Strava leaderboards no longer free

This to me has always been the crux of Strava’s problem. Their tools are just crappy. DCR really hit the nail on the head in his post. By improving the product they would have driven more people to pay. This move just seems self defeating.

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Also, with this after cutting off various 3rd party syncing, Strava is not a ‘safe’ place to store all your ride data. I need to rethink where my canonical archive of all my ride data is kept - Strava made this simple, but now has chosen to make it unreliable (in that they have demonstrated that they are not a reliable service provider.)

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Bummer. Always considered myself too cool to go for KOMs until this year with no races, now I’ve gotten into it. Can’t see justifying another cycling-based subscription service other than TR. Back to racing myself.

Was going to look in to Ridewithgps but it appears to be down. I wonder if they’re getting a big influx of traffic from this news!

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I know they said the 3 different bundles confused everyone but IMHO it was perfect and not difficult to understand.

If they want to monetise route planning make it a bundle but when it goes to £7.99 I’m out, I’d be happy paying £3 for just live segments and leader board. I know graphs give better info about improvements but out on the road I have favourite climbs and the count down is really good motivation.

Live segments and leader boards are the only things that aren’t in some other app.

and interesting comment in the DCRainmaker’s article:

“In a conference call last week, Strava was point-blank clear that if they don’t get more subscribers and become profitable, there’s a pretty good chance there won’t be a Strava in a year.”

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I also have issue with the new pricing. I’d be 1000x more likely to subscribe at $3 per month versus $7.

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When was the last time they innovated or fixed bugs?

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Same… reminds me I need to turn off my autorenew

Their analysis features are garbage

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No. There are reasons to pay for Premium, but using with WKO5 isn’t one of them.

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I’ve been using strava for route planning, so that end from today :frowning:
What’s the best other option out there? I’ve used garmin connect and found it a bit more clumsy.

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Probably not the best move on Strava’s part but i will keep my account as long as they keep pushing data to TR and more importantly intervals.icu.

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I went and cancelled my renewal when they dropped Bluetooth device support from the app. They managed to overcome my inertia, nice one.

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I really like Strava from a social network point of view - it keeps me in touch with cycling buddies all over the world. I’m willing to pay a subscription to help keep the platform going. I wish they could have managed this and previous situations better though. They carry on like they don’t know their arse from their elbow.

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With their incredibly persistent popups and alerts, it seems like they’re just begging or getting users to begrudgingly sign up for paid. Even if it’s effective, people probably aren’t that happy about it.

The other method is: provide a clear benefit to the user, and charge a reasonable price for it. Strava costs what, 1/4 the cost of TR? Yet the cost of TR doesn’t phase me, and I haven’t even considered Strava. What should their takeaway from that be?

Part of it is, before today I guess, I don’t think it’s been clear what EXACTLY I get for my money anyway. HR analysis? I don’t personally need that. Their value prop has just never seemed very clear. Like other said, I don’t necessarily expect the full suite of services for free, but if you want me to pay, your paid services better be things that 1) I want and 2) work well.

EDIT: Their heatmaps and route planning is probably the feature i’m closest to paying for. I would do it, but I don’t think it works well with my head unit, sadly, so I still have to move over to ridewithgps anyway. Live segments on my Wahoo also made me consider it.

EDIT 2: – Non-paying users will not longer get ‘matched rides/runs’ feature: This will automatically compare runs/rides on the same route from a pace/speed standpoint. I think it’s funny you have to pay for that feature now. I hate that feature, and think it sets a bad expectation for lesser experienced users that all rides or runs should ‘trend faster’ and it’s bad if it doesn’t.

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Which, if you believe in basic free market theory, is all the reason they need to start to charge a subscription for it…if you want what makes it unique, then you will need to pay for it.

The twist is that, as has been noted many times above, this was always part of the deal with Strava…and now that they can’t figure out how to add features that people will actually pay for, they are taking what IMO is the lazy way out.

I’m really torn on this…I understand why they are doing it, but it just doesn’t sit well for me.

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Confused, nothing seems to have changed, yet! I am on Free.
Can still create routes, can still see position outside top 10, even this mornings.
Is this only for new activities going forward, or is it a phased change that just hasn’t affected me yet?

Edit: The only difference I can see at the moment is a ‘new’ START TRIAL button, lol.

There seems to be no good logical reason as to why they ever did this. Why remove a feature so many use successfully?

I am using TRs calendar more and more. If Strava stopped pushing out to other apps I would 100% drop Strava.

Leaderboards were cool and nice when I started riding but I don’t need em and rarely look at them anymore. That being said removing a defining feature that has been free for so long is going to leave a bad taste in a lot of peoples mouth. It is their app and they can do as they please though.

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If I hadn’t read about it here, I honestly don’t think I’d have noticed the change… :woman_shrugging:

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I’ve deleted Strava once before, and I wouldn’t mind doing it again. I enjoy the social element of knowing what routes and areas my local friends are enjoying, that’s probably the only benefit I utilize. I have Garmin Connect and TR for actual analysis and training. Getting QOMs is fun, but not worth more than $1 or 2 per month.

I suppose one upside of ditching Strava would be that I stop feeling guilty or lazy when I see all my friends out riding every day, even though I’m sticking to my personal goals.

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Good move for Strava. They should have done it 2-3 years ago.

Routes: Strava vs. RWGPS: It take about 1/2 - 2/3 # of way points to create a route with Strava vs RWGPS due to Strava knowing popular cyclist roads aka heat maps (7 vs 13 on a popular 50mi 5kft route in our area). So if speed of route creation is important, Strava is much better. When traveling, it is also much easier to locate routes on Strava of your favorite pros or club rides to copy/modify.

Leaderboards: Google gave away search for free and built up their user base before building an ad model on top of it. Strava could have chosen to load us up with ads. But instead has chosen to charge for highly valued features (routes and leaderboards).

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