With the three month free trial over, I’m curious to hear how many people ended up paying for premium. And for those who didn’t, any plans to in the future?
Personally, I signed up for the free trial and canceled before it expired. Leaderboards were fun, and I still go for KOMs, but I haven’t really felt a need to pay to see my current position. I still use Elevate and Intervals.icu pulling from Strava, but I’ve noticed I’m using Strava itself a whole lot less now. Between TR and Intervals.icu, I get way better analysis, and Elevate I just use for mileage tracking for the most part.
Did the limiting of features drive anybody else to pay?
Did the 3 month trial, just ended. No desire to pay for premium. Get all data etc from TR. Leaderboards are nice but not end of the world…and if I’m fast enough then they are still free!
Yeah, it’s not great. There’s a couple near me that don’t show on the search. I’m not sure if I’m going to carry on paying. Nothing seems to have really changed/improved.
LOL…I just lost a “Local Legend” crown. It was from a ride I did out of town over a month ago when we did a college visit with my daughter. I had done the segment a total of ONCE…and I was the Local Legend.
I am busy with Garmin Connect integration specifically pushing planned workouts to Garmin devices.
I like the social side of Strava, segment leaderboards and the API so am happy to pay for it. There is a nice climb near my house and I am 22/1450. Never going to make the top 10 but I still like to know where I am!
My trial just ended and don’t think I will renew. The only thing I might miss is matched rides/runs but I can always creat a Garmin segment and do it that way. Not as convenient but easy to do.
Absolutely but easy to replicate other places. The weekly mileage/hours are gone in the profile app section but can still see it on the web. Can get that from TP free version. Have liked adding some clubs to get some new route ideas.
I find that if I create a route in ridewithgps, thought I can get it wirelessly on my garmin 830 or 1030 plus easily, I don’t get any live segments. Only if I create the route in strava, will I get the live segments to work. True for others?
Just pointing out that this still works: you (or at least I!) can see my own top-10 times for a segment, just as I could prior to the paywalling. NB in my “Settings”, under “Display Preferences” I have “Default Leaderboard View” set to “My results”.
I had used Strava’s trial subscription for a couple of months; this feature (own top-10) worked prior to my trial and it works again after my trial ended and I’m back to being a freeloader.
For me, probably the only useful things missing as a non-subscriber are (i) granularity on the Leaderboards, eg. Today / This Week / Month / Age Categories etc. filtering and Matched Rides, which is marginally useful. To me, these are quite low-value nice-haves rather than must-haves, so rationally it’s quite hard for me to pay up for them…
Perhaps the most useful aspect of Strava for me is its function as a data hub through which other services connect and grab my ride data. I would pay up for that, but Strava have chosen not to ask me to. If in future they decide to charge for that data-hubbing, and the price is reasonable, I’d pay for that, or if they introduced new subscriber features that are useful to me personally, I might pay up for those, but currently I’ll probably not bother.
I agree. I keep thinking that Strava should go for a much higher percentage of users paying $1/month for primary features rather than $5/month for crappy secondary features. 5M users paying $1/month is $60M per year.
For free you get to record rides on your phone. With a device you’d have to manually upload. For $1/mo. you get data hub, syncing, leaderboards, clubs, routing, and everything.
Strava only made $35M in 2019. The $60M in subscriptions would be on top of selling data, mapping info, or partnerships. Strava could probably have a nice retail business selling Garmins, Wahoos, trainers, and whatever equipment people need to be on Strava.
The most useful Strava feature for me is just getting to see what my friends are up to for runs/rides, and in turn letting them see what I’m up to–basically the social aspect. I use Garmin Connect as my main “log book” which I log comments and stuff on and keep relatively private, but Strava is where “just the data” can go for my friends/acquaintances.
Wahoo bike computer? Or Garmin but using a service that only syncs with Strava?
All my data is on TrainingPeaks and Garmin Connect. TP makes it easy to download archives of all the original files uploaded. And TP has all kinds of workouts (hikes, walks, swimming, weight lifting) that were synced from different apps and bike computers. The free version of TP has a good set of features and sync partners.
Got an alert today notifying me of a poached KOM. Went to check it out…spent a few minutes flagging the top SEVEN rides because they were ALL in vehicles by old people. One even managed to bang out 1000w for 30sec with a 73HR! WTF! LOL! So…strava wants me to pay for the leaderboard AND do the work to ensure accuracy?! Nah.
A little bit of a contradicting statement. Sounds to me like you recommend no one to pay for Strava because you see no value in their work. Yet you spend some time to flag people to get your KOM. You know if no one foots the bill for Strava’s servers and their work, your KOM will be gone as well…
If in future they decide to charge for that data-hubbing, and the price is reasonable, I’d pay for that, or if they introduced new subscriber features that are useful to me personally, I might pay up for those, but currently I’ll probably not bother.