How Much Do You Pay for Web Apps?
October 21st, 2008 (8:00am) Aliza Sherman 27 Comments
Image via Wikipedia (LibSyn)
Before I fell asleep last night, I started thinking about what I’m spending on Web applications. I take advantage of the free levels of apps whenever I can, however, in some cases, I have to give in and pay for the services.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have buyer’s remorse, but I do think I need to get a firm grasp of what Web apps or SaaS’s I have on autopay on my business credit card because it is getting to be too easy to charge these things.
Here is the list of Web apps I’ve been paying for and why I pay for them:
- Basecamp – $24/month – to keep track of communications and files with clients.
- FreshBooks – $24/month – to manage client invoicing.
- Typepad – $89.50/year for three blogs (about $7.45/month) – to develop three of my many blogs.
- Constant Contact – $15/month – to send out my occasional e-newsletter.
- Cafepress – $6.95/month – to sell Second Life swag.
- LibSyn- $5/month – to host my Cybergrrl Oh podcast about Second Life.
- SpinVox- $9.99/month – to convert my voicemail messages into texts and emails. (My service in the U.S. is actually through UReach.
- MeetUp – $72/6 months ($12/month) – to host several Meetup groups.
Total Fees – $104.39 per month or $1,252.68 per year
I began thinking that I should pay more attention to these payments. If the app is really valuable to my business, maybe I should consider paying for a year’s subscription in advance. Often, an annual subscription is discounted so I could save some money.
Then again, it might just be negligible. CafePress, for example, comes out to be $5/month for an annual subscription which would save me $23 for the year. Well, the theory sounded good when I was thinking about it. Still, if I were to subscribe to many more apps and sites, maybe the savings would become more significant.
Sites like Freshbooks and Basecamp don’t offer an annual fee. They use a pay-as-you-go model without committing you to a long term contract. Freshbooks does offer a lump sum payment where you can opt to pay for a number of months in advance but without any discount.
What are you paying on a monthly basis for Web apps and sites? Which ones and what do they do for you?
Tags: basecamp, cafepress, constant contact, freshbooks, libsyn, meetup, spinvox, typepad
27 Comments Post your own comment
Freelancer says: October 21st, 2008 9:14am
Opposite sides of the coin here
WordPress – I used to pay $15/year for this until I started hosting it myself (I like controlling the installation)
MailChimp – $15/month for newsletters to clients
Ronin – $9/month for invoicing clients
Highrise – again, for managing clients.
coachchic says: October 21st, 2008 9:42am
Perhaps your next blog post could be about those FREE services you’ve managed to find useful.
Aliza Sherman says: October 21st, 2008 9:53am
Funny you should mention that coachchic! Back in March, I did just that: http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/03/11/how-to-be-a-productive-cheapskate/
Avonelle Lovhaug says: October 21st, 2008 9:55am
I’m using…
Unfuddle for software project management: $9/month
Backpack for keeping track of misc. notes, to-dos, and other stuff: $5/month (grandfathered plan…no longer available)
I Want Sandy for task reminders: Free
I’m very happy with Unfuddle. I like the 37Signals products, but some of them are getting kind of pricey.
Dan Perlman says: October 21st, 2008 10:36am
Jott Pro – $12.95 per month — I pay because I like the longer time for recording notes — a premium upgrade. I’m going to upgrade Evernote, partly because I think the service is terrific and want to support them and partly because I keeping so much info on Evernote, I’m going to need more monthly bandwidth.
Laura says: October 21st, 2008 10:43am
I pay for wrike, mobileme, and mozy. Generally I like to buy software as opposed to SaaS, mostly because I like to have total ownership and control over my data.
Peldi Guilizzoni says: October 21st, 2008 11:18am
That $15/month for newsletters seems like a lot. I’ve been happy with CampaignMonitor: you only pay when you send out campaigns (I think it’s $5 + 1cent per user for each campaign, i.e. not much).
podcastgalaxy says: October 21st, 2008 11:55am
I don’t pay a dime for the apps that I use at http://webapps.ifthensoft.com. They are free for your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Ryan D. says: October 21st, 2008 2:15pm
Use open source..it takes a little while to setup but it’s worth saving the money. Try free alternatives like http://invoicejournal.com instead of freshbooks. :-)
Justin Kelly says: October 21st, 2008 2:53pm
invoicejournal.com is not open source. for free/open source wen based invoicing give Simple Invoices http://www.simpleinvoices.org a go – free to download and install on your own server
Cheers
Justin
How Much Do You Pay for Web Apps? [Commentary] | CMOs Blog says: October 21st, 2008 3:32pm
[...] Aliza Sherman: [...]
John Bradford says: October 22nd, 2008 1:15am
Only two monthly I pay for are to GoDaddy for hosting $5 pcm and to £23 Freeagent for accounting/finance (I’m based in the UK and they’re tailored to our tax system).
Annual subscriptions are RTM, Flickr, Goosync, and Plaxo.
Otherwise I’m on Ubuntu with open source apps.
thisismyurl says: October 22nd, 2008 5:37am
$23 a year on your cafepress.com is nothing to sneeze at, especially if you look at those kind of savings across your whole billing. Say you pay $1,252.68 a year for these services and you can save 10% by prepaying from cash (not credit). You’ll save $125 a year which can basically pay for your hosting.
Personally, I pay $70 a year for my BlueHost account and that’s about it. I replaced BaseCamp with a free alternative and now I get more money for coffee and EVE. :)
WebWorkerDaily » Archive Open Thread: Why Do You Use Web Applications? « says: October 22nd, 2008 11:00am
[...] 22nd, 2008 (11:00am) Mike Gunderloy No Comments We recently looked at the question of what people pay for web applications. Some of us put a fairly substantial sum into monthly payments for online functionality – which, if [...]
Jennifer Fugel says: October 23rd, 2008 5:58am
Great article and recommendations for Web apps!
I wanted to mention that SpinVox is available through UReach at the following URL:
http://www.UReach.com/spinvox/
Brian says: October 23rd, 2008 11:42am
I don’t pay anything -
OnStage – for project management/communicating with customers.
Gmail – for email
Yuuguu – for online meetings.
Phil Barnhart says: October 23rd, 2008 11:44am
I discovered that running “free” open source apps took to much of my “free” time. I pay to use backpack, for example. One of my biggest challenges is separating “business” from “personal” usage for tax purposes. Now I think I need to go back through and do the same calculations – but at least the ones I pay for will stick around (what is the biz model for totally free?). I switched to BudURL for business url tracking BECAUSE they bill!
I recently set up a site based on my personal bookmarks on web apps (Vtoolbox) and in doing some of the research found that trying to calculate if “apps by the piece” vs suites are more cost-effective?
Robert S. Robbins says: October 23rd, 2008 12:55pm
I don’t pay for web applications. I create web applications. My only business related monthly expenses are for my DSL connection and my web site hosting.
John says: October 23rd, 2008 7:33pm
You should check out Intervals, a web app that does time tracking, task management, document sharing, and invoicing, along with a few other things, and starts at $20/month to manage 10 projects. You could ditch two or three apps, save some money, and have everything in one place.
Chris Tingom says: October 24th, 2008 11:16pm
At our company, we use the following:
JotForm.com – $9 month
Freshbooks – $39 month
Basecamp – Free plan at the moment
Todoist – Free
Gmail for Business – Free at the moment
Corey Freeman says: October 26th, 2008 2:45pm
I don’t pay for web applications. I use a lot of open source stuff and I think it works out all right. I’ve never been very good at using advanced features on anything.
Sal says: October 30th, 2008 6:47am
We pay for:
icontact – ~$70
deskaway – $49
slicehost – $20
Harshil Karia says: October 31st, 2008 11:05pm
Currently we are paying only for DeskAway. We pay about $25 a month and are extremely happy with it.
WebWorkerDaily » Archive How to pay for web Apps Without Hurting Your Wallet « says: November 6th, 2008 10:01am
[...] times, it’s never a bad thing to trim our spending. Last month, Aliza Sherman asked us how much we spend on web apps, and while some claimed to spend nothing at all, there were others who paid more than $100 each [...]
fredmac says: November 7th, 2008 3:05am
As Robert and Corey, i don’t paid for web app.
I’am an old school user and prefered desktop app and paid once of course.
Ovi Demetrian Jr says: November 8th, 2008 6:26pm
I use:
Voo2Do for task management – Free
PBWiki for project notes and organizing – Free
MailChimp for newsletters – Paid per use basis
Gmail for Email – Free
How to Become a More Frugal Web Worker says: May 31st, 2009 6:01am
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