I'm a person doing a lot of different sports, mainly a waterman (windsurfing, sup surf / paddle) but also winter sport, indoor sports like swimming and ice hockey. I've always liked statistics and even logged a lot manually before apps and gps.
The last 10-12 years or so I've had different devices for recording but I've always kept Endomondo as the overall place with the updated history. This has to do with the great features for
- filtered overall statistics
- numbers on each sport on different periods (sessions, time, distance, calories)
- estimated personal bests on the different sports
- great flexible challenge feature that could be dialed for a specific group of sporta and different parameters (distance, calories, time, sessions). Always a lot of nice challenges around and great for creating challenges for friends, colleagues etc.
Endomondo closing down 2020
In November 2020 the news was that Endomondo would closing down by the end of the year. Under Armour bought the system from the Danish developers a couple of years ago, and then finally closed it for unknown reasons. They replaced it with MapMyFitness, a replacement very far from Endomondo :(.
So what next? Many hours spent trying out different options and only a few met the basic needs for me to even be considered
Comment below on your thoughts and favorite applications.
Garmin Connect
I use the Garmin Fenix device and really like the App end web application for the direct analysis after the sessions. But I've never came to turn with the historical overview. I've also never kept the data in Garmin correct over the years, by setting the right activity type, cleaning up, etc. That has been done in Endomondo. And starting over and importing all the history in Connect does not seem like an easy task.
Pros:
- Great general app for steps, heartrates, and the overview of recent activities
- Not sure if possible to use without a Garmin device in the future
Cons:
- Community features seems not that developed. There's no focus on getting inspired by others
- No real comparison measurements I've found usable, at least not for sports outside Run, Bike, Swim
- No easy challenge features
MapMyFitness - Under Armour
The resentment to Under Armour mayby show on my judgment, but the
Pros
- A lot of sports, very diverse and possible to select
- Imported everything nice from Endomondo
Cons
- Very little developed functionality.
- Lacks the overviews
- No searchability
- Bad community functions, hard to search, no real life friends using
- Maybe too many sports, hard to even select
- Sync to Garmin with a lot of flaws. Wrong types and a mess to update.
- Maybe closes down and changes again
Strava
Currently Strava is my main choice where I've spent many hours to fix, import and update the imported data that was not 100% from different sources.
Pros
- A big community of existing users and nice notifications and friend overview, a social platform
- Been around for a long time, and hopefully stays around.
- Very fun with the heatmaps
- Segments is nice to compare sessions, even if it lacks the flexibility to use for "out of track" activities like SUP where you don't go on the exact route.
- Club feature is nice, but missing the sports flexibility, only shows the 3 main sports in standings
- A good web and app that seems to be continuously developed
Cons
- Focus on Bike, Run and Swim with a lot of overview limited to those
- Missing the estimated PB and performance development of different sports
- User created/community challenges missing
- Missing graphs on sports over time
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| Heatmap is a fun feature in Strava. Both personal and global |
The really annoying parts of Strava is that some of the very nice features only applies to the 3 big sports, Run/Ride/Swim. Like the comparisons on Athletes, the start page overview. Clubs. It seems like basically very small development needs to implement some of the features on existing sports.
For now I'll stick with Strava, payed the fee and tries to update the historical data
