Great post and idea.

We're paying for:

- MongoHQ

- MailChimp

- New Relic

- AWS (although not using most of their services)

- Github

- Dropbox

- Skype

Worth a mention although less-involving services:

- DNSPark: http://dnspark.net/

- Dynadot: http://dynadot.com/

And of course our web host:

http://hivelocity.net/

Thanks benologist. With some of these services, we save so much time, it feels like we hired someone.

Agreed, nice post. I ask myself this question (i.e. what I'd actually pay for) when trying to gauge if customers will pay for something I'm building. At first I often think "Yeah, I'd pay for this", but then reality sets in. Even making this list now I'm surprised how few services I buy.

  * Linode
  * iDrive
  * Skype
  * Laundry

Yes, laundry as in washing clothes. I'm currently in SouthEast Asia and it costs US$1 to have all of my clothes laundered, line-dried and ironed. If this were survey.io, laundry is the services I'd most miss if it disappeared.

Google Talk uses Jabber which has support for group chats. Hosting your own jabber server isn't a huge deal. You could use IRC for group chats and have multiple rooms there as well. Again, it's not a huge deal to setup your own IRC server.

It'd be nice if there were some free/open-source software services listed there, but oh well.

Just because you can set something up yourself doesn't mean you should. You'll take on the burden of maintenance, support, and teaching people how to use the system. We could all be running git on our own servers instead of using GitHub, our own mailservers with Postfix and Horde instead of using Gmail, and using rsync instead of Dropbox. But for most of us it's worth it to pay for a managed service with an improved user experience. This is especially true in a startup where time is the most valuable resource you have.

We tried to run our own IRC server. It's not exactly that easy. For example, you also need to deal with authentication, as well as set up an IRC proxy just to get backlogs on reconnect. Never mind the fact that IRC doesn't have important features like inline images or nice iPhone apps with notifications, etc.

We tried IRC, GTalk/Jabber, FlowDock and Campfire, but all of them were kinda "meh". HipChat is actually totally rad. Try it out: http://hipchat.com/r/2zqso

I was going to call you out for recommending HipChat and then posting a referral link, but then I saw that the referral merely gets you a custom icon that they draw for you. Pretty interesting incentive.

I genuinely like the product. I was not simply recommending it in order to get a custom icon. But I kinda really do want a custom icon :-)

For anyone who is wondering, for Android phones (not sure about iOS) there is an app called andchat which handles IRC extremely well, definitely worth checking out.

It handles IRC in a very native environment.

i really like these "what i pay for" lists that are starting... we have a list here too: http://ladyada.net/library/software/index.html

(left column) of all the things we use for our open-source hardware business.

we'd love to hear suggestions for more too..

Thanks just saved us some money with the Paypal merchant application suggestion. I just got off the phone with Paypal and it ends up that if you've applied to Paypal Pro then they auto-enroll you otherwise you need to apply separately.

rad, glad this worked out!

Our startup uses several of the products on the list, but there is a one big name missing: Hellofax

We use Hellofax several times a week and it's great! It makes signing and faxing documents extremely easy, instead of the mess it used to be.

If you think of companies to add, let me know. I can write another post later with a list from Hacker News.

Can other HN users add a list of the services they pay for?

For me: -Getcliky -Url2png

We (www.kapost.com) also pay for:

- Geckoboard, which gives us a really easy-to-set-up dashboard for business metrics, system health, etc.

- Papertrail - fantastic log aggregation service, lets you easily manage, search, etc your logs from disparate sources. Their support has been super responsive as well, great guys.

- github (pay version)

- google apps for business (email, xmpp)

- campfire (team chat) with propane.app

- AWS (lots)

- pivotal tracker

- concept share (i dont use it much, but a few others at work do)

- sendgrid

- digicert (CA)

- dnsmadeeasy (dns)

looking at possibly using:

- new relic

- airbrake (used to be hoptoad)

What do you use Url2png for?

Webpage snapshot for an email archive.

If anybody wants a free AwesomenessReminders subscription for their company, to keep them cheery, peppy, and focused on positive (leadership-driven) thoughts, then let me know and I'll hook you up!