Strava leaderboards no longer free

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I got into cycling just over one year ago. One of the things that most contributed to my motivation, engagement and growth at first was Strava, because I could quickly connect with friends anywhere (for encouragement, feedback, guidance) and so I could have a central data repository to use as a diary. I certainly don’t ride because of Strava… but it has definitely helped me get into, and enjoy, cycling a lot more smoothly and quickly.

Since I have a busy work/family schedule, I mostly ride alone, so again Strava segments and analysis have been great tools to gauge my progress. I even have a small spreadsheet where I track how I’ve gradually moved up the leaderboards over time on certain key segments.

I think there’s real value in having a social network for cycling. I think Strava’s various route/training/segment tools also provide additional value even if 80%+ of its users don’t need or want them. Are they the best, or the only, in most cases? No, but they’re good enough for many people to make Strava their only cycling subscription.

I think this change, and others in their past, has been miserably communicated and shows some real strategic stupidity. I also think the company has been tragically mismanaged for years, as their particular road to Hell has been littered with missed opportunities and lack of improvement.

I’m sure that providing features for clubs as others have suggested, or maybe a three-tier pricing (truly barebones is free, features most people want cost $10 a year, and the full feature set is $50/year) might be better. But somehow, Strava needs to become profitable or they’ll eventually die off… and while that wouldn’t be the end of the world, it would be a real loss.

Too many people conflate what would be good for them or what would matter to them with what would be good overall, or would matter overall. Anything that’s being used by 50 MILLION PEOPLE deserves significant effort to rescue, whatever its current condition/management may be.

I don’t care if current investors lose their shirt… that’s capitalism. But I do hope that either they succeed, or someone else buys them out and makes everything work well and profitably, for the common good.

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355

Not sure about Wahoo, but on a Garmin head unit you can create your own segments, so just make them “match” the Strava segments you care about. If Wahoo supports this, then you should still get notified when approaching one so you can hammer the KOM/QOM.

356

Very well put.

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Ride with GPS is pretty good. I use it as my “central repository” for all routes and upload them to my watch and head unit as needed.

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Now you’re just being unreasonable for the sake of arguing. You know what he meant

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The market here was to be the social and communication hub for cyclists, clubs and informal groups but they never pursued that in any meaningful way. All my friends are on Strava but we all still have to use FaceBook for group communications. As a rider i like seeing what my friends are doing and check my Strava feed regularly. But tellingly, as a Club officer, race organizer and someone who actually needs and wants to communicate with cyclists, both individually and in groups, Strava has nothing whatsoever to offer me . . . .

Strava is another example of a great little company that will die trying to be a mega bucks tech home run.

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362

I wonder if anyone senior in Strava will read this thread (and / or other similar ones on other forums)?

In between the various personal perspectives (all legitimate in their own right) there is a goldmine of feedback and pointers / solutions to problems they could mine and act upon

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I ran a series of age group swim teams. There was one company that had the go to software for running teams and swim meets. Eventually it got bought by Active.com (the event entry company). Active took the software and its market share to get its hands on processing almost all the money changing hands in age group swimming in the US.

Strava could fit into that space. In my cycling club work we pay to collect event entries, we pay to track volunteers, we pay to collect membership dues, etc. There are revenue streams there that dovetail with Strava’s users and data.

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Strava management sounds like they don’t know what they are doing. They have had years to monetize it and have failed.

First, the social is the best aspect. I see what my friends are doing on their bike. I can follow friends in different states that I no longer ride with. Or, I can follow pros that are on Strava and see what they are doing. But you can’t direct message someone. They could have added group and direct messaging for communication. Right now my clubs and riding buddies use FB, Google groups, and text message for club communication and setting up rides.

Second, they are targeting the wrong population with the current change. People that train seriously are a very small percentage of the cycling population. When I look at all the serious cyclists in my town, you are only talking about a handful that go for KOMs or look seriously at leader boards. The majority of cyclists aren’t strong enough to get KOMs. The same 20-30 hot shots in town have almost all the KOMs and fill out the rest of the top 10. It’s just the way it is. I don’t see people that are 165th on a leader board caring that much - certainly not enough to pay $60.

Strava’s idea that training tools will encourage people to pay $60/year is misguided. Their tools are have been substandard. Any serious cyclist will quickly jump up to TrainerRoad, TrainingPeaks, WKO, etc. That leaves Strava with a small sub set of cyclists that want to train and are fine with their very basic tools. Not the greatest business model.

In the end, they have built hardly anything special that people want to pay $60/year for. I think they would be better off charging everybody $1/mo / $12/year. That would probably put plenty of money in their coffers.

BTW, I’ve noticed hardly any change in my Strava account. I can still see full leader boards where I am in the top 10. I looked at a leader board that I am not on and I could only see the top 14. I was still able to compare my ride with the KOM ride. It did indicate that I could compare up to 5 rides at a time if I paid for premium. Never thought of doing that. They advertise it as “see who won the race” - another feature that would appeal to 1% of their membership. I tested routing though I never use it. I was able to make a route and export it as a GPX file. So, it’s hard to see what they removed. Again hardly any changes worth paying $60 for… Another Strava fail.

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No debate on this. As another person said, it has been years after Routes was launched and is still Beta with no additional features and added robustness. FWIW: I have found it has reliably worked on various Garmins I have had, but I doubt they have done testing on many other devices.

The issue has been leadership. When the founders launched the company it took off like a rocket - several million subscribers. However, unlike Google which had deep pocket funding long before revenue, Strava did not. And when the original premium service was launched, there wasn’t enough uptake to pay for their costs. So that is when the founders were ousted and the investors put in the Instagram BD guy as CEO who hired his own team, none of which had any understanding of the cycling market.

This new team launched Summit which made the offering quite complex. HOWEVER, two of the real value features - leaderboards and route planning - remained free. You could see the issues in front of your eyes right here in the TR Forum - a large # of complaints about Strava by TR Users who WERE NOT paying subscribers. How screwed up of a situation is that?

So the investors recently fired the management team and reinstalled the founders. And, as I said earlier, what the founders did should have been done 2-3 years ago. You can call it panic if you want, but I view it as the recognition by the investors that the prior CEO and his team had failed and changes were needed. And these changes need to produce revenue to fix product issues and add new features. I think the most interesting thing to see is whether users, such as many here on TR, decide to subscribe particularly as Strava makes those changes and additions to their subscription offering.

FWIW: I have been a paying subscriber since the early days wanting to support them as they are a local company providing a great service, regardless of whether leadership was bad and I “needed” their premium features.

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:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::+1::+1::+1::heart_eyes:

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Proficient use of the flag function. I’ve also used it copious amounts on strava for all the false leaderboard times. :+1:

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Once real racing opens up again I will be. strava segs are an incomparable substitute.

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372

Man this thread has devolved . . . :expressionless:

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Thanks for posting that, I was planning to do the same. I’ll give the founders kudos for delivering updates this year. I may even subscribe again.

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375

Let’s take a moment, a few deep breaths and reset, please.

Confrontation and such serves no benefit here. Keep to the TOPIC please.

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377

This to me is one of their key failings. I pay ridewithgps, as I make use of their advanced route planning features. Strava is unusable in comparison. If strava had a superior routing experience than the paid ridewithgps, I would likely be paying strava and not ridewithgps.
The amount of time and money they squandered doing who knows what is astounding.

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I think many people who are griping about the change (me included) would not agree with this part.

Agree with this part, and this feeds back into my view that they haven’t been providing a great service for a good part of the last few years.

I think it is a panic, as surely they knew that it would be better to give notice, especially to third party apps. Rolling this out in the way they did is rude in my opinion, so either this is their preferred way of rolling out changes that negatively impact their user base, or they were forced to do it this way due to financial constraints - AKA panic. If this is not a panic, and this is their preferred way of interacting with users, they have made it clear where I stand with them, and that doesn’t make me inclined to give them money.
This issue goes well beyond 'internet users complain that they have to pay for something." That is part of it, but I think the majority of the griping is around the other issues that have been highlighted.

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379

I haven’t seen this posted here - I think this captures a lot of the sentiment very nicely.

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Is your comment directed at the discussion that I and a few others are having? If so, I’d like to understand the issue you are concerned about further as it is the core underlying issue that has driven Strava’s success and its failure over many years and is the basis for many of the Strava topics described on the forum. What I am trying to do is shed light on the situation - why it emerged and why I believe it has a good chance of getting fixed.