Experience with Coinbase, Poloniex, & Bittrex

Like many, I started off getting into Bitcoin through forming an account on Coinbase. While this was satisfying for about a minute, I wanted to see more movement and play around with alt coins. I didn't jump to another exchange right away, and instead downloaded wallets onto my phone and used Shapeshifter app to convert Bitcoin to things like monero, dash, litecoin (not yet on coinbase), and a couple others. Then, I realized if I lost my phone I would be kinda lost, despite backups.
Next, I got a Poloniex account and started playing around with that and soon realized I can buy/sell directly within the exchange. Poloniex is like a dream, I thought. So, after a while now, I look at trends and manyof these cryptos aren't on Poloniex, but are on Bittrex. Okay, so I get an account. I throw some test Bitcoin btc into a wallet on Bittrex, and try to buy Reddcoin rdd. My amount was too small in btc to activate proper purchase of rdd and I see fees being pretty high to send, unless its my imagination. Also, their limits of how low you can send seemed a pain. Anyways, I took bitcoin from Coinbase, sent it to Shapeshifter, and deposited Reddcoin into the Bittrex wallet.
Shape shifter takes a minute, and ocassionally hangs up on itself, but tech support can push it through, as they did in an etc to btc exchange a while back. It works. I like Bittrex, but am only looking to it for larger purposes, and will not be moving reddcoin until it grows enough to warrant the fees. I prefer the buy/sell of Poloniex over the Bittrex interface, so far. Perhaps I'll learn it better and utilize Bittrex better, but for now, its going to be a wallet for non-poloniex compatible cryptos, only. This is until I use hardware wallets.