I think my post was a bit misguided. I still think the 189$ a year is good value for what you get. I’d pay it if I didn’t have the LUXURY of legacy pricing. I do see it as a major bonus. My post was more coming from a position of frustration from that fact that buying anything in USD with our current situation here in Europe has made “stuff” expensive. Other posts and users have pointed this out already. I think that my Strava premium is going to be the first thing that I drop from my cycling budget this year to offset other costs in the sport I find give more value.
< wishes for loyalty program instead of legacy program >
Agreed - and by being forced to only pay in USD customers in the rest of the world have no certainty over what their monthly price will be.
My price has increased by 20-30% in the last few months just throw being on the wrong end of FX. That strikes me as a much more fundamentally issue than the perceived rights and wrongs of the grandfathering pledge.
I guess most would stay.
They obviously like, and use TR regularly to stay subscribed constantly for 7+yrs. (I think thats the timescale)
It’s been suggested more that once. Here is one instance in this topic:
What I do think would work is to change “legacy” pricing to Loyalty Pricing. Say you’ve been 3+ years as a subscriber, you enter loyalty pricing at a flat 20 or 25% discount to the current, new subscriber pricing. Not locked, just always lower. Isn’t this what we all wish our cable and phone companies would do? But instead they do it backwards and discount for new subscribers and hope old ones will never notice the price going up and up.
I think your point here is valid. However, what you lack in history and context is that this is less about money and value and mostly about Nate making a decision to keep a promise that he made. For right or wrong, Nate publicly stated that he would not raise prices to existing customers. This happened before this topic existed. This post originally explicitly explored ways that he could keep that promise while continuing to expand the product. He went through a few iterations, including having multiple tiers for legacy pricing versus new feature pricing and ultimately decided not to do that. He did this knowing that some “experts” don’t recommend this approach financially and that some customers may not understand, but that to Nate, having a user base that he was connected with, that trusted his transparency and believed him at his word was more valuable to the brand at that time. He also said they may revisit and I suspect they will eventually. Either way, this is not simply an argument about the value of a Trainerroad subscription, but also the integrity of the company and the CEO. As someone who may not have been present at the time, I don’t think you can understand what it was like and what the sentiment was and simply saying those impacted by that decision are entitled or selfish is unfair. Many, if not most were willing to pay more at the time. I think there is still more of a family feel to this company that any other I’ve been in business with, but I’m not sure many would disagree that it’s a bit different now…
Loyalty pricing doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. Of course, I’m happy with my legacy pricing but I can’t blame a business for wanting to make money
I hope they would but that will never be tested so we can both speculate what the outcome will be. And if that is the case, what you guess, the TR would be winning on three streams by keeping their legacy customer base, having extra revenue generated by the legacy crowd now paying nearly double their fees, and getting new users not making them feel they are being done in.
So, why they lackluster attitude of not being in a one user pricing policy then? There’s nothing to fear based on your guess and as I hope.
Well, thank you very much. I did not know that the people on legacy pricing did not get a product from TR. That they only paid for the development 6-7 years ahead. No, you got the TR product and yes you did pay for development, but that was the ongoing development at that time. Just as my payments have helped with ongoing developments now (calender, AT, AIT FTP, outside workouts, etc)
What you can say is that the people on legacy pricing do not pay for the development going on today. They only pay for the product from back in the day.
That is why TR should make 2 products. One with a price that will match the legacy price and contain less. I am not sure where to make the cut. But workouts, AIT FTP, and calendar maybe. Everyone should be able to purchase this product. Product 2 should be the full package. You could call the 2 products Rookie and Elite 
I have no idea, but I guess TR have done their homework and maybe legacy TR users are only a very small % so will make a negligable impact on revenue.
Plus TR made a promise not to raise pricing for them. However I am surprised they have access to all new features.
I hear you. Did read about that promise. It’s hard to break a promise. And the contingent of legacy users guess about being small is likely correct, hence my comment about the tail wagging the dog that didn’t come across too well, but it gives a very good metaphor.
I guess the problem could be alleviated where all users pay equally and get full service product. Only thing a user can be unhappy about is either glitches in the training software, TR servers going down, no new products etc. and these would be issues to all users across a leveled playing field.
If you had to hazard another guess, do you think current TR subscription fees would be as high as they are now if there wasn’t a legacy pricing structure for X number of TR users? What do you guess X number represents in terms of % of current users?
I guess the tail of a dog likely represents 5% of its body, if that. I do guess though that X number is greater than 5% and closer to 30% of being legacy TR users. That’s a big promise to break to 30% than what it would be to 5%.
Yikes, even breaking a promise to one person is not ideal. In any
matter. But one person should not dictate the existence of a service when it could be precluding the increase in profits of said service.
I guess I have said to much. But it is all a guess, as that is what it seems to enable viewpoints to pass. A guess is nearly an affirmed assumption, I guess.
Yes. I think the fees are set by what they think the market will bear and what cyclists will consider reasonable value. If they could raise the price 50% and generate significantly higher overall revenue then they would - it would allow them to hire more people and move faster on their product roadmap.
Equally there are scenarios where I think fees would drop. E.g. If Zwift or Wahoo were offering a compelling alternative to TR at a lower price, or if cost of living meant enough people were cancelling subscriptions then I could see them needing to reduce fees to maintain their customer base even if that meant putting some development on hold.
Much like the shortening of days portends that winter is near for those of us in the northern hemisphere, the TR Legacy Pricing thread coming out of hibernation signals the same.
No matter your platform of choice or your cost basis, on this beautiful fall day here, I’d like to wish everyone in TR land a healthy and happy winter training season.
-Darth
This is a big question but we can easily approximate the answer.
In fact it is only dependent on 2 numbers: The % of users with legacy pricing and the discount % of the legacy pricing.
If we start with a yearly price of $189 for all users, we can vary both the % of legacy users and their % of discount and get different curves for the “Equivalent yearly price to make the same income if there was no legacy users”. Take a look at the curve below.
What we see is that even though we like to think a lot of money is going away to these legacy users, it actually doesn’t represent that much of the total revenue since the impact is not high on the yearly prices.
In other words, if we assume that 10% of users have legacy pricing and they get a 50% discount on their dues. If we eliminated this discount, all of the members prices would decrease from $189/year to $174/year in order to keep the same income. This is a discount of $1.25 for all users.
In exchange, TR has to factor in whether or not the legacy users would quit and leave due to not having the retention incentive or the smaller price.
I don’t think the monthly or yearly price is set by legacy users but by what TR has analyzed to be the sweet spot to retain users, gain new users and what the market can take given their features.
TLDR: In summary, the equivalent discount for all users if there was no legacy pricing is very small and only becomes significant (depending on the definition of significant) after 25% of the user base start having a 50% discount or so.
PS: this is a very crude approximation based solely on my own math…
You lost me after the 1st sentence 
7 Likes
I will only add something that someone much smarter said to me when my twins were young and we were constantly comparing them:
“Comparison is the robbery of joy”.
If you enjoy the product - try (emphasis on try…) not to stress that someone else is paying less than you. Just enjoy the product. If it doesn’t meet your needs - move on, but someone paying less than you does not impact the product’s ability to meet your needs (not making the argument that if everyone was paying the current price - newer things couldn’t be rolled out quicker because they could higher more people, etc…)
Nate made a very savvy decision when he made the Legacy pricing promise.
Many reasons, but the biggest from my perspective is he created a class of loyal and “sticky” customers. Outside of being kind and rational human beings, all of the Legacy customers represent reliable recurrent revenue. Not all customers are created equal, and customers who will reliably re-subscribe each year, and who pay for an entire year, are more valuable than fickle customers who pop in and out and complain a lot while doing so. Even worse are the customers who subscribe for a couple years, complain that TR didn’t make them a GT contender, then disappear never to return.
From my perspective, it is today’s legacy customers, and tomorrow’s future Legacy customers, who have big value to TR and whom TR should bend over backwards to keep. The monthly customers are actually Freeloaders with marginal value.
The Freeloaders are customers who want TR to keep improving while not committing to the platform. Freeloaders only want to pay for the months they will use. Freeloaders will complain loudly that they want the best price points. Even though they don’t deserve them and have certainly not earned them. Freeloaders are happy to find a cheaper version of TR even when that cheaper version is a total rip-off of the originator. A double gut punch from Freeloaders on that one. Not surprising though as Freeloaders lack ethics and morals and only look out for themselves. For ex-USA people, Freeloaders also want TR to take it in the shorts when exchange rates aren’t favorable. But of course when exchange rates are favorable, those same freeloaders happily pocket their savings and splurge on fancy coffee (according to the other thread) or bike parts.
Here is the simple math, because Freeloaders are simple:
Assuming the majority of TR customers live in the northern hemisphere, which is a pretty good assumption, then peak TR use will occur in Dec-Jan-Feb-March each year. That is four lousy months. Sure, there are a few demented individuals who train indoors all year long or use TR to program their entire lives. Both of those people know who they are, are probably on the trainer and not reading this thread and also: Mad Respect Yo!
Back to our Freeloaders… at the current, and amazingly great deal pricing of $20 a month, with no obligation for more than one month at a time, that means the Freeloaders can use TR very cheaply and with no commitment. Cheaper than most, if not all, Legacy customers. Furthermore, these Freeloading scum are massively sponging off of the good customers who are keeping the lights on for you. We are so happy each fall when the Freeloaders deign to return and we sure do hope that everything is warm and cozy and to your satisfaction.
If anything, TR has the Legacy pricing policy sorted out very well to create loyal, sticky customers and reliable revenue streams. By my math, they should significantly raise the monthly rate and force the freeloaders to finally pay their fair share.
Good Day,
-Darth
p.s. Dark Lords of the Sith don’t use emoticons or /sarcasm tags.
I feel seen
Seasonal?
Do you mean people do wo on the road?
What is this!?