Life by subscription – Picture of the day

The audience of ecosystem products is growing, and their operators are constantly updating the list of available services. Kommersant looked into what is currently included in subscriptions from leading ecosystems and interviewed experts on how to choose the most effective products in terms of content and how to avoid unconscious costs.

The audience of ecosystem subscriptions is growing every year: by the end of 2023, 40% of Russians who live in cities were their users. This is data from an online survey by GfK (7.5 thousand Russians aged 16 to 55 took part in it). According to the same study, the highest level of ecosystem subscription penetration is in Moscow and St. Petersburg (48%), as well as in the age groups 16–24 years (47%) and 25–34 years (48%).

Many users have several subscriptions at once. The majority of Russians (65%) use up to two paid subscriptions to ecosystem services: such data was provided in a Tele2 study (the company conducted a study of user interest in subscriptions in its digital channels covering more than 21 million people in August 2023). A fifth of Russians use three or four subscriptions, about 10% use seven or more, the study says.

The largest Russian digital ecosystems (according to the analytical company Spektr, see Kommersant on January 15) are Sber, Yandex, VK, MTS and Tinkoff. Kommersant interviewed these operators about the composition and cost of their subscriptions as of April 5.

“Yandex”

Yandex Plus opens access to Yandex content services (Kinopoisk and Yandex Music) and cashback points when paying with Pay in Yandex services and in online stores. Subscription is worth it 299 rub. per month, You can add three close people to it, and each will have their own “Plus” points and recommendations in content services. In addition, you can connect additional options:

• e-book service “Bookmate” (100 rub./month.);
• option “More movies” (100 rub./month.) opens access to additional content on Kinopoisk;
• option “For Travelers” (200 rub./month.): with its help, subscribers receive the same number of S7 miles and Plus points when making payments in Yandex services and on external platforms using Yandex Pay. And other options.

“Sber”

Sber has three subscription options: SberPrime Start, SberPrime and SberPrime+. “SberPrime Start” will cost 99 rub. per month, “SberPrime” – 199 rub. per month, and SberPrime+ – 399 rub. per month. SberPrime Start includes:

• free card service and SMS alerts;
• 5% cashback with SberThanks bonuses for purchases in the Cafes and Restaurants category.

The following are added to SberPrime:

• cashback on online purchases at partner companies Samokat, Sbermarket and Megamarket with the ability to pay up to 99% with SberThanks bonuses;
• payments and transfers in the amount of up to 200 thousand rubles. per month without commission;
• access to the Okko online cinema;
• access to the “Sound” streaming service;
• up to 5% cashback bonuses for purchases at Sber Pharmacy;
• 25% discount on tests and online consultations from SberHealth. And other services.

“SberPrime+” offers additional benefits in addition to what SberPrime subscribers have: for example, an increased limit on payments and transfers without commission – up to 400 thousand rubles. per month, 10% cashback at all gas stations, etc.

“Tinkoff”

The bank’s main ecosystem subscription is Tinkoff Pro. The bank is updating it: new conditions will be available to Tinkoff clients from April 15, 2024. The cost will be 299 rub. per month, or a one-time transaction in 1990 rub. in a year.

For Tinkoff Pro users, the existing subscription benefits will remain: increased cashback on the balance on the Tinkoff Black card – up to 5% for purchases over 3 thousand rubles. and higher income from savings – 10% on savings accounts. As well as increased cashback for the purchase of tickets to theaters, concerts and exhibitions, when purchasing air tickets and booking hotels, a discount on Tinkoff Mobile services and more favorable conditions for individual entrepreneurs.

New options will include:

• balance transfer: Tinkoff Pro clients will be able to transfer a credit account from another bank to Tinkoff. After the transfer, the user will receive an additional interest-free period of 180 days;
• free luggage insurance for trips up to $1 thousand;
• installment plan by credit card for purchases up to 10 thousand rubles. for a period of three months;
• cashback from partners. For example, when subscribing to Ivy, Premier – 30%, to VK Music, MyBook – 20%.

VK

VK closed its VK Combo subscription: at first it was integrated into the “Fire” subscription from Gazprombank, but later it was completely closed. Currently, users only have access to a subscription to VK Music. She is standing 169 rub. per month.

At the same time, the services “VK Music” and educational services Skillbox, Geekbrains, Skillfactory, Contented are included in the subscription packages from Gazprombank – “Gazprom Bonus”. The “VK Music”, “Career” and “Education” packages can be activated for 99 rub. per month. Also, the package with “VK Music” can be connected to a Tinkoff Pro subscription for additional 159 rub. and 20% cashback.

MTS

MTS Premium costs 249 rub./month. You can invite up to three people to subscribe for free. The subscription includes the KION online cinema, spam blocker “Defender”, “MTS Music”, free start on MTS Urent scooters, accumulation and write-off of cashback for trips, book service “Strings”, permanent 10% discount on BelkaCar car sharing, banking MTS CASHBACK partner card with increased cashback in supermarkets and for other daily purchases and other services.

The short-term rental service for electric scooters “Urent” has become part of the MTS ecosystem, and the process of integrating “Urent” clients into the ecosystem is now underway, MTS clarifies. Now the Yurent Plus subscription has been transformed into MTS Premium, but the cost and conditions for existing Yurent clients will remain the same.

How to choose a subscription

According to Telecom Daily, on average, the owner of an ecosystem subscription often uses only three services from the entire list of available ones, comments the general director of the news agency Denis Kuskov. “Therefore, when choosing a subscription, you need to focus on such basic services or services that are most important to a person,” he says. “The drivers for the growth of ecosystem subscriptions, according to our data, are cashback – people are trying to save money – as well as online cinemas,” added Denis Kuskov. An important criterion could be the ability to share a subscription with other people, he added.

The most rational course of action when choosing an ecosystem subscription is to study the proposals of ecosystems, correlate them with your needs and rationally calculate the pros and cons, comments Nikolai Sedashov, managing partner of the analytical agency Spektr. “But people do this quite rarely,” he says. “A common scheme is to subscribe to a tripwire (trial periods during which users are invited to familiarize themselves with the service, for example, for 30 or 60 days for 1 ruble) as part of a promotion, and then either start using part of the services regularly or forget about it until the first write-off,” says Nikolai Sedashov. “In 2023, we saw how popular TV series could attract subscriptions. Thus, the online cinema Wink surpassed Ivy in terms of the number of subscribers and jumped from third to a confident second place thanks to the series The Boy’s Word. We don’t have exact figures, but “The King and the Clown,” which was advertised along with 60 days of subscription for 1 ruble, probably had a similar effect on Yandex Plus,” added Nikolai Sedashov.

“The subscription is a very personal and living product that is constantly updated. The first step is to understand whether it really brings benefits and, if it does, what kind and when was the last time you used it,” added the Tinkoff representative. “It’s important to stay tuned for updates; the latest version may have added better options that you didn’t know about,” he added.

When choosing, it is also important to take into account several factors: variety of content, ease of use, additional benefits, quality of content, as well as reviews and ratings, comments Natalya Lesogor, director of the MTS ecosystem products development department: “To choose what you like and not make a mistake, you can take advantage of free periods that allow you to test the service before making a final decision to subscribe.”

How to avoid unnecessary spending

There are no recent studies on this topic, but according to a 2021 survey, about a quarter of Russians paid for subscriptions that they do not use. And this figure has probably increased significantly, because if in 2021, according to J’son & Partners Consulting, there was an average of just over one ecosystem subscription per Russian citizen, then in 2023 – already one and a half, says Nikolai Sedashov.

In the West, the industry of subscription managers has been established for quite some time – these are applications such as Rocket Money, Bobby, Trim, continues Nikolai Sedashov. “On the Russian market, the only such solutions are the subscription marketplace SubU and the SubsCrab application from Kaspersky Lab. These are quite convenient solutions, but in general they lag far behind their foreign counterparts. The problem is that Russia has not yet developed mature regulation of open banking,” he added.

To avoid subscriptions to unnecessary services, you can try to keep a list of paid subscriptions that you once signed up for somewhere in the notes on your phone or diary, advises Nikolai Sedashov. Also, according to him, you can check for forgotten subscriptions by tracking the history of expenses in your bank account, including through push, SMS notifications and mail.

Valeria Lebedeva