Thanks… I wasn’t aware of much of that history, mostly because to me Strava has only ever been a lightweight ‘Facebook for fitness’.
When the prior CEO joined the company, he (and his team) replaced Strava Premium (a single paid for feature pack) with Strava Summit. Strava Summit separated the premium features into 3 separate offerings: Training Pack, Analysis Pack and Safety Pack. The concept was that you could pay less if you were only interested in 1 of the Packs (feature sets), but if you still wanted it all, you could retain the Premium pricing. Strava also planned to add more features over time to each of these 3 packs.
If you would like to understand more about the details of the feature sets of each of the packs, here is an article (I believe Strava has withdrawn their own description from their website):
For me Strava doesn’t provide ANY “added value” to Garminconnect now when they have closed access to “followers” in segements.
It was the sole point for me to have a Strava account.
Now when it is gone I have deleted my account and I will not return.
When it comes to data logging Strava got NOTHING on any competitors according to me.
So that is another reason for me to abandon the Strava-ship.
I bet that Strava will be gone in a year due to this.
They should have gone for adds instead to get the income.
I think the thing with Strava, that would be hard to replicate anywhere else, is that it’s about as purely device/platform agnostic as one can get. “Everyone” (exaggeration, just meaning lots and lots of people) share stuff and it doesn’t matter if you use garmin/wahoo/strava app/other head unit/TR/zwift. It brings everyone together.
No one really needs Strava, and I would be equally motivated with or without the kudos I get, but I like seeing what other people are up to, giving them a thumbs up and/or comment on a job well done. I would miss that if it were no longer available. I don’t (currently) foresee any viable alternative for that exact thing, everything else is going to pale in comparison.
Then you would have a mob also bitching about how add ruin everything!
I had been under the delusion that if I paid for Strava, then I could opt of of my data being shared. Metro is just one example. I’m similarly annoyed that with my NYT subscription I still see ads. I agree that theoretically the use of the data could result in good things, but it was the concept of still losing control over my data even though I paid that rankled me. I’m still disappointed, but have moved on.
Nope!! 
I just noticed…
the training log is no longer free. It was also redesign. You can add lot of other activities (no longer limited to run/bike/swim)
Sequoia Capital, the lead investor, is an extremely thoughtful, thorough and very successful venture capital firm here in Silicon Valley (e.g. they funded Apple, Atari, DropBox, Instagram, LinkedIn, Zappos, Zoom and many other successful tech firms that you likely know). Unquestionably they, along with the founders and other Strava execs, did a thorough review of various business models, including one based on an advertising model before selecting the path they are now on. As part of this business and financial analysis, they fully realize the tradeoff of customer revenue vs. account loss when they chose this business model.
Curiously, were you a previously paying customer to their Premium and/or Summit services or just using their free service before you decided to delete your account?
While not directed at me, I was a paying customer in 2018/19 but dropped it as there was little value in the “premium” services (outside of Live segments).
They should have done ads…premium accounts removed ads and gave (worthwhile) features. Sure, people would have squawked at first, but few would have cancelled their subs and they would have monetized all subscribers, not just those willing to pay for premium.
My $.02…no change allowed. 
While I applaud Strava’s decision, I am not defending it over other alternate paths that may have turned out to be better . . . or worse. I’m only suggesting that it is extremely likely that they evaluated many options, including combination offerings. What was clear, however, is that business as usual (their prior Summit offerings) was a failure so changes are necessary for the company to survive and prosper.
You’ll be missed
And … the changes are now live.
Wow! It’s much more crappy than I had expected! Losing the ability to see your own results wasn’t something I thought was getting chopped.
Also not being able to see your overall place on the leaderboards unless you’re top 10 is just downright mean!
Agreed 100%.
I really wish their prior Premium offerings had value…I’d MUCH rather have a one-stop place for everything related to my outdoor activities. If their analytics had even just used common metrics, I would have considered dumping Training Peaks for them…but they tried instead to develop their own metrics. Really dumb choice, IMO…people had years of data and familiarity of with TSS, etc. They were basically asking users to learn a new language.
i don’t see it this way at all. trainingpeaks hasn’t updated their ui since 1995 and other platforms are in the same arena (insufferably unpleasant to use). they don’t offer anything over strava that’s useful in my training. i’m on trainerroad and also a paying strava memeber and will continue to use and pay for both. strava keeps training interesting and is not an excel spreadsheet that few people might care about.
it’s $5/month. ridiculous how many people complain about that after spending $10k on their biking proclivites.
that said, prior ceo leadership sat on their hands for quite a few years and contributed nothing.
that was a great read, sums up my feelings perfectly
what’s ‘garmin connect’?
jokes aside, garmin’s platform is terrible and was enough for me to leave garmin altogether. every garmin user i know never look at any data on garmin connect. it all about the output to strava.
NYT subscription is ~$220/yr (I’m a subscriber as well). About 2/3 of NYT revenue comes from subscription; 1/3 from ads. The question for you to think about is whether you would be willing to pay $330/year (~$6.50/wk or $1/day) for a subscription without ads.
As for the Strava data, that is integral to their business model - it is why their Routing is #1 with no reasonable ability of a competitor to catch up in. Sure, RWGPS can add lots of peripheral features to make it attractive. However, with >10m users, 100s of millions of rides and billions of segment miles, there’s a ton of data for Strava to make their routing great and this comes from both premium users and free users. So the question for you is similar to above for NYT: Would you be willing to pay $180/year to Strava (the price of TR subscription) in exchange for eliminating your data from being used in their routing database?
It does work. The only place it doesn’t work is in the CEO’s arrogant and misplaced ideological mind. Someone should tell him that there’s a huge difference between Wikipedia suddenly promoting completely random ads and Strava deciding to have cycling/sports specific ads.
That and that anyone who complains can install an ad-block extension anyway.
After looking at my first post change ride today, I had a new thought. I think this change may decrease the number of new users to Strava. When I stated cycling a few years ago I started out using Map my Ride but switched to Strava because I liked their segments and how I could track my improvements on segments over time. There is no way I would have paid for that back then, for my first two years cycling I didnt know or follow a single other Strava user.
I know Strava says they have 50 million users, but how many of those are actually active and how many create an account, are active for a couple years then find new hobbies? My guess is that less new users could equal less paid users starting a slide