What the hell is yext?

My competitor is ranking high in google 3 pack even though I have better backlinks. I have eliminated the problem down to one thing: citations (NAP) He has his NAP on whitepages and yahoo local and some other directories. So I tried to add my business to there and it looks like the only way to do it is by paying yext a monthly fee? WTF? now you might be thinking "just pay the fee once, and then cancel" but based on my research, it looks like if you cancel, they remove your citations. WTF? Is there any way to be added to whitepage and yahoo local without paying yext?