PDKL45

I don't mind the cost so much, but the way they went about increasing the price about a year ago was preposterous. They were inept at being sneaky and then tried to clarify their new policy with a post in the Strava club on the website, rather than issuing a press release. They badly botched the roll-out in the UK and seemed intent on destroying their reputation in a spectacular own goal. A lot of people in the industry were looking at them at the time and wondering WTF? Why would anyone invest in a company making moves that clumsily? I remain a subscriber, but they lost a lot of respect and good will from me and I am sure from many others.

The subscription issue was obviously huge with their company, as they conducted a big subscription push about 18 months or more ago, admitting that they were not turning a profit. The odd thing was, that at the time, they had such a large amount of goodwill and reputation built up with their users that it seemed almost impossible that it would be destroyed, and yet they managed to do just that with a few dumb moves. Had they just been upfront about things and communicated clearly, I am certain they could have ridden their accumulated goodwill to profitability without resorting to weird pricing tiers and their awful geographical roll-out.

pdlamb

I don't use any of Strava's "advanced" options, so after I canceled I don't think I'll rejoin. Planning? Rwgps works fine for me. Advanced training metrics? There's other things I have for that. I did find out some years back that our city engineers look at Strava heat maps, so I continue to post most of my in-town rides to move the metric needle. But I can do that on a free account.

boozergut

I cancelled mine along with some streaming TV channels. I just wasnt getting a lot out of the premium stuff. I would see someone's ride and think "Ill save that route" and try it, but I never did. Also the Captain obvious fitness levels. They go up when you ride a lot and vice versa.....

terrymorse 

Don't blame Strava for the "fitness" graph that is actually a training load graph. They weren't the ones who named Chronic Training Load (CTL) "fitness".

mstateglfr 

My subscription is set to renew in February and I am definitely on the fence.

- I like the segment leaderboard and peek at segments after a ride, but dont really care much because I am not fast enough to actually compete for any segments. That is worth $10/year to me.
- I like the route comparison tool where you can compare the recent ride to prior activities where you rode that same route/course. That is worth $5/year to me.

- Strava is not used to create routes so I get no subscription value there.
- Strava is not used as a training app so I get no subscription value there.
- The end of year Strava Year in Sport review is...unimpressive so I get no subscription value there.
- If I have the free version, I can still follow others and they can follow me so I get no subscription value there.

If I dont renew, my rides will still upload to Strava from my GPS and from Zwift. I mainly use Strava to just track all activity- indoor and outdoor. With the free version I can still see my results on segments and compare them to prior efforts on those segments. Thats really what I look at most after a ride.
Maybe I will think of things that are worth $65/year, but currently it looks like I view Strava as being worth just $15/year to me.



On a related note in response to some comments in this thread- just because I can easily afford a yearly membership doesnt mean it is worth continuing to pay for a yearly membership. Subscribing may not impact my finances in a noticeable way, but I try not to make financial decisions in that way.

chaadster

I guess I missed all of that. What did they do? What was the sneakiness about? What’s the new policy?

I recall a price increase from, what? Like $8/mo to $11/mo? And they introduced a discounted annual payment? I don’t even know…

pdlamb

Good point.

Would everyone on this thread please forward me a check for "rounding error in [your] finances," please?

Black wallnut 

I was an early subscriber. Many of the road segments in my local area were made by me. I was an early paid subscriber as well. I have dropped the paid part twice and came back twice. The first time when they shuttered what they considered downhill segments, the second time because of the rate hike, loss of monthly billing, and the way they went about it. The parts of Strava I value the most are not included in the free version. Age and weight leader boards. full leader boards, which for those of us that often are not even remotely near the top, that's useful. Segment history. That was rather valuable in a climb segment I was doing mostly weekly through the summer. I don't really care where I am overall but seeing just my attempts was useful in showing fitness gains. Matched rides and routes was useful this fall to find that I had regained the fitness I had before a job change several years ago. For me it is the data features that are worth the cost. The socail aspect is also nice but not as valuable as it formerly was. Many of my friends on there are no longer posting frequently here.

As far as those that believe that their free subscription adds value to those of us that pay. Not so much. People I know and ride with, yes, I like to see their rides and like to see their stats included in segments but random folks, nope. Besides that nearly every single bogus KOM was done by free users that ended a ride. and then tracked their vehicle for miles before ending the ride on Strava or Garmin. At least with Strava there is a way to get these removed; Garmin Connect, nope making the segment leader boards worthless.

mstateglfr 

Ha, yeah I can see how my comment would focus on Koyote's post, but it really didnt mean to. I actually laughed in agreement at his rounding error comment. It was just a general comment in response to the many varied 'meh, its a small amount' posts.

PDKL45

They never made an announcement about anything, just introduced higher prices to UK subscribers without any warning. Then, when people woke up to what was going on, it seemed that they had instituted a range of subscription prices across the EU, actually breaking EU law IIRC. When sports tech journalists called them on it and asked for a statement, they studiously ignored them and released a statement via the Strava club on their app. I follow that guy DC Rainmaker, who was probably the main sports tech journalist on the story, and I was interested, so I remember following it quite closely at the time. You can get a correct timeline and version of events if you go over his old posts on the whole saga.

The annual payment was not discounted. For me it increased by $20 IIRC, from $60 to $80, but the impact was greater for monthly subscribers. For me, it was a $20 annual increase, really not much money and I had always thought the founders were decent guys and deserved to have a profitable business. I'd heard their story and thought it was a good one, but that unnecessary bumbling, either by the founders or middle management, really made me rethink my opinion of them. I think they brought on a third guy around that time? Maybe to help get things back on track?

Turnin_Wrenches

I have used Intervals.icu before, but only to a very small extent. The manner in which the data is presented was cluttered and "busy". I found it hard to focus on the info that was most important to me. I'm sure there are formatting options that would have fixed this issue, but at the time I was not interested in figuring out to how to change the presentation into something more focused and easy to read.

Per your recommendation I went back to Intervals.icu for another look, but came away with the same conclusion. As a result, I decided to give TrainerDay a go. The interface looked easy, intuitive, and uncluttered. I also really like the custom workout creator! It's super easy to use. For only $3.99 per month for the premium version it seemed like good value for money.

Barry2 

I agree, you have to spend time finding the controls just to limit/select what is displayed.
Its a powerful site and with that comes complexity.

For $4/month I may try TrainerDay

Barry

alcjphil

This was my Strava before it ever existed. Every year my employer would issue employees with an agenda. For about 15 years I recorded every single ride that I did along with a lot of personal observations. When people would sometimes say to me that things like weather were much worse than a year before I could pull out the last year's agenda and look up the date which would give me the exact weather conditions for that day
Those books include information that Strava cannot provide

prj71

I never subscribed. Still using the free version. The subscription doesn't offer anything I need.

I'm actually surprised people actually pay for Strava.

Koyote

You're surprised that some people value things differently than you do?

I'm surprised by that.

prj71

No. I'm surprised that people actually pay for Strava. I ride with **** ton of bikers from road bikers, to mountain bikers to fat bikers...Not one person subscribes to Strava. But hey...that's the world we live in. People like throwing money out the door.

tempocyclist

I like the clubs and many of the rides around here are posted on Strava clubs, plus posts about local events, road dangers, etc. All of that is in the free version.

I pay, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm paying for. To see full leaderboards with filtering? Route creation? Goal setting? Power data analysis? 🤔


That basically sums up me as well. My "source of training truth" these days is TrainingPeaks, with Strava mostly there for the social aspect and some cheeky segment hunting!

Koyote

People don't 'throw money out the door.' People value things differently than you do -- perhaps because they ride for different reasons, enjoy having different pieces of data, have different budget constraints, etc.

I'm continually amazed when some anonymous person on the internet is arrogant enough to judge some other anonymous person's values and spending decisions.

mstateglfr 

...presumably, those that pay for the service don't view it as throwing money out the door.
You do understand that we as a society are not monolithic in what we enjoy or find valuable...right? Like that is something you know and understand...hopefully.

PDKL45

You get unlimited personal challenges with a subscription. I am the admin of a bike-focused online community and I regularly make challenges for members of the group, often a group challenge but also individual challenges. I know that our banter about a certain challenge, over the 5 challenge limit that a member had reached, prompted that member to subscribe. People place value on different things, and there I guess it was frustration at missing out, having been involved in all of the previous challenges, that prompted that person to subscribe. There can be hidden value in it, is what I guess I'm trying to say, or value to people that is not immediately apparent.

tempocyclist

Just for kicks, I had a glance down the list of people I follow on Strava and did a count, 65% of them are subscribers.

Whether that means they get value out of the subscription, or road cyclists around here are more likely to be throwing money out the door, I do not know.

Turnin_Wrenches

I may need to reinvestigate Intervals.icu. TrainerDay, which I thought had some basic analytics, seems to have none.

staehpj1

I wonder how many don't know what they are paying for? Some likely subscribe and have no idea what is in the free vs pay subscription. A few pay and don't really use it. It is easy to just let subscriptions accumulate. One reason I try to avoid them. I am much less hesitant to spring for one time fees or devices that come with a service included.

prj71

I'm a user of Strava. Just not the paid version. I like it for keeping track of my yearly miles, miles on my bikes (for maintenance reasons), heart rate data and elevation data. Outside of that the premium features don't offer much that you can't get from Garmin Connect (FREE) or some other similar free app.

Instead of paying for an app once and being done with it (how things used to be) the developers have a found a way of scamming people into a subscription service (much like Cable TV or Satellite) and then every year or so they raise the price. App developers have discovered that subscriptions are much more profitable than one-time payments and they have discovered that many users are stupid enough to pay for subscriptions despite the huge long-term costs. It’s all about greed.

Turnin_Wrenches

I signed up for an Intervals.icu account and have linked it to my TrainerDay account. After spending some time with the Intervals.icu interface it looks like I can tweak it for what I need. I'm also still looking at TrainingPeaks. Yes, it's more expensive, but it might be worth it. We'll see how it goes with the TrainerDay / Intervals.icu setup ad I'll revisit at the end of February.