Ask Lemmy

I donate $5 quarterly to Wikipedia. It's not much but I figure every bit helps

Kagi.com - excellent search engine. Yes, it shouldn't be needed, but in this day and age it clearly is. Excellent slop filter, and it let's you downrank and uprank certain sites in your search results. And I just found out you can see the most popular sites for each category, so it's fast and easy to see which sites probably are and aren't worth having in your results at all. It makes internet search feel like it did 20 years ago.

Namecheap.com - It's where I have my domain names. Mostly because they aren't godaddy.

EDIT: Forgot to mention hetzner.

What I pay for:

• Mullvad
• Addy.io
• Tutamail

What I "pay" for (through donations, if that counts):

• The EFF
• Wikipedia
• GrapheneOS
• Asahi Linux
• Python

I don't really subscribe to much, but I'm definitely looking to expand the latter list, so I'll probably start donating to the maintainers of ad blocker filter lists and seek out more organizations fighting the good fight.

Nebula. There are only a handful of creators on there that I watch regularly, but even then, it's worth it for the price.

Dropout.tv

The only streaming service I won’t pirate.

Does the VPS provider that runs part of my self-hosted infrastructure count? I've happily paid one of them for almost 14 years now.

I honestly think that's my last online service other than a couple Patreons for music.

my personal economy is hanging by a thread so no expenses that are not strictly necessary.

Kagi. https://kagi.com/

Best search engine I've ever used.

YouTube Premium. No ads and the creators I watch get paid more.

Yes, I'm aware of all the apps out there that give you the Premium perks without actually paying for it. Here's the thing: the VAST majority of my watching is done on my TV via an Apple TV and I really CBA to go through all the hoops to make any of those apps work with my setup.

I don't watch any other streaming services and I don't watch cable / network TV. I'm okay paying for Premium to get the best experience.

Privacy.com. I pay 10 bucks a month and never have to expose my debit or credit card numbers, I just use virtual ones. Plus, I get about $10 cash back each month, so really, it pays for itself.

PBS Passport for $5/month is so worth it.

• Mullvad
• Bitwarden
• Zotero
• Addy.io
• Mailbox.org
• Dropout.tv

Mullvad
Mailbox.org
I used to pay for a lot more until the last election and I found out how many companies backed fascism. Not with my dollar you wont!

edit: $5 a month for PBS also.

donations to soma.fm, listener supported free music streaming/internet radio out of San Francisco

Hetzner VPS and their Storage Box, that is, managed Nextcloud instance.

Mailbox.org email service.

Currently, Mullvadvpn.

I've paid for Proton Unlimited but I'm letting that expire and moving to alternatives.

A seedbox

bitwarden, wikipedia

also, not really paying for patreon, but I'm using it to pay DJPeachCobbler for his amazing videos on history

A few bucks a month for https://piefed.social/

Keep your software evolving and instances running!

Ultimate Guitar. I got a lifetime membership for like 30 bucks over a decade ago and I use that shit all the time. Their pro-tabs are awesome.

There's a lot of stuff I wouldn't mind sending money for, such as WMF, Internet Archives, AO3, and varying creators, and/or, of course, Lemmy, but as I don't like using credit cards and online payments, I'm hindered.

I wonder if there's some card (preferably paper instead of plastic) that I could buy at the store for $10, $20, or like, and use the number as payment. I've thought of sending cash by mail to the WMF, but I'm not sure if they would take it. I sent cash to Miraheze a few years ago, and they said they got it, but they don't seem to have put it in their reports (I hope they used it for Miraheze).

RackNerd for my VPSs (3 of them right now)
Mullvad VPN
NextDNS

I'll pay for Mullvad and Usenet/indexer

Steam games/Valve.
I dont know if this counts/its a hot take.
It really depends on the game tbh(some regret some dont)
I appreciate their work on Proton.
And Steam is the only website I can really buy video games from.

https://www.fullhost.com/

I switched away from NameCheap to a Canadian domain registrar after swearing off American software where possible. They've been great. It's a smaller company so I've gotten really quick responses on tickets I've put in

Right now the only thing I have a subscription for, as a college student fortunate enough to be living at home, is Proton. Don't like the whole Lumo AI thing and don't really trust they ain't scraping all my data for it, but I still have months before my subscription ends.

The VPN is nice enough and the attached email is kinda cool, I guess. Definitely been making use of both, so no complaints for now.

A domain.

Mealime.

Meal planning app. Has a database of hundreds of easy to make, healthy, tasty recipes. Tell it how many people you want to cook for, for how many days. It builds a whole meal plan, adjusts the quantities of all the recipies, builds a shopping list for you, and will even forward the list to Instacart for you if you're into that.

It also builds the meal plan based on reducing food waste, so if you have one recipe that uses half an onion, it will automatically find another recipe that uses the other half. You can also define ingredients you don't like/allergic to and it will avoid recipes that use those.

MASSIVELY increased the amount of at-home cooking I do by getting rid of all the boring/annoying parts. Kinda like Blue Apron, but you just go buy your own groceries. Best $2 a month I spend.

NextDNS, Kagi.

• Kagi Search - I prefer Kagi to avoid misaligned incentives, and it aggregates all major indexes plus their small web index, which is great, so I never miss a result.
• Windscribe VPN - This is a fucking need for me.
• addy.io - It's just $12/year and gives me great comfort.

Proton - the whole suite. I use it all.

crabshack.ai - an easier, better version of openclaw/ personal ai agent.

• Purelymail ($10/y)
• Proton VPN ($30/y on sale)
• Porkbun domains ($40/y)
• Hetzner VPS ($60/y for now)

Covers almost everything I need online

Currently, I'm paying for a vps where I run a test environment for my homelab. I also pay for mail and vpn services, support some FOSS projects and buys music a couple times a month.