Thanks for the update. I get a lot of value for the pricing. I’m a professional/fulltime cycling coach and I could view TrainerRoad as competition but I don’t its a tool I use with my athletes (and for my training!) … so I’m happy to pay the subscription fee.
Just to add my support on here for all the TR team for what you guys do. I will have a 50% price rise, give or take, but fully appreciate the actual value of the product has increased substantially over the number of years I have been with you.
I know full well working for a SaaS player myself that costs have increased on the business from a number of areas and therefore the need to offset to customers is pretty much a given.
With all this in mind I am happy with just rolling onto the new price and supporting what you do
Not sure it did…
@Nate_Pearson Thanks for not being like strava!
Indeed, TR handled this better by many orders of magnitude.
Aside from that recognition of TR’s great work, please keep Strava pricing info in it’s topic:
Sorry… I just saw the video and posted directly here…then I saw the other post.
No I guess not lol!
Joe
I love this response but still, very indignantly want a branded kit. I really want to have “trainer road” on my butt so people behind me know that I’m less slow because of your team.
But, of course, if many leave for Zwift or Wahoo X, it won’t be any skin off your back so it’s easy for you to throw that advice out. TR have to consider the real possibility that thousands of legacy users might leave within months and what it means to the company, its employees and even to their competitors, you don’t.
Or many will stay and pay the higher price as demonstrated in this forum. If they do then they’ll be able to grow the business, employ more staff, pay existing staff more and develop the platform faster. Nate is basically saying legacy pricing is unsustainable.
You’ve only looked at the negative side of the equation and made an assumption that thousands will leave. The overall response in this forum is positive towards price increases.
Judging from the reaction in the forum (which is not necessarily representative of TR’s customer base at large) it is fair to say that the way the price increase was handled was seen mostly in a very positive light.
All TR users have the option to keep their pricing if they pay less or get a 15 % discount. Nobody is forced to pay more, all they have to do is make a choice.
We can speculate how those TR customers will react who don’t post in the forums. I reckon the vast majority is ok with TR’s solution.
Compare this with how e. g. Strava is handling a price increase in some countries by not-officially-announced amounts, and the comparison is like day-and-night. (Plus, Strava has done far less to earn a price increase.)
However this is assuming that forum users are a fair representation of the entire population of TR users. I’d hazard a guess that forum users are only a small proportion of total users and more likely to be firm TR supporters/fans than maybe average user (I include myself in this, I’m a big TR fan). Also human nature says people are far more likely to post on here if they have accepted the price rise than if they have opted out, so likely a very bias selection on this post.
Only TR team will really know what percentage of legacy users will opt out or accept the rise…and judging by some comments how many people will leave TR because they don’t like price rise but are too daft to actually read email/watch video and opt out!
If I understand correctly, I can get a discount even after the “choice deadline”. But where? Only through support? Link in e-mail says that the choice period has ended.
The negative is why they didn’t just do away with legacy pricing and be done with it, regardless of how nicely they could be about it (yes, vs. Strava et al). The negative that only they have to worry about, not you. That’s why they did worry and why they, very decently, did things in this way.
I made no assumption whatsoever - perhaps you didn’t take the time to read my post. I wrote that TR had to consider a real possibility thousands might leave. This is a statement of fact, not an opinion, not an assumption.
Nate - the way you’re approaching this is outstanding. A case study for exemplary business practices if there ever was one. I wish I had more time (and patience) to read through this whole thread (and I may peruse the entire forum only once or twice a year).
I initially opted to remain at the $99/year option because the way I use TR has barely changed since 2016. At least that’s what I tell myself. Also, 95% of my use comes from November 1 to April 30. All this is to say that my first thought when hearing the news was that there’d be tiering options available, but I totally understand your decision given this insight.
Will there be an option to change my selection at some point in the future?
Hey Nate, this is admirable, but do you think maybe you’re making the
same mistake you made in 2010
Sounds like you’re in a spot of bother, but I wish you and the TR family the best of luck!
It’s also a statement of fact that thousands may stay and that would benefit the platform, the people that work there and the user base that are prepared to pay what the CEO thinks it’s worth. You don’t know…I don’t know.
I don’t think you read my post (likely as you just seem to want to have a go at me! And you seem to have dismissed any notion that people may think they’ve had a good deal for a long time and will agree with Nate and pay more)
You’ve only presented an argument for people leaving, no consideration for people staying and the benefits that would bring.
You’d need more than 50% of current legacy subscribers to leave before you started losing money if the other 50% pays the higher price. I’d say that is unlikely. But again, I don’t know. Even if they did cancel many might just go to using for a few months a year which would compensate or come back annually at the higher price. I don’t see the doomsday scenario of TR losing a huge amount of subscribers by cancelling legacy pricing to result in a significant loss of revenue.
I admire Nate as a CEO. But he obviously feels legacy pricing was a mistake or not necessarily a mistake just detrimental to the future development of the platform. If the platform is worth what he feels it is worth then people will pay it. If it isn’t worth the full price then it’s priced wrongly.
A better idea would maybe drop the price to 150 USD for everyone so everyone benefits. The fact some people pay 189 USD includes an element of having to compensate for those users like me who only pay 99 USD.
I’d pay 150 USD if everyone was on the same price.
So you have
a- the users paying full price
b- the users paying original legacy price
c- the users paying an in between legacy price
What they’re trying to do is to convert or bridge the gap between the “A” users and the “B-C” users
You deal with the following scenario
x- Some “B-C” users are willing to pay what users “A” pay
y- Some can’t or feel they should get a discount for loyalty and don’t want to pay what users A pay whether it be for loyalty reasons or budgeting reasons, so the opt-out or 15% is a good option for them
z- Some are willing to pay more but can’t and would opt out if no options are out there
If you can get enough of x and y conversions and DON’T lose on the z crowd, you get a win win win situation.
If you can only get X conversion scenarios you will lose out on Y and Z and lowering the price to say 150 doesn’t ensure that you won’t lose out on Y and Z and we also don’t know at what point they’ll break even as we don’t know how the users will react anyways to a change like as we can’t predict that behaviour.
Giving people the choice also shows some respect for the user and it makes them feel part of the decision making process and probably increases loyalty to the product. These are the same people who will praise the product, talk to their cyclist friends about it and maybe get them to join as well which means more revenue.
At least that’s how i see it.
If you just look at it from a financial sense, it definitely works to convert everyone. It’s less of a headache. But i guess Nate is a man of his word and doesn’t want to (fully) break his promise!
Just look at how much of a $hit show strava pricing change is right now comparatively. $hitty communication and disgruntled users at the increase.
For the time being, I will stay on legacy, but I think there is no reson why legacy pricing would not be subjected to current inflation increase. Nate would still honor his promise of not raising the (base) price, it would only be updated to reflect inflation. I think it would be more then fair.
Yes.
I agree that low/mid/high don’t make sense.
I want to look at training history and recommend a few different volumes. Then match those to regular days/duration you train.
You could have three choices like:
(these are bad names)
- Maintain
- Progress
- Stretch
Where maintain would be a sort of maintenance plan. Progress would be a slow increase in TSS. And stretch would be a more accelerated increase.
Then we could be like “you normally workout for 45 mins on Tuesday, so we set your tuesday workout to 45 mins. On sat you usually do a 2 hour ride, so we will recommend 2 hour rides by default.”
I think this combined with AI FTP Detection makes starting a plan really easy but it also gets you into the right volume.
I swear the people who flame us on youtube for “burning them out” had an EXTREME increase in volume when they picked high volume.