Alternatives and Black Friday

This is a text automatically translated from Italian. If you appreciate our work and if you like reading it in your language, consider a donation to allow us to continue doing it and improving it.

For some years now, towards the middle of November we have found ourselves inundated with offers, more or less real, due to the Black Friday. And what does it have to do with it Le Alternative with Black Friday? We tend to be contrary to the idea of Black Friday, intense as a great day where offers accumulate and small traders are often unable to manage either the many orders or the discounts that other companies are able to offer.

Not to mention then of the environmental impact that Black Friday has on our planet. Quoting Chiara Campione of Greenpeace: “This shopping binge also generates greater volumes of waste than ever. This dangerous trend is harming our planet. We buy without thinking for a minute, but the waste we create will sometimes last for centuries” ¹. Translated: “This shopping binge also generates the largest volume of waste of the year. This dangerous trend is harming our planet. We buy without a moment's thought, but the rubbish we create will sometimes last for centuries.”

It is something that we have already told and explained in our two articles dedicated to Alternatives to Amazon And Alternative Christmas gifts.

We like companies that take advantage of this month to do something different. To give an example: the toy store chain The City of the Sun instead of getting into debt with offers that he couldn't support, he decided to transform the Black Friday in a Green Friday and from 26 to 28 November it will plant 1200 trees and invite its customers to do the same with a coupon ².

Black Friday vs fair price all year round

Let's say that at the level of personal choices, if we really have to decide which side to take, we prefer to give our money to those who offer a service at a reasonable price throughout the year (such as VPN Mullvad ^{3 4}) and not to those who offer continuous discounts, thus distorting the market and, in our opinion, also making fun of customers a little.

Also our Hosting does not participate in Black Friday ⁵, precisely for the reasons mentioned above. It is one of the many reasons that pushed us, for example, to choose it.

We always try, as you know, to find the right compromises between "I won't buy anything for the whole of November" and "I take advantage of any offer made to me".

It therefore makes little sense to ignore discounts and pretend they don't exist. If there is already some service that we use for free, for example, you can try using it in its Premium version thanks to the discounts. Or it can be a good excuse to find some offers for some ethical service that we would otherwise never have tried.

We also remind you that pay for a service or donate to developers who request it is, in our view, absolutely the best way to maintain independence and allow the people who work there to ignore the constant sirens of advertisers or any not entirely welcome investors.

Alternatives and Black Friday

This is why we decided to put some offers that we found related to Black Friday, but more generally this article could remain as an updated source to find out about discounts and promotions, not necessarily linked to Black Friday.

An important little note, given that these days you will be surrounded by promotional items.

This is not a promotional article and outside of Infomaniak which we talked about before you will not find any type of affiliate link.

Here are the offers we found

In alphabetical order:

• AnonAddy, there is a 50% discount for the first year of subscription to the "Lite" or "Pro" plan. The discount code to use is BLACKFRIDAY21 ^{6 7}. AnonAddy is a wonderful project Open source to create infinite aliases and keep your inbox anonymous. A dedicated article of ours is also in the works;

• Cryptee, offers the 10% when switching from the free to the paid plan. It doesn't say as long as the offer is valid, currently we find at the bottom during the purchase: “10% discount will be applied at checkout.”. Cryptee she is beautiful alternative to Google Docs;

• Inoreader, if you buy a year of service they give you six months for free. Inoreader it's an interesting feed reader RSS, one of ours alternatives to Google News;

• iode, it's not part of Black Friday but thanks to our review you can get the 10% discount by entering the coupon: lealternative. Valid until December 31, 2021. Iode it is a smartphone with an alternative operating system pre-installed, precisely called iode, very interesting;

• Koofr, offers the 35% on its 100GB, 1TB, and 2.5TB plans. It's one of ours alternatives to Google Drive favorite;

• ProtonVPN, is offered up to 50% discount on the 24 month plan. The 40% on the 12-month plan and the 25% on the monthly plan. ProtonVPN is one of best VPNs on the market, together with Mullvad;

• SimpleLogin, you can get a subscription for €80 Lifetime. SimpleLogin it is an excellent system for protecting your email address from spam and for obtaining endless personalized emails, even, possibly, with your own domain;

• StartMail, offers the 50% at a discount. It's an excellent one alternative to Gmail.

1. Black Friday to cause spikes in air pollution and plastic waste, warn environmentalists[↩]
2. No Black Friday 2021, Friday in Città del Sole is green[↩]
3. Twitter link[↩]
4. Nitter link[↩]
5. Black Friday: Infomaniak does not speculate with the planet[↩]
6. Twitter link[↩]
7. Nitter link[↩]

Join communities