Do you remember the days when you used to own things? You would walk to the local music store and walk out with a CD. You’d need some graphics software, so you’d buy a license for Adobe Photoshop. The latest blockbuster film would get released, and you’d buy it on DVD. Those days are long gone, my friend.
Now the only option we have is subscriptions, weekly or monthly rentals that give us access to a service, but only for a limited period of time. As a result, we can find ourselves drowning in a sea of memberships. We try to get around this by taking advantage of free trials, only to find that we forgot to cancel them. We need help managing our subscriptions!
Homescreen heroes
This is part of a regular series of articles exploring the apps that we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
With a 4.6-star Apple App Store rating, $150 million of total user savings, and a reported 98% successful cancelations, the subscription management app is clearly doing something right. I’ve spent the past week getting all my subscriptions loaded onto the app and was surprised how useful I’ve found it. Let’s dive into the features.
Add your subscriptions
At the heart of Subee are your subscriptions. The first step is therefore to get your specific subscriptions added to the app. There are two ways to do this: one is manual, and the other is automatic with a connection to your Gmail account. This is currently the only email provider that is supported, but I would expect others to be added in time. Subee also has plans to let users connect a bank account so that subscriptions can be automatically added with exact accuracy.
The automatic email connection is the fastest, although the manual alternative isn’t particularly laborious. I was able to set up each subscription in one or two minutes. All you have to do is enter some basic information, including the company name, the price, the payment frequency, and the renewal date. Simple.
Subee then adds the subscription to your list with a clear label next to each detailing the number of days left till renewal. Subscriptions can then be sorted so you can get more specific information about renewals and which subscriptions are your most costly. Your subscriptions are also visible with the calendar view. This output is particularly helpful for keeping an eye on upcoming payments and whether you can expect a sharp rise in overall monthly costs.
Manage subscriptions like a pro
With your subscriptions all set up, now it’s time to harness that information for your good. The first thing you can do is cancel and refund subscriptions. This is ideal for identifying and eliminating recurring charges that you forgot about. These are unlikely to be in the system if you add your subscriptions manually, but there may well be some if you used the email integration.
To cancel a subscription, just select it from your list or calendar and select ‘Cancel Subscription.’ Subee will then give you the option to mark it as canceled if you’ve already done so or allow you to work through a set of instructions. These instructions are specific to each company, so you know you’re getting accurate details on how to cancel. I would have liked to have seen functionality that cancels subscriptions automatically, but I couldn’t find a way to do this.
Another way to keep on top of your subscriptions is to get timely notifications before each subscription renews. That way, you can cancel it before you get charged for another billing period. These notifications and alerts can be customized to suit your specific requirements. There are options to receive all types of notifications, or specifically for things like trial expirations and upcoming price changes
Take control of your subscriptions
If you want to take back control and get on top of your subscriptions, then Subee is a fantastic tool to help you do exactly that. The free version will let you add up to five subscriptions, although if you have more to manage, then you’ll need to upgrade to premium for $19.99/£12.99 per month or $29.99/£29.99 per year.
Download Subee on iOS or Android.
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