I did a manual upload to Strava and it was very easy.
I don't give 2 ****s about Garmin, I just use them to link to Strava. I do wish that I could connect my Garmin it without their website and through Bluetooth. I'm not home every day and I certainly don't bring my computer camping or on trips, so I do find this annoying.
My Strava is set to private, I don't engage in the competitive side of it, I just like the way it orders my stats from rides.
Big G is usually several thousand feet off in calculating elevation gain. Once downloaded to Strava it's correct. I don't know if Golden Cheetah or something that just displays GPS data and doesn't necessarily run it through a database of similar known rides would do that.