That being said. There is the user group you can charge more money. I say add in all those run and swim features they have always asking for and then charge them $30 a month for them. Most of the tri people I know would gladly pay it. Tri is expensive sport anyway that attracts plenty of people who won’t mind paying it.
The two tier structure makes sense to me. I think I would want a loyalty discount for the first year or two then bridge over to standard rate.
I’m assuming the:
Standard $15 per month
Pro $20 per month
Are just examples. I would always want the option to pay annually for a discount.
I would never want an a la cart system. Keep it a simple two tiered structure.
So what if someone already had some sort of UI / Workout player (let’s just pick some random example… zwift) then the product you described above would become a licensible API. 
@Nate_Pearson Much respect for your leadership. World would be a better place with more CEO of your kind.
I’m price sensible and just jumped on because price rise was announced October 2018 committing myself on the legacy option (assuming TR would always stay a single tier product for all).
From then on it’s just a psychological thing: The decision is made…there is a check made in my head…and you don’t have to reason about it each month or year ever again… That’s kind of liberating to have one thing less to think about!
I guess that’s why many as me stayed.
Now having new tiers and/or prices might start me reasoning again…but I don’t want that 
Even this discussion has me having checked other competitors again…and yes, there are other products I’d like to test…but there is only so much time…and it would be much easier if I could just keep this once made checkmark in my head and stay with TR
(Over testing and burning out on TR plans didn’t change my decision. Learned a lot from the podcast and especially from this forum and now use TR self coached with better results.)
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(If you really want to implement 2 tiers of course that would be the favorite.)
But different points / questions since you always go with 15$ vs 20$ examples:
- no more yearly rate (like zwift) or just example?
- isn’t a 15$ tier a possible cheaper option for many athletes on the actual 20$ monthly plan? So (besides the legacy debate)…are you actually thinking about a possible price drop for some athletes? and if so…that could be communicated better
I would gladly pay 129 for a great Wo creator (where i can set power and not % of ftp for example), access to the library of Wo and a tracker for all my activities and fitness.
People with coach rarely need AT, train now, plan creator or calendar maybe just to track the rides, run and swims). So give me a good TR for outside coaching and i will be fine!
If i need something else I can choose a different product later.
I personally like the tr interface… I don’t care about the fancy display of swift.
I think an interesting comparison is Today’s Plan, which basically has flipped your pricing model. Today’s Plan has the following tiers:
- I train myself - System generated training plans + tools and analytics
- I have a coach or I structure my own training - Tools and analytics
The “I train myself” option is the more expensive of the two by $6/month USD.
The equivalent for TR would be something like:
- Tier X: PB / Plans, calendar, etc. @ $20/month (I’m just using Nate’s pricing)
- Tier Y: Calendar, TR workout library, workout creator, advanced analytics, etc. (No access to PB / Plans) @ $15/month
Yah, this was the thinking.
The question is who are the majority of the legacy users. Are they like me who don’t race and use TR a few months a year in the winter, maybe we follow part of a plan and maybe we just do workouts. We mostly just use it as a way to maintain fitness more than anything.
I started cycling in 2017 at the age of 50, soon after getting a bike the weather forced me inside and I started using TR. I loved the no frills, simple approach and the fact that it worked for gaining my fitness. I tried the other big one at the time (can’t remember the name, the one Wahoo bought) and didn’t care for it, too much fanciness and non sense forced into the app. I actually suspended my TR account that summer because I can’t stand paying for things I don’t use, even if it’s only a few dollars a month.
I got locked in at $99 and during a mild winter I only used TR for 3 months, thought about cancelling but didn’t want to give up my legacy price because I knew a bad winter I would come out ahead. Almost cancelled again this year after breaking my collar bone right before my renewal.
I do want to add cancelling my legacy account doesn’t mean I’ve giving up on TR. I would just go back to paying for the months I use (3-5 months a year). You are the only one that knows how many of us come out ahead or behind on the legacy price.
You may be forced to alienate a certain percentage of the user base to move the app in the direction you want at some point. We all get that and certainly no hate for TR or you guys. I think the people behind TR is part of the reason a lot of us stick with TR instead of moving on to something else.
Not a fan of multi tiered pricing and anything more than 2 tiers gets too confusing for people. I would think a simple tier for people like me that just workouts and plans and another tier that is everything wouldn’t be a bad thing.
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This is a great idea. I have often thought how unapproachable trainerroad is for the average cyclist. Like I want to get on, feel like I am working for a month and see results. Instead, I get sent into SSB1. Feel like I absolutely bury myself and then ride flat outside (it’s only after coming out of SSB2 that I start to see improvements).
Something like this - gamefication open and go would have kept me more consistently using trainerroad when I first started. Instead of getting lost in analysis paralysis and plans (plan builder, AI, and Trainnow has helped solved solved that).
I can see my self wanting to use that during the summer and then switch back over to the targeting event for winter training.
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@Nate_Pearson Two different options makes sense to me where lower priced option would be workout library, calendar and train now. Upper tier would be all of that plus at, advanced analytics/calendar, etc.
I still am at a loss why running and other activities do not import. Even though I do not do triathlon anymore this is a huge issue and missed opportunity that would attract more subs. Even having plans that people could buy like TP does that download to their calendar onto a garmin watch would be huge for you all.
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They could just up the pricing and see what happens. I’ve been on legacy pricing for 7 years. That’s $700 I’ve put in to the company (and received a service from them) I’ve also referred about 10 to 15 people. Why not reward that loyalty?
For new users to reach the same level of “investment” in the company it would take them about 6 years from now (if I keep paying) to match that.
I believe it not making promises you can’t keep. @Nate_Pearson promised to reward my loyalty and for that promise I have stuck around, even in the times I haven’t used the product. Mine and those people’s loyalty on grandfathered pricing have helped him and the team develop the product we have today and run a successful business and have a great time and I’m happy for them for what they have achieved.
Break that promise though and that loyalty from me is gone. I’d probably quit or at least go monthly and for how much I use it they’d actually get less revenue from me.
The grandfathered pricing was probably a bad Idea…but they made the promise.
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I’m a TR grandfather and also subscribe to other services. More than once I thought of quitting TR, but because of legacy pricing I didn’t. I guess if it wasn’t for legacy pricing I wouldn’t use TR anymore and try something new (just because it is new, TR works fine for me). So keep the legacy pricing.
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I would happily pay 30$ for a triathlon-specific product, but certainly not for its current state and the addition of swim/run uploads.
@Nate_Pearson did you consider making a triathlon-specific product?
You already have great bike workouts, a great UI but miss analytics, obviously import/export functionalities, and proper swim/run workouts. You definitely have a head start versus the competition but some new players are coming (eg. TriQ).
Maybe triathlon is too much of a niche and not worth the effort for TR, which would be fair enough.
Even with the legacy price, I personally decided to pull the plug as I don’t see progress on the triathlon front (see upload swim/run thread), but would happily come back if that triathlon-specific product would exist or would at least be in development. Saying XYZ is on the roadmap is for me not enough anymore.
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I would have to see what the tiers provided. I don’t race, but my FOMO would say Pro 
Also worth noting that while the general calendar function in Wahoo SYSTM is very poor in comparison to TR, SYSTM offers a 2:1 work to recovery week schedule for training plans as well as 3:1 work to recovery week schedule. I do struggle to understand why this isn’t part of the basic offering at TR without having to cut and chop it yourself.
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How many subscription services do you have which have not changed their pricing in 5-6 years?
I had a quick look - I can only think of 3 I’ve had that long and none of them are the same price they were in 2016. Netflix (2013), Spotify and Strava (I used to have their old Premium before they came out with the new approach). None of them are the same price as they were.
It is completely unreasonable to expect any company to be able to preserve pricing forever. Especially as it seems to be a reasonable percentage of users at TR (enough that Nate seems to be thinking about getting more cash out of us, and an extra $5/month is meaningful…)
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I did actually listen to the podcast last night though - the suggestion of getting legacy users to pay an extra $5/mo to access new features isn’t that bad really.
I am not sure that having tiers for new users is a particularly good idea though, depending on what you had in the tiers - presumably things like AT, TrainNow and Plan Builder are the kinds of features you’d make premium, but they’re also the features which differentiate TR from the competition.
Paying a little bit more to have access to a proper analytics suite would be value added I would suggest, and I don’t think they are that hard to build (I made my own spreadsheet for TSS/CTL/ATL tracking and planning without any problems). Seems to be a sizeable proportion of TR users using either Intervals.icu (free/donation), TrainingPeaks, Golden Cheetah etc etc., and I’d rather have that directly in TR than have to use a 4th platform (Garmin, Strava, TR and Intervals for me. 5 if you count VeloViewer 
)
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No. As well as liking the guys and wanting TR to succeed and grow (ultimately for my own benefit) I’ve continued to subscribe even though TR has only been of intermittent use to me over the last few years in the belief that eventually the functionality that I want would come on stream and I would be able to use it at the price I was promised. The $99/year was akin to an investment. It looks as though this is going to be another investment that has gone south for me. Hence my earlier post about not resubscribing in February and cutting my “losses”.
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Don’t tar everyone with the same brush please.
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How many of those services you mentioned have a legacy pricing concept?
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