I consistently hear people on YouTube complain that the subscribe button doesn’t do anything for viewers, now that channel notifications are controlled by the bell. But it does do something: it puts the videos from that channel in your subscription feed, which is readily accessible on all versions of YouTube. So why do people act like it doesn’t exist? I think it’s super convenient, especially if you’re subscribed to a ton of channels and don’t want your notifications feed flooded with new videos.
When the home page defaulted to the recommended view rather than subscriptions, many years ago, I simply saved the URL for the subscription feed as a favorite and that’s it. I never had issues, all videos from all my subscriptions show up.