upgrading

[BigDaddyDiscover]

Hello very new to this very excited to get started. Just wondering if any of the premium members can tell me if its really better to pay the upgrade and get a premium membership or does it really not make much of a difference? It's not a matter of expense just not sure if I should go that route or would i better off just flushing my money down the toilette?

[+JunoDobi]

I also started this very recently. I started with my smartphone and a free basic membership. I found about 16 caches, but with the free app a lot of the caches in my area were inaccessible, so I "just" upgraded and found cache 17 today. If you are using a phone, I would say do it, if you have a GPS, I don't know.

 

JunoDobi

[+kunarion]

Hello very new to this very excited to get started. Just wondering if any of the premium members can tell me if its really better to pay the upgrade and get a premium membership or does it really not make much of a difference? It's not a matter of expense just not sure if I should go that route or would i better off just flushing my money down the toilette?

Find a few caches first, and see how you like it. Lots of people are fine with the limitations of free membership. For a little while, I would to print a couple of cache pages, go find caches. Eventually, I paid PM, and could load the entire town and beyond into my GPSr.

 

Here's a list of benefits of Premium Membership:

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

Edited May 20, 2016 by kunarion

[+noncentric]

It's very much a personal choice. I cached as a Basic member for a couple months before becoming Premium, but then I like to go caching as often as I can. I also prefer to use a GPSr, so having the ability to run PQ's and bulk load caches to my GPSr is important to me.

 

I'd recommend reading through the benefits listed on the page the kunarion linked to in the above post and think about whether those benefits align with the type of caching you want to do. If the cost is not a factor, then maybe just buy the membership anyway. Once you buy the membership, then you may want to cancel the auto-renewal feature right away and then just decide next year whether to renew or not.

[+on4bam]

but with the free app a lot of the caches in my area were inaccessible

 

If you use any other app (non-gs) only PM caches are unavailable.

[+AB&JB]

I was a free member for a few months and decided to try the premium. These was a 3 month for $10 plan that was a low risk option. I only use my phone (because I don't own a GPSr) and I really find the pocket queries, lists, and advanced searches useful. If you like it then change to the yearly (you save $10 a year). If not cancel and you'll only be out $10. Don't forget though because I think it auto-renews.