Over the last few YEARS, I’ve kept Readdle Documents app on my iOS phone. It’s been a handy app to have and I started using it when it was free. Unfortunately, they’ve switched to a subscription model that is $9.99 a month with recurring billing.
While a part of me feels bad about using their app for years at no cost, paying $9.99 a month with recurring billing is not something I want to do. After all, there are only so many cups of coffee one can give up (and hey, I don’t drink Starbucks) or other stuff to cover the expenses.
Documents is gone now. Farewell, old friend.
Alas, I know I’m old-fashioned. I want to pay once for an app, and it stays bought. It’s totally unreasonable I know, but I had no problem paying for $4.99 one-time fee for an app that I won’t have to renew. In the meantime, I’ll try to find a way to eliminate the need for that kind of app.
Update
FE File Explorer has turned out to me MUCH easier to use and navigate than Readdle’s Documents app. One of the main reasons I kept Documents around, aside from its ability to view ePubs (ebooks) and play audio/video, was the ease of transferring files. Documents relied on DocsTransfer.com website, rather than arcane FTP/HTTP links that you could use. However, switching back to FTP/HTTP links was easy…it eliminated having to connect the two devices, except via a web browser.
The biggest surprise, though, was migrating gigabytes of data from Documents to FE File Explorer. Instead of uploading it to my computer, as I feared I would need to do, I was able to simply SHARE entire folders from one app to the other. Transfer was instantaneous, and in a matter of 2-3 minutes, I was done. After verifying files transferred successfully, I was able to remove the Readdle Documents app from my device.