Yeah, I'd pretty much agree with this (and I too have no idea how the economics of these sites works - maybe advertising keeps them afloat?). As has been mentioned, none of the sites is perfect, and each tends to have a subset of useful features that the others don't support.

One thing I bear in mind is to extract all the maps and routes I'm using as a standard format - usually GPX, but I've also been using Garmin's Fit file recently - and storing them elsewhere (they're pretty tiny). That way, if RideWithGps goes belly-up I have all my mapping data safe. If you prefer to work on a certain tool to e.g. establish routes between named places, and then another to refine it, transferring it between the tools as a GPX file should work fine.

I also use some offline tools for working with these open (or almost open) formats. For basic viewing/manipulations of routes, Viking is pretty good. Qmapshack is extremely powerful but pretty technical. Google Earth "Pro" (desktop) is surprisingly good. Some of these are quite linux-specific and geeky!

I have no special insight other than 30 years in startup software development, but I honestly don’t know how long RWGPS will be able to function as a business.  They can’t be making much money.  I think about this every time I embed one of their maps in a journal page.  In 5 years, will it still be there?

I pay for both RideWithGps and Strava. I use RideWithGps for route planning. In my experience it's by far the best for that. I  use Strava to track my rides, and for the "social" aspects of it.  It's the only "social media" app I use (no Facebook, Instagram, etc. etc.)

I make my living selling subscription-based software that I created. My customers are businesses, though - I think that's much, much easier than trying to sell software to consumers. So I believe in paying for software that provides value.

It's pretty well known in the software world that Strava has struggled from time to time financially. It would not shock me if they go away at some point. Their dilemma is that they can't charge all the "freeloaders" who currently don't pay for the service, because then their "network effect" would diminish so much that their service would be a lot less valuable. It wouldn't be much of a social network if 80% of the users who don't want to pay go away.

I didn't know anything about RideWithGps until I did a little research just now. Apparently they employee 30 people in Portland, Oregon. Their employee benefits look good. It looks like the two founders are still running the company. They don't run ads, so they must be making enough money with their monthly subscriptions for the business to make sense. Or they took a bunch of VC money and are still operating on that. But  unlike with Strava, whose problems in that area are well known, I've never read anything similar about RideWithGps.

I too have a paid RideWithGPS account as I believe in paying for services but all I am using it for at present is recording my rides so I have nothing to contribute about the route planning function.

Hi Steve,
I've found Komoot quite good as a planning tool.  It's handier for circuit routes, but also works for routes with different start & finish points.

Also use OSMAnd, the latter instead of/as a complement to Google maps. I have OSMAnd-plus -- a $30 (IIRC) one-time payment a few years ago gave me access to any regional maps in the world.  I upload and download these as needed.

Big advantage (for me) of Komoot and OSMAnd is that both can be used offline.

I've had mixed results with Googlemaps -- several roads weren't where they were alleged to be, or were nonexistent.  (Hard to imagine a latter-day Robert Frost doing something poetic with Googlemaps...)

Hope that's helpful.

PS-as-edit:  Both apps are on my iPhone8, as well as on my Macbook Pro laptop.  I usually use the laptop for planning, then transfer the route/s to my phone.  FWIW, I prefer to rough out my route first with paper maps.

This isn't exactly a reply to the comments in this thread, but I've noticed that you often encounter variances between the surface type reported by RWGPS and what's actually on the ground.  ("Lying RWGPS" is a phrase I've come to smile at...)

RWGPS, and Strava I presume, get their data from a third party of course.  In the case of RWGPS it's OpenStreetMap.  It turns out that there's a mechanism in place that lets you report the errors to the data source and, once they've been confirmed, the data are updated and RWGPS gets better.

In the RWGPS Help there's a collection of Articles, one of which deals with Surface Types.  Within that article there's a discussion of how to go about reporting surface type errors in the OSM data and what to expect when you do.

Like others who have posted,  I also pay for an annual RWGPS subscription.  At first I just used the free version, but discovered that the $50/year fee provided a good deal for my needs.  So far I haven't felt the need to upgrade to the premium version for an extra $30/year, but others on Cycleblaze have found it to be worthwhile. I use it to help plan out tours in advance - my next tour is planned to be 38 riding days, and I have created each day's route with RWGPS.   Of course, my plans may change, but I currently have the entire planned tour saved as a collection in my RWGPS account.  

The Tulsa Bicycle Club also has a RWGPS account and all of the club rides are mapped using RWGPS so that members can easily download the route in advance.   The Tulsa Bicycle Club has hundreds of members, so lots of folks get used to using RWGPS on club rides. I don't know the numbers, but I suspect that there are quite a few of us (individuals and clubs) that pay for the subscription to get more than is available from a basic account.  I think it's likely that RWGPS will be around for a while.  

I've tried to use Google Maps but mostly had negative experiences:

In 2018 or so, a Danish cyclist (not on Cycleblaze, his web site is here) was coming through the Maryland area as he worked he way up the east coast on the final leg of an around the world tour. I met him for lunch in Laurel MD and he was using Google maps and showed me his route to and from our lunch stop. He was an experienced global cyclist and was not afraid to share the road with 60 mph traffic to reduce mileage, but even by those standards, the route was nuts. I convinced him to add a few miles when leaving our lunch spot and then retry Google maps, and it vastly improved the route.

In 2020, I used Google maps street view to see what the shoulder situation was on Route 17 on the leg of a Florida tour from Arcadia to Auburndale. Mostly my error in interpreting what I saw, I suppose, but I didn't enjoy that segment, would have increased length to avoid it.

This past weekend, I rode from my house to my daughter's house, a 42 mile ride I've done many times and the route is 6 miles of roads and 36 miles of Maryland/DC/VA trails. I met up with a friend who rode with me the last 36 miles and he had used Google maps and it didn't know about a lot of trail connectivity and all the trails and connectors are many years old. We would have had a longer ride and on some really annoying roads if we had followed that route.

One thing I've found useful for any auto-routed planning is asking for a sanity check on the Regional Discussions Forum on Bike Forums here (I've one gotten US input). That might have saved me from near mutiny back in 1999, after I planned a four person tour around Lake Champlain using my handheld Garmin GPS and Garmin software and after a long ride into headwinds most of the way from Isle la Mott VT to Plattsburgh NY. 

At the final endpoint, we were staring at an empty lot, not a Days Inn. After a brief call to the hotel, we had an uphill, upwind slog along crumbling and heavily trafficked Rt. 3 West.  After that, the 3 others ripped off my captain's badge but couldn't find a keel to haul me under...

Google maps can be extremely helpful but it certainly depends on where you are and what you're looking for. It was indispensable in Thailand, where nearly every tiny road is Google Street View-ed. It won't map bike routes for you there, but it will do motorcycle routes (who knew?) and walking routes, so between those two we usually were able to suss out a quiet route. 

As far as helping find accommodation, it was really great, we used the satellite view to confirm that a place really existed (or had). As a Google user, I edited Google maps more times than I can tell you, when a supposed accommodation was just plain wrong, closed, or nonexistent. You would click on that little pink hotel icon and the photos showed a selfie out in a rice field or their new motorbike. "Aspirational hotels", we called them. Google can't check them out for us, that's what we in the user community do.

If there hadn't been a recent review of a hotel or restaurant (which were usually in Thai but that's okay) then odds were good that it had closed due to covid. 

There had been recent flooding last November north of Bangkok, so a few of our chosen routes were being repaired and we had to backtrack or reroute. That certainly wasn't Google Maps' fault, we just had to go with it. It's all part of the adventure.

Hi Steve. I just spotted something on this topic in a bike touring Reddit forum. This person is developing a routing app (available only on desktop at present but mobile is coming) that might be what you're looking for.

https://sherpa-map.com/

To read the Reddit post (which is pretty informative) you can go here: https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycletouring/comments/14rb5bn/i_made_a_new_cycling_routing_app/

Thanks Andrea! I found the guy's enthusiasm invigorating. But at heart his thing is like RWGPS, sharing the characteristics that do not thrill me, but more so.  For example, it really wants you to click on places rather than name them. And when I gave it my home address as a starting point, it showed me the neighborhood rather than the place. Ok, I clicked on our place. Then to route to Duncan, 15 km away, I had to hunt Duncan up and click on it. Admittedly, the "Leisure" option did suggest a less hilly way to make the trip, one we normally do not consider.  Next I thought to try Sherpa out on the Cuxhaven to Hann Munden ride I have been using to evaluate other programs. Sherpa agreed to show me the general vicinity of Cuxhaven, but clicking near Cuxhaven always gave the error message "Can not determine nearest road", even when I carefully clicked on a road.

It would be fun to exchange feedback with the author, but his thing does not seem to have the base functions I think I have been looking for.

p.s. We are set to leave for Leipzig in a month, and from there will head west. In our routing, we have veered north to try to avoid the Harz Mountains, but they seem to have a magnetic attraction, and we now are heading straight to Quedlinburg and then Harzburg. These mountains are infested with witches and demons. Fortunately this does not include the one that got Hansel and Gretel, which was in the Black Forest. Maybe Sherpa should have an "avoid dark forests" switch?