Subscription Regret

I’m constantly finding myself with subscription regret. So many apps have moved to a subscription model and offer reasonable discounts for committing to a year or longer. Inevitably, within about 10% of the subscription duration I find a different service that I maybe would have preferred, but with the long lock in I feel like I can’t try it, or I regret spending money because a free alternative would have done the trick. Top of my list right now are:

• Inoreader - committed to 2 years on this but Netnewswire would do just fine for free.
• YNAB - committed to 1 year, and it’s a great app but Moneywiz looks like it matches my software philosophy better.
• Pinboard - I committed to 3 years on this but it’s starting to appear abandoned by the developer. There are better app based solutions for this - Goodlinks is one I’m looking at.

I don’t have a good answer on how to avoid this other than only signing up for monthly subscriptions. I suspect that I would be saving money in the long run that way.