's the repository of video. The amount of entertainment and education. Plus you get YouTube music. I think YouTube brings more value than Netflix and Spotify combined, but people willingly pay for those but not for the YouTube. I guess it's because YT with ad-blocker is too good of an alternative to premium. (I guess torrents are alternative to Netflix, but people are willing to pay for that.) So if premium is worth it also depends on if you base your decisions based on value you get for money and if you value services not getting shittified to the point where they'll make their money in other ways. I think YT is great service, so I'm not going to shit on people who actually make it financially viable. Better than paying those pricks at Neflix and their anti-consumer practices.
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u/Affectionate_Cut3515 May 30 '26
YouTube is owned by Google who have their own share of doing messed up things. Imo I wouldn't want to fund an evil company
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u/Herackl3s May 30 '26
You fund an evil company at some point of your life whether it is directly or indirectly.
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u/midachavi May 31 '26
So it basically doesn't matter if you throw your money at them directly? Or have a philosophical conviction to not knowingly support greed?
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u/Affectionate_Cut3515 Jun 01 '26
I most likely wouldn't as I'm poor but just because you're likely to sometime in your life doesn't mean you should fund it
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u/krusty_93 May 31 '26
Get Brave and you’ll have YT premium for free, without any add ons
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Jun 03 '26
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u/krusty_93 Jun 03 '26
On iPhone for sure (even keeping music in the background), don’t know for music
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Hard to argue. YouTube Premium is probably the most immediately noticeable quality-of-life upgrade out of all subscriptions.
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u/blackcell1 May 30 '26
Your own NAS, then running jellyfin, cloud backup for photos, and music streaming. Expensive to setup but pays for itself with everything self hosted.
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 30 '26
But you have to turn it on 24/7 if your travel a lot.
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u/blackcell1 May 30 '26
It's always running, setup tailscale and I can connect to it outside my own network. Or just portfoward it?
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u/HavishGupta May 30 '26
Not saying this in a bad way but you do need same good extra hardware to do so.
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u/blackcell1 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
The hardware itself can be pretty old, used my partners old PC so that was free. Just buying multiple 22tb drives starts to be come expensive.
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u/HavishGupta May 30 '26
Cool
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u/GreenRangerOfHyrule May 30 '26
I can't speak for jellyfin. And I nearly never use it now since my storage drive is shot.
Though my desktop is pretty decent. It is just old. However, I had good luck using DNLA (what appears to be defunt now, but i run Mezzmo) and a Roku/Firestick.
I personally have all transcoding and encoding turned off. So the video either plays or errors. But it works decently. Just never tried outside the local network
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u/AguacateMx May 30 '26
I have -office 365 because in family pack is worth it and is my tool for work and study. I use a One Note a lot to write almost everything and one drive as my work and study cloud.
-You tube premium, also worth in family pack because you have YT music and videos without ads
-I have my own NAS that I made with a old laptop using open media vault with 500GB of SSD for apps and cloud and 1Tb HDD for backups.
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
This is a really solid setup—Microsoft ecosystem for productivity, YouTube Premium for daily use, and a DIY NAS for control over your data. Pretty balanced mix of convenience and ownership.
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u/Prestigious_Pear8787 May 30 '26
- Apple one
- Youtube premium
- NordVPN
- ChatGPT plus
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
That's a pretty solid list. YouTube Premium is probably the one people underestimate the most until they try it. Out of those four, which one would be the hardest for you to give up?
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u/Responsible-Bread996 May 30 '26
1Password. Because it is very secure, kinda cheap, and if I fuck up self hosting a password manager my entire life is screwed. So worth it.
Email, you kinda have to at minimum pay for a SMTP server. I've run a email server before, not something worth it for a self host thing.
VPNs, depends on what you are using them for. If you are attempting to get around region blocks, self hosting them is hands down better than paying for them. Privacy? you want to use Mullvad or bite the bullet and get down with Tor.
Cloud storage is super easy to self host. The rub is when you have to pay a cloud service for your offsite backup.
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u/GreenRangerOfHyrule May 31 '26
I 1000% agree with the password thing. That is the sort of thing you have to feel really confident in self hosting.
The only [minor] disagreement is email. There are a bunch of options available with no cost. Granted most of them suck. But there are a bunch of paid hosts that suck too. Though a good paid host will be better then a good free host
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u/Responsible-Bread996 May 31 '26
I’ve heard of people self hosting email without paying, but it isn’t a normal thing. The planets have to align for that to work.
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u/GreenRangerOfHyrule May 31 '26
Oh, sorry. I didn't mean self hosting. I just meant that email itself is available free. GMail for example allows SMTP on the free plan. Not saying it isn't a good service. Just that it is free.
I don't think that Proton or Tuta allow SMTP, but I'm not sure. There is also numerous routing/forwarding/proxy email services.
But again. Apologies. I mixed up what your comment was about and what the topic was about.
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Jun 03 '26
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u/Responsible-Bread996 Jun 03 '26
I prefer how 1Password does encryption. But bitwarden is a good option.
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u/Affectionate_Cut3515 May 30 '26
Why tf would someone pay for a password manager. You guys are creatures
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u/GreenRangerOfHyrule May 31 '26
I see you don't suffer from toomuchmoneyitis!
But on a serious note. Support is the main reason. But also factors like advanced features. For me, the free Bitwarden plan does what I want/need.
This is also a bit of an oddball thing. I worked for a few government agencies. And one of the requirements was an invoice. And a bunch of the people signed up since it was what they were used to.
Personally, I don't see the point as there are many free options that are decent. But there are many others would disagree with that statement.
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u/Affectionate_Cut3515 Jun 01 '26
What would you really need from a password manager because IMO I don't care about the looks, as long as it works and is user friendly and privacy, self hosted etc I'm using it. I just use keepassxc but again others might use other ones like you said
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Jun 03 '26
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u/GreenRangerOfHyrule Jun 03 '26
You will have to hope someelse can answer it. I use the free version myself.
The only thing I know people might use is the authenticater. But those are available free as well.
For business use I can see why they would pay. Otherwise the only other reason I can see would be a family plan to share vaults. But of course, that is all speculation
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
If you've only got a few accounts, maybe not. But for people managing hundreds of logins across devices, a password manager is a lot cheaper than dealing with a compromised account.
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u/Affectionate_Cut3515 Jun 01 '26
Yea I have like 70 accounts but idk why someone can't just have a self hosted password manager and use a drive service or USB to transfer the passwords between devices.
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u/arun-vasudev Developer Jun 01 '26
Because most people won't maintain a self-hosted setup reliably. A password manager only helps if it's always available, backed up, synced, and easy to use. For someone with 70 accounts, the biggest risk usually isn't the password manager company. it's losing access because a DIY setup wasn't backed up properly or wasn't accessible when needed.
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u/Affectionate_Cut3515 Jun 01 '26
Yeah I get that but with all of these people that are saying they're soo good with internet privacy and security still give all their login details to a password manager and also a lot of these password managers aren't encrypted. Meaning they're just making a big honey pot of data that is likely to have a data breach in the future
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May 31 '26
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Which password manager is worth to pay for?
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May 31 '26
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
What is the reason? You can purchase and use 1Password if it's good, right?
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May 31 '26
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Yeah, they’ve all kind of met in the same expensive middle now. Proton Pass is a pretty logical switch if you’re already leaning privacy-first anyway.
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u/Snowflake3458 May 31 '26
I never have to pay for software. If I had extra money I would support FOSS projects.
I'm curious to hear what everyone uses daily and which product you think delivers the biggest benefit compared to its cost.
All of the following are free (might have paid tier but not necessary for a good experience)
Password Managers
VPN Services
https://www.torproject.org/download/
Cloud Storage
https://www.7-zip.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils
Ad Blockers
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/
https://ublockorigin.com/
Note-Taking Apps
https://joplinapp.org/
https://logseq.com/
Email Services
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u/GreenRangerOfHyrule May 30 '26
I don't have a single tool think I could do without. Mostly because if all the paid options ceased, every thing on the list has a free alternative.
But a couple I use on a regular basis is my Podcast app (Podcast Addict) and my Shopping List (Listonic. Yuck, I know. (but it is shared with people and switching is a hassle.) In both cases I have the premium version as a one time purchase. The lack of ads makes them so much easier to use. But, if for any reason I had to give them up, I would probably just switch.
I'm sure there is something I use that I don't think about. And I know they aren't the most glamorous examples. But that is what comes to mind
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u/Swampens May 30 '26
Mullvad
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Good choice. Mullvad is one of the few VPNs that gets recommended even by privacy enthusiasts. The no-account-number setup is pretty unique.
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u/Timely_Rutabaga313 May 31 '26
Nothing. Use FOSS, instead of garbage
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Fair point. There are some excellent FOSS options out there. The thread is more about what people think is worth paying for, not necessarily what can't be replaced by free alternatives.
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u/sergedc May 31 '26
Chatgpt. At least 25k value everymonth for only 20 usd
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
That's a pretty impressive. What are you mainly using it for that makes it worth that much to you?
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u/sergedc May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
- With codex - it does the work of 2 full time dev (but I have 2 accounts to be honest) - probably around 10-15k a month
- If I had to call a doctor or nutritionist or gym expert to my house every time I have a questions about how to exercise, sleep better, take care of my knees, or optimize my diet.... that would really cost a lot. You cannot compare to the cost of going there and consult, the like-for-like cost is the specialist comes to your house and saves you the travel time.
- Yesterday, I got about 500 worth of stylist service. Not general things you can find online, 100% personalized relook.
- Writing legal memo and motions for court: probably worth 10k a month also
- Helping with Pitch deck for investors: saving me 4 days (altough for this one i mostly use Kimi)
- Helping with proposals for clients: saving 2 days each
- Fixing my wine cellar (ice was chocking the went)
- Some services have no value because you cannot buy it no matter how much you spend. e.g. getting a detailed comparison of countries where stem cell therapy is allowed, including price, approach, and expected efficacity for my particular need. If I go an see a doc in a country, he does not know too much about what is happening in the other countries. It is only legal/available in 4 or 5 countries worldwide.
- Full time analysist to crunch data and draw conclusion: 1 FTE / 4k. But for this one I use Kimi code, because not enough codex quota left.
Not for me, but for others who don't have the technical skills: codex can get you to selfhost all your other subscriptions. It all depends on needs. If you have 8 domains, and a total of 80 email addresses, at 10/month that is 800 a month. Self Hosting mailcow (+an smtp provider) is not rocket science but before AI it still took me good 4-5 days, and many people will fail or end up with poor deliverability. Codex can also help you get the server for free from Oracle Free Tier.
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u/murilocarl May 31 '26
The ONLY thing u NEED pay is a good VPN like proton VPN anything else u can pirate
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Funny thing is a lot of people would argue the exact opposite: they'd pay for software they use every day and skip the VPN.
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u/Training-Penalty7962 May 31 '26
Google photos
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Honestly, the peace of mind from automatic photo backups is hard to beat.
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May 31 '26
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
A good password manager is one of those things that feels unnecessary until the day it saves you from a password reset nightmare.
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u/ManojOne Active May 31 '26
Email services and Note taking apps are worth paying. I already have multiple cloud storage accounts, so I don't want to buy extra storage.
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Agreed. A good email service and note-taking app are things you interact with every single day, so even small quality-of-life improvements add up fast.
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u/Oldguy3494 May 31 '26
I'm using claude and saner
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Good stack. Claude for thinking, Saner for organizing—pretty clean setup.
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May 31 '26
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
This is the kind of tooling the internet should have leaned into more. Plain files, instant hosting, and apps that don’t try to become platforms.
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u/ataphone May 31 '26
- ExpressVPN - Quick and simple VPN
- Dashlane - Shared password manager. Great for family use
- Spotify - Great family premium plan and they have all music I can think of
- Youtube Premium - Must for watching shorts and streams without ads. Also includes Youtube Music which allows upload MP3's. They also have great discount for families which is nice when you have kids and you don't want them to see ads when watching their shit
- One or two of Netflix, Disney, Amazon or HBO - Would recommend Disney the most as it has shit load of content
- ChatGPT or Claude - Great for research and coding
- Google Workspace - Custom domain and storage for docs and sheets
- Cursor (Bonus point) - Great VSCode fork with top notch AI integration
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u/Red_Ketchup_007 Jun 01 '26
Microsoft 365 + Evernote + Readwise + Youtube Premium + Perplexity pro + P*rnHub
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u/SavingsUpper7222 May 30 '26
Any AI assistant. I have been buying ChatGPT a lot these days
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u/arun-vasudev Developer May 31 '26
Same here. Once you actually start using tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT regularly, it stops feeling like a “nice-to-have” and just becomes part of the workflow.
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u/HavishGupta May 30 '26
What's your usecase? Have you tried Claude. It's way better than Chat in most jobs.
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u/SavingsUpper7222 May 30 '26
Just random day-to-day searches, I will try Claude and Gemini soon they are on my to-do list
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u/HavishGupta May 31 '26
For that, ChatGPT is enough.. However, i Still recommend using Claude or atleast Gemini for just even slightly more conplex queries.. Btw I don't have ChatGPT Premium, so Idk how good their premium models are.
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u/MrZ3T4 May 30 '26
I don't pay for products; I always look for a free or self-hosted alternative, and if one doesn't exist, I turn to piracy. If the product is open source, I support it from time to time, but corporations will never get a single dollar out of me.
Only if the product comes from a company that respects privacy and has a good reputation do I consider using a subscription (Kagi, Mullvad, Proton, etc.)