I've saved hundreds on glossy magazines with a little-known app perfect for holiday season

No matter your interests, it seems there's a glossy magazine for everyone these days. However, the cost can quickly mount up if you're buying a few each month and, what's more, if you're tempted to buy a selection in the departure lounge to tuck in your hand luggage for some poolside holiday reading you'll also find lugging the bag around gets tiresome quickly.

But money-savvy readers have been turning to the Readly app, a little-known service that allows them unlimited access to read more than 7,500 newspapers and magazines from anywhere in the world - and with it now offering new readers two months' free it's the perfect time to give it a try.

I discovered Readly when I got my Kindle Fire tablet and noticed it in the Amazon app store, but I've since also downloaded it on my iPhone - it's available on Android too. If you're someone who likes to read it is simply a game changer - you can never be bored with the breadth of reading material at your fingertips, which can either be downloaded to read offline or enjoyed online if you're worried about space on your device.

Readly's library includes women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Red, Closer, Grazia, Best, Bella, Chat and Women's Health, alongside celebrity gossip staples OK! and Heat. Elsewhere, for film buffs, Empire and Total Film are available, while sports enthusiasts are catered for with popular national titles like Four Four Two, Golf Monthly and more - perfect reading for fans of football, golf, cycling, rugby, horse racing and beyond.

Younger readers aren't left out either, with the Beano included in the selection and with Readly allowing family sharing across multiple devices, so everyone can find something fun to read without having to pay for multiple subscriptions. In addition to current editions, fully searchable archived editions are also available.

As a fan of collecting new recipes and home and garden ideas, I love to read various foodie and home decor magazines every month but with them often costing between £6 and £8 a time I had to rein myself in every time I went shopping. Discovering Readly last summer was genuinely a game-changer.

I regularly work through BBC Good Food, Olive, Delicious and Good Housekeeping for recipe ideas but there were several discoveries I made with the app that made it a must-have for me. Firstly, as a fan of American style cooking I was thrilled to see I could read dozens of US cooking magazines (and plenty of other things besides), tracking down recipes for everything from how to make an authentic pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving through to beignets - although the former definitely turned out better than the latter.

I soon discovered though that not only does Readly give you access to older issues of magazines but it's all fully searchable - so when that beignet recipe turned out to be a disappointment I was able to search and find alternatives in other magazines. Then, much to my joy, I realised I could screenshot pages of the magazines, building a collection of recipes on my iPad I could keep to refer back to later.

While the world definitely seems to be geared up to subscription models and I started my free trial thinking I would cancel at the end of the summer once I'd had my fill of holiday reading. However, I've ended up continuing to subscribe through the year and, with the monthly cost working out at the price of around two magazines, I always end up feeling like it's value for money.

For me the thing that made me continue my membership was the realisation that I could read all my favourite Christmas planning magazines packed with ideas, decor and recipes but boasting premium price tags to cover their hefty page counts within the cost of my subscription.

After the two month trial Readly is priced at £12.99 per month, but can be easily cancelled via their website before the first payment is due meaning there's a summer's worth of reading available completely free. 

Readly isn't the only app that offers this kind of unlimited newspaper and magazine access. Kindle Unlimited works in a similar way. As it too comes with a free trial (albeit only 30 days) and works with my Kindle I've also tried that too although cancelled at the end of the trial. The interfaces are similar - although I find ironically Readly works better on my device. Kindle Unlimited was missing a few of my favourite magazines that are on Readly, although it does offer some books included in the subscription alongside newspapers and magazines.