I tried swapping cloud storage for a portable SSD, and learned why subscriptions are so hard to escape
Throwing off the yoke of subscription costs is not an easy task
I'm sure I'm not the only person who's getting fed up with having to pay a monthly fee for everything in life, from streaming services and wearable subscriptions to creative software and more.
None of these is a huge expense on its own, but once you add them all up, you realise you're steadily losing money on things you don't necessarily need.
After a sobering look at my bank account at the end of May, I decided I had to do something about it. I tallied up my subscriptions, and even though I don't think the number is excessive, I realised I could cut a few without having a huge impact on my sanity.
When I say cutting, I really mean replacing. My Adobe CC subscription runs until the end of November, and cancelling early would mean paying for the privilege, so that one is staying for now.
When I do cancel it, I'll still need photo editing software for work, so I'll probably switch to an option that doesn't require a monthly fee, such as Affinity Photo.
The convenience tax
As with most subscription-free alternatives, though, there's usually a trade-off. You might save money in the long run, but you'll often have to sacrifice a little convenience or find workarounds to achieve the same results.
One of the most popular ways to escape subscriptions is to take things offline, whether that's buying your favourite films on physical discs or listening to music on vinyl or CD. That comes with its own costs: you need to build a library and buy something to play it on.
Thankfully, physical media has seen a resurgence in recent years, so it's easy enough to buy new players instead of hunting down ageing second-hand hardware. The downside is that some modern players cost a small fortune, although there are still affordable options if you're willing to shop around.
Cloud control
Another major subscription expense is cloud storage. I have a 2TB iCloud plan, costing me more than £100 a year, largely because I couldn't be bothered to delete old photos and videos as I went.
As my iPhone filled up, Apple kindly suggested I upgrade my storage and offload everything to iCloud. It's incredibly convenient, and before long I'd forgotten I ever had storage issues.
It took about a week for my phone to upload everything, replacing my originals with low-resolution thumbnails. I wasn't the biggest fan of this approach, but I accepted it as the price of freeing up local storage.
I didn't want to lose my photos and videos, but I also didn't want to keep paying to store them forever, so I started looking into alternatives.
Eventually, I settled on the Lexar ES5, a 1TB portable SSD that's compact, works well with iPhones and integrates perfectly with my MacBook. Plus, it's IP65-rated and supposedly drop-resistant up to 3 metres (I haven't tried throwing it around, though).
Exit wounds
In my head, the process was simple: download the Lexar app, plug in the SSD, back everything up and cancel iCloud. In reality, it took almost as long to get my media out of iCloud as it did to upload it in the first place.
Apple certainly doesn't make the process easy. The Lexar app can't back up directly from iCloud, so you first have to download everything back onto your phone before transferring it to the SSD.
The catch? My phone didn't have enough free storage, which is exactly why I'd moved everything into iCloud in the first place.
The solution was to disable Optimise iPhone Storage and wait for Apple to download everything again. You can't prioritise certain files, choose which downloads first, or even clearly see what's already been restored.
At the same time, you have to back everything up to the Lexar drive and figure out which files are safe to delete. Thankfully, media that's already downloaded no longer has the little cloud arrow on its thumbnail.
Once those files are backed up, they can be deleted. Unfortunately, iCloud downloads files seemingly at random, so you're constantly checking what's available, backing it up and deleting it before repeating the whole process.
Then there's another step: repeatedly emptying the Recently Deleted folder to actually reclaim storage.
Hot swap
Thankfully, the Lexar ES5's transfer speeds are lightning fast. Thousands of files move across in minutes, which is impressive considering it's a tiny passive SSD that's barely larger than a keyring. Better still, the Lexar app is refreshingly simple to use, making the whole experience a little less frustrating.
The passive design comes with one drawback. Because the SSD draws power directly from the iPhone, both devices heat up quickly, so you need to work fairly fast. Thankfully, the speedy transfer rates mean each backup session doesn't take long.
The project also made me realise just how much redundant data my phone stores. Apple Wallet alone takes up more than 3GB, apparently for Apple Pay transaction data, and there's no way to clear it.
Apple also found another way to fill my MacBook. The Photos app had quietly downloaded all 11,000-plus photos and videos from iCloud, consuming almost 100GB of storage. Once everything was safely backed up to the Lexar, I deleted the lot.
It has to be said that buying the Lexar ES5 costs roughly a year and a half's worth of iCloud, so there is an upfront price to pay for escaping subscriptions. It also only solves one of my recurring monthly payments, and I still have plenty more to tackle.
One step at a time, as they say. Even if breaking free means paying the occasional lump sum for a gadget or piece of software, I'd rather buy my way out of subscriptions than keep renting the same convenience year after year.
You can check out the ES5 Portable SSD at Lexar (if you're interested).
