mev

I have noticed several otherwise free apps also have paid subscription services, e.g.
- Mapmyride
- Strava
- Ridewithgps

I am not a fan of subscriptions sucking away money every month and so far have avoided these and many other non-cycling subscriptions (e.g. no cable TV but over the air antenna...). However, I anticipate my next extended trip where I'll be on the road for multiple months. Hence, I am curious for those of you who have subscriptions to some of these services - what is it you have found most useful and what you do with them?

As an example, I explored a little what I could do with free versions in terms of creating a route and downloading to my GPS device. It was probably my naive first approach but it seemed like I was exposing limitations in all three examples above with doing that for extended time, e.g.
- Mapmyride seemed to create *.gpx files that didn't directly load in the Garmin Connect app to go to my device - something about converting file format perhaps but I didn't go much further
- RidewithGPS let me create one route and transfer it with free version but somehow I needed to clear that route before doing it again
- Strava didn't let me create routes at all without a trial of their subscription service.
Perhaps this was my naive understanding of the apps or perhaps I was running into legitimate limitations but that was one of the few features I could see on the lists for paid versions that seemed more interesting. Along the way, I found an app that seemed to do what I wanted for free anyway (maplocs).

So anyways, for those of you who use some of these paid subscription stuff and also go cycle touring - what is it you use them for and what do you find valuable enough to keep paying your subscriptions...