Did anyone else notice that Ride With GPS sent out a note about “how to import all of your data into Ride With GPS”? I thought that was interesting, and very smart.
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Yup, finally checking personal email and here it is:
I’ve been doing that for 7 years. After Strava upgraded the routing stuff a few years ago, I have a small preference for using Strava because of better road surface info in areas I’ve wanted/needed that info. Also if I see a ride on Strava that looks interesting, its literally a couple of clicks to have it saved and pushed to my Garmin 530.
The problem is that they are sending that notice to people already linked in some manner to their system / software…they need to get the attention of people outside their ecosystem to they can try and convert them.
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The masses except those with Wahoos or Hammerhead Karoo’s. 
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Or Bytons 
+1. This is a network effect issue. Strava is the “Switzerland” platform, compared to Garmin. I’m in the Garmin ecosystem, but I don’t think of the platform the same way as Strava.
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Garmin does as well. Their editor has some quirks but it offers flexibility.
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It ‘draw lines’ in RWGPS ; come to think of it I’ve never seen a route planner without some sort of snap to road that you couldn’t toggle on or off 
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Wow you’re right, I normally only use the Garmin Connect app on my phone. AFAIK, they don’t have a manual mode. So after reading yours and @HLaB reply, I checked on my laptop connect.garmin.com. Yes it does have manual mode there 
Thank you for pointing out you can actually use the Garmin course creator that way!
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I do like Strava’s feature to send a Garmin Livetrack link by text to three contacts then I start my Garmin. With Connect alone it only sends via email. This weekend I tried using just Garmin and sending email-to-text using Verizon’s vtext. My wife got the notification but the link to follow was stripped out or the message was too long and truncated before the link.
Anyone have another solution to send Livetrack link by text without using Strava?
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I always just open Garmin Connect on my phone, click on Safety > Live Track then click “share” and it sends only the link to whoever I choose. Easy enough and I can send it any time as long as I have my phone with me. Of course it’s not automatic, but I like to take the extra step anyways to make sure I know it was sent
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Can always go the garmin Inreach solution but that’s costs money. Device and subscription. I use that as I’m often out on gravel rides with no cell coverage and often solo
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Komoot also offers live track feature. If you are using a route it shows where you are along that route and if you’ve taken any detours. Also your ETA + remaining battery life.
I typically still use Strava’s live track from my phone because that’s what I’m used to and it only takes like 3 taps to send the message to your safety contact. Komoot send the notification automatically right after one starts recording a ride. When I still used to have a garmin unit it was nice when it would auto start from my head unit and actually work but this wasn’t always the case.
One of the reasons I was on strava premium was the live track option which now seems to be free (at least from their app). I too cancelled my subscription for the next billing period because I don’t really appreciate the way Strava handled this. The only innovation they’ve been bringing lately is taking free features and making them paid for (still cool they did the opposite with the live track though). It still amazes me is how angry everyone is over this price increase and at the same time a huge part of the cycling community currently does not have a problem paying 25€ for a pair of plain white socks.
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Makes sense, I use the automated way and have my own email on the list along with anyone else, that way I can see that the email went out, if I want to double check.
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Does that method send by email or text message?
It is completely manual (I didn’t realize you were talking about automatic options at first), but yes you can choose where to send it. It comes from your phone so whatever app you want to use
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Strava for some reason converted me from an annual plan (at around 60/year) to 7.99/month plan at some point. I don’t remember getting any notification from then. I took stock of what I actually use Strava for and came to the conclusion the money is better spent elsewhere. So I ponied up for a TR yearly subscription instead 
Now I am in the process of disconnecting Strava from accounts. One impetus for this is their data policy which (AFAIK) says that: if we (strava) pushes data someplace, and if we (strava) stop working with where-ever your data is (e.g. TR or others) then that data needs to be deleted. Not risking all of my workout info in TR on the vagaries of Strava corporate.
I’ve also switched to intervals.icu for analysis (along with golden cheetah). Both have dropbox integration, so using dropbox to put fit files (garmin and tr can do this automatically, Zwift seems to need you to copy them over). From my understanding, synching not-to-strava is helpful for the intervals.icu platform as well. So far so good as far as I can tell.
The main downside right now is that I am still learning intervals.icu (which has some really neat stuff in it) so am trying to figure out where to go to get my numbers-related dopamine hit right after a workout (was using relative stress score in Strava for that, so will have to convert to ATL I think
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Exactly why I cancelled my auto renew in April 2022. Thankfully I noticed it immediately and filed a support ticket and had it fixed.
However I like Strava and will let it lapse a bit before deciding if I renew in 2023.
The other option if you are part of the Apple ecosystem is just to enable location tracking and share your location with your significant other. Since Garmin Livetrack requires a cellphone connection, it will only work in locations where the native Apple location tracking works and vice versa. Plus in the past (several years ago admittedly) when I tried live track it burned my cellphone battery down from ~9X% to ~30X% in 35 minutes.
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I really doubt Strava will delete anyone’s data no matter where it came from. If Strava pushes data elsewhere, I can’t see how they could delete it from another platform.
In any case, store your data in multiple locations.