I would be happy to pay more for this superior product, and customer service. Cost of everything is going up, Nate should move forward with his pricing plan, and it keeps fairness with all current and future customers. Most other companies would just increase price, with no consideration for the customers. Strava’s training progression is not accurate so the free version of Strava is just fine really trainer road needs a training progression score to help its athletes see what they are cheating but I guess that’s kind of like your FTP. But remember that is just a number. In my opinion Zwift is for gamers Strava is social media TR is for real athletes I want to get faster.
Decision made. I’ve just clicked “cancel subscription.”
My reasons:
- The lack of progress in areas of development that would suit my needs - Run/Tri integration. AT just isn’t important to me.
- I resent the fact that I’m paying nearly double for the same product than someone else is. My subscription is the same as two grandfathered users!!
- There are better & cheaper alternatives out there that meet my needs.
Out of interest - what would you consider to be ‘better and cheaper’?
PMd him for that exact reason.
For sure. Up until Nate’s announcement I hadn’t even thought about alternatives. I’m a very happy TR user. I’ve been supremely impressed by the product, by the team, by the support. I pay for 2 accounts (one for me and one for my son) and consider it money well spent. But you can see where this leads…
There’s a huge split in our audience.
The big differentiator is those who want to follow some sort of plan with the calendar vs those who want to train based on how they feel that day.
They really have two different needs.
It’s not about trying to hamstring Standard so that everyone upgrades. It’s about serving more of the market better, thus we get more athletes that way.
Both markets are big (so says our data) and we are financially influenced to build features for both groups.
But it also frees us up to do things more specific to a particular group that would confuse the other group.
Some of us have a challenge when the pricing goes to the level you indicate as there are others competing for our dollars.
Option 1 is 180 for the year…which in Canadian dollars is more the equivalent to $225
Option 2 is 240 for the year…so more like $300 Cdn.
So the price point becomes fairly high to subscribe all year. Currently I am at $129. I can see a 20% bump being okay but more then that means I question my options.
Originally I paid for TR in winter months and then dropped TR in summer. At some point I subscribed annually and didnt use it much the first year in the summer. Now I do use it regularly all year round.
I cant follow a TR plan presently without tweaking it to death. I am 61 and need a different mix of days of intensity then the plans offer. New offerings other then PLs dont do much for me.
If you go to your options I would consider going back to use it for 5 months in the winter and drop it in the summer. TR is a great product…it just isnt geared to me. It feels geared to those that are younger and or like to race. I wish to slow the decline. I only need the workout library and the PLs of the workouts and I can do my own thing. I just wouldnt pay year round at those rates.
If you want me to be an annual subscriber at new rates I need a flexible plan that in some fashion adjusts my number of days of intensity and lets me plan my recovery weeks better then I can currently.
That sounds more like you want to have two different products, rather than two tiers. And two very clearly defined products, so that the choice is very very obvious.
Word vs Excel, rather than Student vs Pro.
As mentioned elsewhere, it also increases your marketing costs, support costs, etc. So it had better be worth splitting your offering in two.
Do you think one audience places a higher value on your product than the other?
I’m a geek. I will invest the time to figure out what each version offers me, etc. But my training partner (a high-level triathlon Age Grouper), doesn’t have the time or headspace to have to worry about that kind of crap. She just wants to get on her turbo and follow the plan you have set for her to podium at the World Champs. Before I got her into TR, she just used her Garmin head unit and a post-it note with her workout written down. I would caution against making things more complicated for users like her.
I may be less happy if I feel like promises that were made have been broken unnecessarily.
Yah, you’re saying it better than I did. When we did this exercise earlier we didn’t call it standard/pro, but two different products.
And your training partner is a good example. Some people want all the details, other people want non of the details and just want us to tell them what to do.
We have internal data that shows how they use the product differently, use different features, have different churn rates, etc.
The part I don’t get is that people are pre-upset with me before we’ve done anything. So much so as to cancel their subscription with TR.
I like to talk to ya’ll about things like this and get feedback.
But do you have the resources to develop for both markets? Given the lack of features and polish in other areas (workout creator, calendaring, etc. etc.), it seems you are stretched very thin anyways? As others have said, there is a lot of practical value in basic, boring features.
This seems like a Windows-vs.-Mac, Garmin-vs.-Wahoo-type or Android-vs.-iOS-type problem to me. The Mac and iOS prioritize displaying ~80 % of the features that people use most and is less customizable. Windows and Android are more customizable and e. g. the Ribbons in Microsoft’s Office Suite show you a barrage of what seems like all functions. TR has been the Mac of training software (even though it seems that most of the programmers have a Windows background). I think you can balance that, but it requires a lot of thought and time.
Yah, we’re doing it now. And the idea is that we could position ourselves better and have this split we’d get more athletes and retain more athletes.
TrainNow vs Plan Builder is a good example.
I think it’s confusing for new athletes to come in and see the Plan Builder, ad-hoc plans, a calendar, TrainNow, and a workout library. Like what do I choose?
If I just want TR to tell me what to do and my goal is to supplement outside riding (no races or events targeted) why can’t I just open the app and have TR serve me the right workout for me that day?
So what if one product was just “Open the app and go” and then we automatically told you when your FTP increased. We put some gamification around workout streaks and stuff like that (things that wouldn’t be good for someone wanting to build a 12-week plan to peak for an A event). Maybe this group also has some achievements based on usage.
The other group is targeting performance for an event. PlanBuilder, AT, Workout Creator, more analytics, calendar, more control, etc.
OK - but she’s not using ‘TrainNow’ - she wants/needs to know what training she has every single day (we train twice a day six days a week). That’s not about having a lot of data - it’s about the second line in your brand promise, that TR will take make it easy to get faster. She doesn’t care about seeing all the data (frankly neither do I).
So, if we are going back to what you said on the podcast - what you have now is a great product (that needs some polish, but that’s fine 
) We don’t need to see the numbers behind it, but we also don’t want a dumbed-down version that only tells us what to do when we decide how we are feeling (we are triathletes - we are always bloody knackered!)
Half the time when I listen to the podcast, I wish I was still living/working in the US. I’d be applying for a job with you in a heartbeat. So please take this as coming from a fanboi with experience in marketing software with over 1 billion users worldwide, bifurcating your offering is a MASSIVE decision that should not be undertaken lightly. Only if you have very clearly differentiated products for very clearly different markets/audiences is it going to be worth the pain, expense, etc.
I want TR to succeed. I want TR to keep helping me to succeed. Please think very carefully about this. And if you want any help from an old British fart who has been round the block a few times, drop me a line 
This is a hard problem. Do you want Wizards and Clippy giving suggestions to users? If so, to what degree? How detailed do you want your dialogs to be? This is extremely tricky.
One tactic to deal with this on the Mac side is progressive disclosure: the basic interface should be simple and easy to understand for beginners. For example: if you don’t have a scheduled workout, then the default for the first screen after launch should be Train Now. If you are following a training plan, then then default launch screen should be closer to what it is now.
Another problem as I see it is that functionality isn’t universally available: I almost exclusively use TR on my iPad and for some things I need to go to the website, other features that have been implemented in the desktop apps are not available on the iPad so I either am not aware of them or they are too cumbersome to use. Even simple things like adding notes to my workout or tasks scheduling require me to go to the website.
Welcome to the world of online forums 
Keep in mind that what you read here most likely represents the more extreme ends of the opinion spectrum. Few would be as extreme as the person who canceled their subscription even though you haven’t done anything. But also few are as extreme as me who are saying that we are totally cool paying for more just to support TR’s continued development.
I’d wager a lot of money that most TR users have no idea that you gave a promise, for example. That isn’t meant to say it should make it easier or harder for you to break it, just that you should consider how a user who isn’t clued in would feel about the changes. The same goes for new features: despite the marketing bonanza, I think many users also don’t have an idea that AT exists. So they may not see new features even if they wanted them.
With the best will in the world, I’m not totally sure you announced it in the best way possible…
I’m not pre-upset. But I almost never come to the forums. When I heard what you said on the podcast, I came straight here. I think you need to be aware of the depth of feelings that people have (in a good way) towards yourself and TR. Most brands these days are pretty disposable or interchangeable. TR seems to built on something more than that and I’ve grown to love it in the 3-4 years I’ve been using it.
If you tell me that my grandfathered subscription is financially crippling the company - I’ll trust you and I will pay more.
But if you tell me that I need to pay more simply because you want to add more shiny widgets a bit sooner than you had previously planned - I will feel like my trust has been misplaced.
I spend several hours every week listening to the voice of you and your team and doing what you tell me. I have put myself in your hands. Not of a faceless company, but you. And Coach Chad. And Jonathan. And Amber. I can’t think of any other company where I have that kind of intimate relationship. Don’t toy with my feelings…
@Nate_Pearson you should have phrased it more like this from the start.
“Hey, we see two user groups, casual train now and structured plan builder. We’re thinking of diverging the product and would have a two tier pricing model. Should legacy users go into train now or plan builder?”
I appreciate the honesty, but most people heard “price increase or no new features”.
I’m at $99/year, so a big jump to $240/year would have me thinking really hard about cancelling after 5 full years on TR.
I personally don’t like the tiered approach. I understand about raising more money, so the idea of raising the subscription price based on something like the inflation rate appeals to me more.
That’s my 2 cents.
I would pay extra not to see any more tri people complain lol