drewguy

Though Elevate is looking to become an app instead . . . guy was prescient in doing this - he was worried about reliance on Strava and their at best sketchy treatment of third party apps - https://blog.usejournal.com/elevate-...p-1f644c2af824

Unfortunately it looks like he hasn't developed the desktop app quickly enough! Maybe this will be a spur.

Rides4Beer

I just started my two month free trial, because I want to try out live segments. I'll decide after if it's worth keeping. Might check out some of the training, since I don't do any structured training, I just ride.

wipekitty

Not sure yet. RWGPS might be a good start; I have yet to test it using data from my cycling computer, but it at least it will track mileage for free. I already use it as my primary route planner. RWGPS has segment capacities, but I'm not sure if one can create them from a free account.

A few of my anti-Strava pals just use whatever comes with the Garmin and seem to like it; I don't have a Garmin computer, so that's not an option.

I'll have to check out some other options - since joining Strava four years ago, I haven't looked around too much. I used to use Dailymile (now dead) and MapMyRide (which got sketchy, IMO, when they joined with Under Armour.) I'm sure somebody out there has found a way to fill the void...

bbbean 

Programmers have to eat, servers cost money, graphic design, tech support, legal, etc all cost money. If you don't like the product, don't use it. That's fine. But I'm not sure why you think the notion of freeloading is odd for social media.

FWIW, I'd pay for a great many social media services, and do. If I'm taking advantage of the service they offer, it's worth something. If it was worth nothing, I wouldn't use it.

bbbean 

EXACTLY. How much do people pay for cable? For Netflix? To join clubs or subscribe to magazines?

bbbean 

If Strava was such a crappy product why were so many people using it, and why are people upset that they want to charge for certain features?

There's a restaurant in my town that serves crappy food. I don't go there. It's no skin off my back if they raise their prices.

SethAZ 

They've got 180 employees working not only to develop new features, fix bugs, develop both their iPhone and Android versions of their app plus their web-based version of the app, maintain server storage and processing capabilities able to handle probably many gigabytes/day of training data that gets uploaded, store all the segment definitions, process activity data and match to all applicable segments, etc. plus support a userbase that's got to be at least in the tens of millions worldwide.

And for all this you've paid nothing, and then you whine like a biatch that they haven't pulled off perfection. Maybe they could improve things a little if they could afford to hire more than 180 people to do it all. Maybe they could afford to hire more than 180 people to do it all if folks like you would actually pay them a little something for all that they've given you for free.

My spellchecker must be acting up. How does one spell "entitlement" again?

datlas 

It comes down to value.

I get value from BF so I pay the annual fee, it's like $1 per month so that's a reasonable value. That said, plenty here are not paying members and that's ok.

For the VALUE I get from Strava, I would certainly be willing to pay a similar amount or even $25 yearly. But its NOT worth $5 per month for me.

Seattle Forrest

19 years ago in the aftermath of 9/11 all the landlines into New York were dead, cell phones were the only way to get a call through. I was living in California and my uncle was NYPD. Email wasn't ubiquitous back then. Cell phones were literally the only way to find out which relatives had perished and who was still part of the present tense.

But I think his point was more along the lines of how much value he derives from Strava vs from having a device that allows communications with the outside world. I can't speak for @Bah Humbug but for me, I haven't used Strava this year, I mostly use my phone to talk to all my friends at Bike Forums, plus my family, and I use the mobile hotspot feature to work from home and sometimes from a park.

Strava is a really unique thing. I can't think of a lot of for profit companies that people give their money to and describe it as a donation. That's incredible good will. I don't understand how they haven't been able to leverage that to make a profit after ~15 years.

Velo Vol 

I'm happy to continue paying nothing for Strava to track my routes/time/average speed, woeful as they may be.

datlas 

Average speed is a fool's metric.

WhyFi

What if walks counted towards the club leader board? That's gotta be worth five bucks a month.

ZHVelo

I have Summit and don't even use Strava for tracking live journeys, I use the Wahoo fitness app on my phone (the interface is really, really good and directly after you see great key metrics), and once I buy a bike computer it will be just that. Why are you using Strava? Before I discovered Wahoo fitness app, I used Endomondo, because the Strava app for live tracking I found piss poor. There's gotta be a dozen better apps to use while cycling.

eduskator

Don't care. I never even read what were the benefits of paying for Strava. I use it (in order of priority) to track 1) My mileage 2) My basic stats 3) See if I improve and 4) See my friend's rides & stats.

With all its users, I'm sure Strava makes money. They might not make profit, but they must earn money somewhere.

Velo Vol 

What about average velocity?



Game changer.
Because I started using it a few years ago and does as much as I really care about?

Seattle Forrest

You don't need Garmin hardware to use their web platform. It's probably too cumbersome to want to use without one because you would have to upload your ride data manually vs just saving it on the device and having it sync over the air automagically. But if you were willing to do that, they provide a training log, segments, route planning, automatic route creation, popularity heat maps, and a whole lot of etc.

smashndash

I started their 60 day free trial. I think that’s notice enough.

I don’t get the hoopla. The core functionality for most people has been uploading rides, seeing what rides their friends are doing and tracking segment PRs. I’d argue that most people are unaffected by this change. Actually I think the biggest change is making route builder Premium only. That was really handy for me. So it factors into my decision for sure.

I, personally, do target segments (unsuccessfully) and I’ve been meaning to get Summit for a while, with all of their analysis and tracking features. So it’s probably worth $60 a year for me. If I suddenly were hurting for cash, I would have no issue using the free version of strava.

Carbonfiberboy 

I've had a premium Strava account for many years. I only use that one for our tandem rides, which are 90% of my outdoor riding, and 100% of my stoker's. I also have a free Strava account which I only use for my singles, maybe 10 posts to that account/year. I don't care that much about my numbers on my single, since outdoor rides on it don't figure into my year's training. I never upload anything except outdoor rides to Strava.

I like Strava fine. One problem I've noticed in the past couple weeks is that sometimes the file import function doesn't work. It gets the file, but then doesn't do anything with it. An irritation of using any group platform like Strava is that other people can change things you use regularly, like segment boundaries. If course I could just make some segments private.

Bah Humbug

Bingo bango.

It doesn't matter whether we say cell phone or landline - it's not an option or a frivolity or entertainment (at least, one is). Connectivity to work, family, doctors, etc is not an option and is a major service to my life. Virtual leaderboards? Cool, but I can do that on Garmin, and will now. It's like trying to say "you pay for electricity, why won't you pay for Strava?", except that cell phones are somehow still seen as a sign of elitism or discretionary spending in 2020. Strava, by comparison, is quite clearly not at all a necessity.

Bah Humbug

Yup, I'm a programmer. I work for a bank, doing fairly boring work that brings value to our clients and, in turn, my bosses. That's why they pay me to do it.

Maybe you'd pay for social media. Personally, I barely touch social media anyway. Would you pay for literally every website you hit? Come on man, be realistic. Not every geek with a website deserves "just the price of a cup of coffee per month". It's amazing those words are still uttered unironically.

If they don't want people using the product for free, they shouldn't make it available for free. That's fine. But I'm not sure why you think the notion of using a free service for free is odd.

If they want people (or just me) to pay, they need to act like a business doing things reliably, with features that can be counted on. They don't act like a company; they still act like a couple of guys in a garage turning things on and off when their feelings are hurt.

Again, the fact that they haven't made money yet is telling. Maybe they will now, but I doubt it.

Cyclingsloth121

I could be tempted to pay if they added new features to the paid version, but taking away features from the free version will not make me pay for it.

bbbean 

Glad we agree on the basic premise. I have no problem with people who say it isn't worth $X/month. We all make similar calculations about everything we buy (or don't). I have a problem with the folks who object to the very notion of charging for a service.

BB

bbbean 

Straw man argument. You don't like Strava. I get it. Since you don't like Strava, why do you care enough to post complaints about Strava here (which is social media, FWIW)? There are dozens of services I don't like. I have no idea whether they charge too much because I don't use them.

Have a great day, hope your employers continue to value your services enough to pay your salaries/fees/commissions.

Sy Reene

FWIW, I wasn't talking about phones- that has nothing to do with Strava. Cell phones have been around since the mid 80's. Landline phones for obviously our whole lives. Texting since the mid 90s.
I was referring to smartphones, apps, mobile data plans and wifi, and the associated cost of such that enables us to check the weather, look at a map, track a ride, etc. To be honest though, I don't even run Strava on my cell phone though I think I do have the app. I always use the PC. Paying for Strava is very much basically the same as paying for software which is all mostly subscription based now. Adobe Photoshop runs about $20 per month, Microsoft office is $100/year, Autocad is about $1700 per year. If you think Strava is worth it, then subscribe. If not, then don't.

datlas 

Since it’s been free I understand some don’t want to pay.

Suppose Google decided to charge a small monthly fee of $5 for your searches and gmail. I guarantee people would be up in arms. Unhappiness comes from unmet expectations.