Quiet donor

The Figma renewal email landed on Tuesday just after lunch.

Annual team plan. Multiple seats. Renewing in three days.

I checked the dashboard. Last project? 6 months ago. Last login? 47 days ago. I scrolled to my account page and canceled it before the coffee finished brewing.

Canva went the same way two months ago.

Here's the part that bothered me. I didn't cancel them because I'd stopped needing images. I make the same amount of visuals — or more — now than I did a year ago. Carousel slides, blog headers, quick mockups for clients. The work didn't shrink. The tools did.

What happened in between was Gemini got so good at images. Claude got good at code. The bundle that used to be Figma + Canva + my own time became a few prompts and a workflow I run myself.

It does maybe 30% of what Figma does.

And 100% of what I was actually using Figma for.

That's the part nobody talks about. You're not paying for the tool. You're paying for the 70% of features you'll never use, bundled with the 30% you actually need. And until recently, there was no way to unbundle them.

Now there is.

The renewal email was the tell.

And when you stop using the thirty, you're not a customer anymore.

You're a donor.

Subscription audit Open your bank or card statement. Filter for recurring charges from the last 90 days. For each online subscription, ask one question: when did I last log in? Not "when did I last find it useful." When did I literally open it. If the answer is more than 60 days ago, it goes on the kill list. Before you cancel, ask the second question: what was I actually using it for? Not the feature list. The actual job. Usually it's one or two things. For each of those one or two jobs, open Claude or Gemini and ask: "can you do X for me right now?" Try it once. If the answer is yes, cancel it. Last six months for me: Canva, Figma, ChatGPT, and two others — gone. Over $200/month saved. That's $2,400+ a year. For tools I wasn't opening anymore.

Everyone else flexes the SaaS stack they pay for. Flex the one you canceled. What's the subscription you're still paying for but haven't opened in 60 days? Reply and tell me — I might feature the best one next week.

That's all for this week. See you next Thursday.

— Michal

P.S. None of the companies I canceled reached back to ask why. If you run a subscription business, ask them why they canceled. Not through an automated form, ask them like a person. You will get valuable feedback.