Premium v Free membership

[Malbrown24]

Good afternoon,

 

I am weighing up the pros and cons of premium membership, does premium far out weigh the free membership, or should I stick with what I've got? I would like to hear the thoughts of premium members, what are the perks and is it worth the upgrade?

 

Thanks in anticipation,

 

Kind regards

 

Marianne (malbrown24)

[+Bear and Ragged]

Don't expect Premium Member Only caches to be 'Better' than non-premium member caches...

 

My reason for PM?

Pocket Queries.

(And that warm feeling, knowing you are 'putting something back' into the site. )

Edited July 7, 2013 by Bear and Ragged

[Malbrown24]

Many thanks Bear, it's one of those "am I going to use it" as we go through phases, we tend to do it more when we travel abroad, so offline facilities are important due to cost of data when abroad.

[+whh0]

Pocket Queries... Must say I also like all the statistics

[+sparklefingers]

Pocket Queries... Must say I also like all the statistics

 

+1

[+Lieblweb]

Pocket Queries... Must say I also like all the statistics

 

+2

 

If you enjoy the hobby, and you have a handheld GPS.....pocket queries are the way to go. Also...email notifications of new caches.

 

A little read for the OP

http://support.Groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=175

[+Chief301]

$30 a month is a small price to pay for the benefits of Premium membership. The Pocket Queries feature alone makes it worth the price. I don't see how anyone manages to plan a caching outing without it. Once you've tried it you'll never want to be without it.

 

Other PM features include bookmark lists, Favorite points, and access to PMO caches (although as Bear said, don't expect them to be better than regular caches necessarily, though)

 

I think they offer a $10 for 3 months plan, if you want to try it out first.

[+simplysup]

$30 a month is a small price to pay

 

That's a HUGE price to pay! Fortunately, it's closer to $30 a year; currently £24.99 in the UK, or £7.99 for three months.

[+simplysup]

To augment the PQ vote, I'll also throw in the access privileges you get to the Groundspeak API, so you can use third-party programs like GSAK to their full advantage. If I were to revert to "normal" membership now, I'd feel hamstrung.

[+Chief301]

$30 a month is a small price to pay

 

That's a HUGE price to pay! Fortunately, it's closer to $30 a year; currently £24.99 in the UK, or £7.99 for three months.

 

Oops....what was I thinking? LOL. Of course I meant $30 a year. Yeah, don't think I would pay $30 a month, that would be a little extreme....

[+Happy Humphrey]

The API feature alone makes subscription worth it. Without Pocket Queries you can't really get "serious" about the game. GSAK became much enhanced when the API was added, and IMHO is the other geocaching tool that's well worth the (small) investment.

[+sparklefingers]

The API feature alone makes subscription worth it. Without Pocket Queries you can't really get "serious" about the game. GSAK became much enhanced when the API was added, and IMHO is the other geocaching tool that's well worth the (small) investment.

 

I've been hearing how great GSAK is but it's a shame it only works on windows.

[+Ranger Roo]

Before I upgraded to Premium, I would spend hours the night before a trip inputing coords manually to the GPS. I didn't realize how revolutionary PQs would be until after I upgraded. Very much worth it

[+Curly_McWurly]

We found 1000 Caches before upgrading from Basic to Premium.

 

The best thing about Premium membership is the ability to create Pocket Quires which lets you download lots of Caches at once. You can still download Caches as a Basic Member but each Cache has to be downloaded individually and only the Difficulty, Terrain, Cache Size & Hint are sent to your GPS.

 

The improved statistics are pretty poor to be honest; in my opinion websites such as project-gc.com give you much more detailed statistics and are available to Basic Members.

 

Premium Caches are no better than Basic Caches. You just get more mag nanos, film cans, clip top boxes as well as some very creative and clever caches. The advantage of upgrading after finding all the local ones is it means you have lots of new Caches to find locally and don’t have to travel 20 miles to find the nearest Cache.

 

We’ll continue to renew our membership as it feels like we’re giving something back to a hobby that’s given us a lot more in return.

[Langy]

I think as most people have mentioned the Pocket Queries are the best think about being a premium member.

 

During the last year I have toyed about upgrading to a Premium Member, even after just recently changing phones from an Android to Samsung to an HTC Windows 8 Phone I still wasn't going to upgrade as I was able to get all the data I needed and stored on the phone before I left home quite quickly. The turning point for me was when I upgraded from my eTrex H to an eTrex 20. With the eTrex 20 I can simply copy over the GPX file generated by the pocket query and I have all the cache details I need. It still requires planning but is far quicker and easier for me when using a proper GPSr. If you just use a phone then it is possible to use free programs and download all the caches you want.

 

Also as mentioned the notification of new caches is also nice, along with the premium member caches. Before I moved to Cumbria from Suffolk there were a set of Premium member caches that I couldn't do. Now since I've upgraded to Premium last week I got a notification of a new cache (which was also a Premium member cache) when I got to work in the morning. Lunchtime I was out and got the FTF. Only my second FTF in the first 250 finds I've had.

 

It's not a lot of money each year if you are serious about the hobby, if you only plan to do it a few times a year then I'd go to the manual planning side.

 

Paul