I don’t think I’m opposed to seeing my rate go up with time. I think the legacy pricing program could be transformed into a guarantee to have fixed pricing for N years, and then to change with the market. I’d probably leave pricing alone for customers who have been continuous subscribers for the first 1-3 years.
I don’t like tiered programs.
I seriously doubt I’d walk at that price. At those figures, I wouldn’t have enough incentive to switch knowing what I know about Zwift/Systm.
You know what I’d pay full price for, happily? TR pushing workouts into zwift. That’s my dream.
Also, I know you aren’t being an ass. It’s cool.
well… i may have jumped the gun too early assuming that they will do what they vented about doing on the podcast so, ok… lets chill, wait and see
If i had to re-write my post i would summarize to two key points: 1 - They can’t have my money both ways. 2 - I’m not an investor on TR, i’m an user of TR. That completely changes the perspective on how you’ll see these price increases and the way they are justifying it to us.
I haven’t read all 731 posts, but a quick question. Isn’t every one grand fathered in. If prices were to go up, wouldn’t those who are at the old $189 become grand fathered following @Nate_Pearson promise?
More than one way to increase capital than just increasing prices.
I’m grandfathered in at $99 yearly. I have considered other training systems, xert, suf mainly, but with AT coming online and new things always rolling out, I’m staying on board here. When considering those, it feels almost unfair that I pay so little, but Nate is trying to keep his word about grandfathering in this price. I respect that. Would I pay more for new features? Absolutely.
Thanks for the response…again, these are the kinds of details that a more structured research project could get at.
Yeah, I posted on the “Zwift Premium Membership” thread that I would gladly pay $5 / month to push my TR workouts into Zwift and they can split the proceeds. Similarly, they could charge Zwift members an extra $10 / month for access to TR workouts through Zwift.
The effect for legacy users is that the price would increase, as expectation is all new features available at no extra cost. Rationality doesn’t factor in when emotions are at play. Entitlement is being threatened.
That’s an odd reading of the comments by legacy users. Where does “entitlement” come from when all that has been done is an application of promises made and future expectations based on past behavior?
We’re having this conversation without understanding the data. What percentage of the user base does not pay the current full rate? What is the churn rate? How many of the users that do not pay the full rate (grandfathered/legacy) who continue to pay annually would have churned without the grandfathered pricing promise?
Nate has all this data, we do not, being bitter toward the “sense of entitlement” that legacy users have isn’t helping the conversation, nor is making assumptions about how people should respond to a price rise and/or breaking the original promise.
I’ll say it again, I’m one of those users would have churned years ago if it weren’t for the pricing cap, that “feature” is what has kept me paying TrainerRoad annually for going on 8 years now, I suspect there are many just like me.
I totally support this assessment. When adaptive came out, the sleeper feature was trainNow. Spinning that out into its own product without the baggage of calendaring and periodisation is the sub product. But nobody on legacy wants to just get that. So the discussion on what to do with legacy users is separate from the decision on product.
Paraphrasing Khoi Vinh of Subtraction.com. Design is improved not by adding features, but subtraction.
Ditto. Unfortunately, TR has made a number of promises through the years that have remained unfulfilled for far too long. That certainly plays a role in how I view this issue. Personally, if TR had fixed their previously released features as promised prior to developing additional features such as AT, I’d have no problem paying more. As it is, I don’t even want to continue paying the $99 a year I’ve been paying. I think that is a lot of what we are seeing on this thread. The legacy pricing issue is just the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back for a lot of us. TR has acknowledged AT needs further work and have said they are working to improve it. Those of us that have been around long enough to enjoy legacy pricing have heard the same thing said about many of the other features TR has developed, but the improvements never came. Why should we pay more under the assumption that TR will actually improve AT such that it functions as intended for a broad base of users? The pattern that they have established through the years is that they will leave AT as is and move on to developing the next big marketable feature.
Please read my previous posts. I believe I have communicated those quite well.
Copy that. I didn’t know you had prior posts with related info. Looking now.
Upon review, I have a different take on those points and don’t consider any of those “promises” or broken, but that’s just me.
We’ll just have respectfully agree to disagree. As someone that has been renewing their TR membership based on comments on this forum from TR staff members clearly indicating that they were going to provide master’s plans to address my aforementioned posts and fix the calendar such that we could import other activities…it is just terribly disappointing when those drag out for years while even more unperfected features are continuing to be released. The fact that my first post has received the most likes in this entire thread is a good indication that I am not alone. Cheers!
The biggest benefit to masters that we’ve launched is AT. That’s huge because of the difference in VO2 to Threshold relationships can be different for older athletes.
It also allows master athletes to progress at a different rate than the default plan. This is very important.
The next benefit we’re launching is changing the duration of workouts per day in any plan. The other upcoming feature mentioned in the podcast - #6 by Nate_Pearson
And for other activities (like running), it has been a while. We focused on AT to get that out but our roadmap is opening up.
When was the legacy pricing “promise” made to you though?
June 11th, 2015
Respectfully, Nate, older athletes need fewer intensity workouts per week and more frequent recovery weeks, as has been discussed repeatedly on this forum. Comments have been made through the years by TR staff indicating that such plans were upcoming. A feature that still requires the same number of intensity workouts per week and the same number of work weeks in between recovery weeks simply is not a feature that accommodates us older guys simply because it will decrease the intensity a bit. If that is TR’s fulfillment of a promise to offer masters plans for us older guys, I’m sorry, but I have to give TR a grade of D- on that matter.
As far as the other activities, I think your comment illustrates what I’ve been trying to point out. Instead of working on those other activities like running as TR has said it would do since the calendar was released, it worked on other features such as Plan Builder and AT, which like previous features, were released with flaws that limit its real world functionality for too many users. Similarly, TR has acknowledged that AT needs further improvements, yet, we get another post (this time from the CEO) stating “our roadmap is opening up”, once again suggesting that we just have to wait a little longer. It sounds way too familiar to what we’ve heard in the past. I appreciate that you dream big, Nate. You are a visionary in that sense. However, I feel TR has misjudged just how important fixing all the little details of previously released features has been to their users. Many of your competitors don’t have AT or Plan Builder, but because they are doing a better job of “nailing the basics”, I am finding them to be much more functional in the real world.
I hope you understand that if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t say anything. I’m rooting for TR, just like I’m rooting for you. There is so much promise in what you are trying to do, but letting the little details go unsolved for so long while continuing to put so much effort into new features will ultimately prove fatal for any company. Cheers!