SSB or not?

[GHA]

Any thoughts welcome, and especially if you can share personal experience.

Noy my experience... this from a circumnavigating couple =>

Single sideband radio: Some cruisers have questioned whether they need tocarry an SSB or just a satphone. Both are important, but if we had to go with
just one, it would unquestionably be a single sideband radio and Factor mo-
dem. which enabled us to have e-mail through Winlink and receive weather
files. Our satphone served as our backup, and we used it when propagation
was difficult. But the SSB also let us stay in daily contact with the cruising
community, either through established radio nets or through nets that we
set up with friends on passage. In addition, had we run into serious trouble,
the radio would have been much more useful than a satphone. On the other
hand, the satphone would be pretty handy in a liferaft.

Personally I went the Ham route for various reasons, cheaper/more interesting/learn more. And that marine SSB course seems a load of money for little return..
Not really tried the ha system too much offshore yet for gribs/emails but has worked OK so far.

Looking purely from a financial viewpoint, even not using a satphone the sim card keeps drip feeding money from the kitty to keep it alive as you pop into another nice cruising area for a year or 2

Both comms methods have pluses and minuses, not that easy to compare directly as either/or systems. For ocean crossing having a good SSB receiver/antenna really should be high up the list regardless IMHO .