Now that Strava has paywalled their route creation feature, does anyone have suggestions for good sites?
My minimum requirements / wants:
Ability to export to Garmin Edge - This is probably a no brainer, but putting it out there
Needs to be able to do both road and gravel routes
Ability to copy / duplicate a route
Ability to easily edit an existing route - Strava really sucked at this part. It wasn’t really possible to edit / change a route once you had it created
“Snap to” roads / trails
Creating routes must work well on a computer - having a good iOS app is a bonus
Nice to have: ability to import the routes I’ve already created, and let me edit them
I’m willing to pay for a good site that meets all of the above.
Ridewithgps does it for me. I have paid for it in the past but I can’t remember why as currently the free version does everything I need. It should tick all your boxes although I don’t know what the IOS app is like.
Ridewithgps. I use it as my single source for creating all routes, then export / import them into my watch or head unit as needed. Their Collection feature to group similar routes is pretty slick, too.
One more for RideWithGPS. They tuned the site up a little while ago. Made some improvements I like.
It will ‘snap to’ pretty much all municipal and rail-to-trail bike trails. Sometimes annoyingly so.
Don’t know about the export process. I always just save my routes to a file and then transfer them via usb cable to my navigation device. I never connect my GPS devices to WiFi.
The Garmin Connect website has a built in router builder. On the left of the screen navigate to Training, then Courses, and then create a course from there. It meets all your requirements and is free. The route creating might be a little finicky for you since its a similar interface to Strava.
I use RideWithGPS all the time together with the Wahoo Elemnt. They have a relatively new feature where they can push an updated route directly to your head unit. You just have to link your account in the head unit settings. Often I will map a route in Strava first just so I can use the Heatmap feature (premium members only I think) which shows the most commonly used roads/trails and then I retrace it out using RideWithGPS so I get the turn by turn directions on my Elemnt. I find the RWG is easier for making edits and trying different variations of the same route by saving a copy the original route and grabbing the route line on the map and pushing/pulling it over different roads/paths. They recently improved their mapping functions and has some really good functions.
I tried RideWithGPS and the snap-to feature is really freaking annoying. They an option to turn that off. I know which road I want to ride on, so don’t assume the road I’m using is a problem and route me onto another road.
I gave the Garmin route creator another try, and at least you can duplicate courses, so that is a very slight improvement over Strava.
RWGPS web editor can be a little finicky, I drop and drag control points to force road selection. Think you have to toggle edit control points or something. The free version works. Our club has an account so I get offline maps if it’s in the library. I mostly edit club century rides - I ride my bike to somewhere on the route instead of driving 30 minutes to the start.
