So what's good about a Strava subscrition other than recording distance?

For me it's the segments, best efforts, matched activities, personal heatmaps, group challenges. But different people have different preferences, it really depends on what you expect. 

Here’s a list of subscriber features if it helps, https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216917657-Strava-Subscription-Features

I canceled my subscription when it was up for renewal a couple weeks ago. If I was training for a race, I might have paid up, but I’m not. Also, my primary activity is not running or cycling, so Strava treats what I do as “second class”.

When I did pay for a sub the start of last year, it was because I got an invitation to join an annual distance group challenge right about the same time as Strava, out of the blue, offered me a discounted rate.

All the other features: segment racking, heat maps, etc., I pretty much never used. The “relative effort” scoring was amusing, for a while. Then it got tiresome. I really resented being told on Tuesdays that my total weekly effort was below average.

For me it’s only the segments that are worth the subscription. Everything else I could either live without (i.e. heatmaps) or get better elsewhere like routes, statistics and evaluations.