It appears that all of life is becoming one big subscription fest. There’s Netflix, Spotify, Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus, food order subscriptions, Duolingo, Amazon, and YouTube. Can you believe there’s even a subscription for buying socks? Look, the list could go on, but I don’t want to bore you or myself.
Subscription services are here to stay, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. As much as we hate them draining our money every month, if we want the goods, we must accept that, in return, we have to part with our hard-earned cash.
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This is part of a regular series of articles exploring the apps that we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
Orbit is a beautifully designed subscription tracker app that is designed to solve the growing problem of subscription creep. It acts as a financial watchdog that uncovers every bill draining your account and centralizes them into one elegant interface. This all but eliminates the stress of surprise charges and helps you reclaim control over your wallet.
Adding subscriptions was easier than I thought
I was expecting to have to add each individual subscription manually, and even though this functionality is present in the app, there’s actually a much smarter way to load all your subscriptions into Orbit.
It’s called Magic Import, and it simplifies the tedious task of manual entry by capturing financial information directly from screenshots, bank statements, CSV files, or PDFs.
This is made possible through a mix of very clever AI and OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and I have to say it’s very good indeed. I uploaded a number of different files and found Orbit reliably picked up what I needed it to.
On the very odd occasion that Orbit interprets specific details of subscriptions incorrectly, it’s easy enough to dive into that particular subscription and adjust any number of data fields, including its billing cycle, which list you want it in, and whether it’s a free trial or not. These changes can be made when you import a subscription or further down the line if you spot a mistake.
Tracking subscriptions like a pro
The main homescreen lets you see your subscriptions in a list format, but the calendar view shows you when the money is actually going to leave your pocket. This helps you spot heavy payment days or times of the month where multiple subscriptions are bunched together. Armed with this type of information, you can plan ahead to make sure you’ve got the money set aside in your bank account.
The calendar view also includes readouts for the total cost of subscriptions throughout the month as well as a live countdown of how much money you still need to account for before the month ends. I process information visually and have found the calendar invaluable for tracking my own personal subscriptions.
There are also notifications that act as a proactive defense and are designed to bridge the gap between knowing you have a subscription and acting before you are charged. This is maybe most critical when you add a service marked as trial. Orbit will calculate the expiration date and send you a notification, usually 24–48 hours, before the trial period ends.
It’ll also send you renewal reminders for recurring bills. This is incredibly useful for cash flow management, especially for services that cost a lot of money. No one likes being surprised by a sudden large financial deduction, and notification reminders minimize the chances of it happening.
Go premium for the full experience
So, if you’ve ever subscribed to a service only to realize that a number of months down the line, you’re no longer using the service but you’re still paying for it, Orbit is designed just for you. It’s for those people who have anxiety around the build-up of bills and want a simple one-app solution for managing it all.
The free version is extremely limited, so I’d recommend paying the lifetime fee of $24.99 / £24.99 to gain access to the full range of premium features. These include unlimited tracking, magic import, iCloud backup, custom lists, and support for multiple currencies.
Orbit has a number of soon-to-be-released features that include family sharing, a dedicated Mac app, and advanced spending insights. With these new additions, Orbit will go from strength to strength and become increasingly helpful to users who want complete control over their spending.
Download Orbit on iOS.
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