It's convenient that you can buy subscriptions right through your phone. You don't need a long trek to a store so you can pick a voucher card. From services like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live to renewing prepaid phones, your phone is a hub for payments these days.

However, there's an important fact you should know so you can avoid getting ripped off if you have an iPhone or iPad: whenever you make an in-app purchase, Apple takes 30% of the profits and the developer gets the other 70%. This applies to everything from free-to-play game credits to subscriptions for music streaming services.

To combat this, music subscriptions cost 30% more than their normal prices if you purchase them through your iPhone. Spotify Premium, which we've lauded as well worth the cost, is normally $10 per month but costs $13 per month through the iOS app. Over a year, that's $36 wasted that you could have spent elsewhere!

Spotify offers instructions on its website for getting the lower price if you've subscribed through iOS, and it's a similar process elsewhere. You should cancel your current subscription and sign up for the Premium plan through the website, not the iPhone app.

It's a good idea to have a look through all your subscriptions. Check the prices on the main website for each so that you're not paying 30% more than you should. There's absolutely no reason to pay the upcharge.

Have you subscribed to any services through iOS apps, and did you realize you were getting ripped off? Let us know which subscriptions you've fixed!

Image Credit: pathdoc via Shutterstock