Quick Tip: I just saved over $100 by checking a subscription’s hidden plan options
I wanted to check out a mobile video editor to cut up some videos to share. So I searched the App Store, found one called Splice that looked pretty good, downloaded it, and got to work. Adding music was a Pro plan feature, so I needed to subscribe in order to finish the export. Pretty standard stuff so far.
The cheapest plan the app presented was $9.99 per week, or I could do $119.99 per year. Both options are too steep for my budget and benign use case, but luckily it had a weeklong free trial. I subscribed, and then before even exporting the video, I headed to the App Store’s subscriptions managment page to cancel the free trial. I do this for almost every subscription I sign up for because it allows you to continue to run out the current plan — including free trials! — but then it won’t auto-renew. I don’t want to forget to cancel if I don’t like an app. And if I do like it, I’ll just resubscribe.
That might be a handy tip on its own, but here’s the game changer: Make sure you hit the ‘See All Plans’ button on the subscription page.
In it, you’ll find every pricing option that the app offers. Sometimes it’s just the usual suspects like singular monthly, yearly, and lifetime prices. But sometimes there are way more choices there. In Splice’s case, there were dozens of weekly, monthly, and yearly options at price levels ranging from $3.99 per week to $199.99 per year! And guess what. You can choose to subscribe to any of the choices on that screen.
Why are all of plans here but not in the app? Because app developers have the ability to run different pricing schemes to A/B test them amongst their users. Thankfully, Apple recognizes that it’s inherently unfair that you might just get randomly placed into a group that’s only offered the higher prices. So, outside the app, in that subscription management page, you get to choose from any plan that’s currently being offered to any customers.
I exported my edited video to make sure that the app indeed worked as advertised, and when I was happy with the result, I went looking for a more affordable plan. About halfway down the screen, I found the cheapest yearly option, coming in at $10.99 per year. Just $1 more than the weekly option that I would have been relegated to had I not gone looking for something less expensive. Or, put another way, I just saved $508.49 (if paid weekly) or $109 (if paid yearly) off the in-app subscription plans.
And guess what, I’m still probably going to cancel that plan once it kicks in following the free trial so that I can reevaluate next February if I want to continue paying for a second year.