It’s a common trap many of us have fallen into: Too many subscriptions to keep track of. In fact, you have so many that you’ve forgotten what they’re for, or why you signed up in the first place. Maybe you’ve even been charged because it slipped your mind to cancel a free trial. (Are you even using all of those streaming and cloud collaboration services?)
So, to help reign in the subscription chaos, two local entrepreneurs who were frustrated by this issue have built an app for that.
SubscriptMe, which just launched at the end of February, is an iOS app that helps you not only track all of your subscriptions and stay on top of your bills, but also find ratings and reviews on services before committing to new ones. Users can find the most popular services or browse curated lists, as well as share the ones they love with friends. SubscriptMe also auto-detects subscriptions based on the apps that live on your phone, so there’s no need to enter your credit card—and users can customize billing cycles or even set reminders. Meanwhile, the app’s insights provide a detailed report that breaks down exactly how much you spend on apps monthly and annually.
Ben Rothman and Scott Judson met in the General Assembly Product Management Immersive course in Boston. After hearing Judson pitch his idea, Rothman jumped at the opportunity to collaborate with him on building SubscriptMe. The project was then scoped at General Assembly, built mainly at District Hall and just launched last month. Since they both have full-time jobs, Rothman and Judson developed SubscriptMe primarily over Skype, Slack and Hangouts after work and on weekends. Already, the app has been featured in Product Hunt with 50 upvotes, and was picked as a "can't miss" app of the week by Mashable. Currently, they’ve hit more than 500 users.
“We found ourselves running into the same problems with our subscription services, and we learned that this was a common problem with so many subscriptions on the market,” said Judson in an email interview. “It seemed that there was a gap in the tools available in the marketplace that solely focused on subscription tracking and discovery, which is why we decided to tackle this challenge.”
Judson told me that the startup, which is currently bootstrapped and will be for the foreseeable future, has already gotten valuable feedback from Redditors as well as individuals within the cofounders’ networks—feedback that can be turned into actionable upgrades to the app.
“We’re going to continue to refine the user experience, simplify the process for discovering new services, and make it more obvious the ways in which users can save money on subscriptions,” he said.
Images courtesy of Subscript.me.
