I was totally fine using orange when it was free. I accepted the fact that it was free and with it all the errors, inaccuracies, and having to do the work to correct those. Asking me to now pay for the same situation is a joke.
It’s like having to go into the restaurant kitchen to correct your order that you’ve paid for and the cook saying, “Oh wait! I need to put hair in that before you take it away!”.
No thanks.
You know ehm…, it’s still free to use?! Last time I checked no one forces you to pay.
But you are right. Only the main course is free. It used to be the main and the dessert. That wasn’t a feasible business so they ask you to pay for the dessert. It’s still the same main you enjoyed for free before - it’s still free but somehow people complain and recommend others not to go to the restaurant. Aaaaand they still come back and order the main…
That’s all I had to say to this topic. I’m hungry and go eat now. Maybe doughnuts - I have to admit I like dessert - preferred free 
I agree with Doughnutman’s argument here. There is no reason that Strava couldn’t detect the vast majority of problematic KOMs - like where someone leaves their head unit running as they drive off in their car. I’m talking about really simple algorithms that detect this kind of stuff.
With a little extra brain power they could analyze files and probably get to 99.9% accuracy.
Why should users have to do this a million times over manually?
If they want people to pay for leaderboards, it should be a premium service. And I think leaderboards should require power and HR but that may not be popular. It’s truly the only way to combat e-bikes eventually taking every single KOM.
The support sucks too.
Thats a good point. They will have to get it right or leaderboards for segments (what Strava wants you to pay for) won’t be worth anything at all.
I’ve just cancelled mine, I kept it going for a while but I’ve not seen any improvements that make it worthwhile.
I’d like to see the leaderboards but I’m not paying just for them. I like the live segments too but again I can’t see a good cost to benefit ratio.
If they actually make some improvements I’ll start paying again since I do use it so feel I should contribute.
So, my Strava sub must have automatically cancelled at the weekend and I’m now asked to pay a discounted £48 for a year (I can think of a good few other things I’d rather spend £48 on right now) or £7 a month.
So, I’m left wondering how I can justify £7 a month for what’s on offer for me, personally.
I’ve forced myself to take a long hard look at what I get for that £7 and the answer is not too much, for me at this moment or in the near future of my cycling training.
I look forward to continuing my improvement using Trainerroad until next Spring, at which point I’ll probably sub to Strava for a month or two and attack my old segment times and leaderboards for shits and giggles, hopefully with an extra 40 or so watts and perhaps a few lbs less girth to help annihilate those times 
same. Used to pay just to support them and not because they are essential; then they started fiddling with the timeline, didn’t fix basic bugs, instead added more clutter and went generally in a direction that didn’t suit me 
This is exhibit A of why Strava remains such a compelling product - we see that those KOMs still still had enough value to you to flag all those rides after so much time bashing on Strava on this forum. I would submit that the real test of transcending Strava and their business model is when you can ignore that email and let it go. Or delete your account completely.
I am giving them another year because while not at all perfect, I have no problem admitting there is enough I like and value in the product, they have indeed shifted their direction and I want to see it continue. I’ll evaluate that choice for me in a year just like TR.
Said perfectly!
Exhibit A indeed. This drama is playing out like some kind of Internet vendetta, straight out of a movie “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” The auto-flagging bad rides is a red herring, a distraction tactic. Yes, Strava put large parts of the leaderboard behind a paywall. The old Internet era of ‘give it away for free and figure out a business model later’ is over. Yes, we’ve seen this story before and have learned to move on or pay. Yes, bashing Strava and trying to make premium subscribers feel bad only makes you look petty.
Why? If it takes them more than a DECADE to nail down their most popular feature, one more year probably isn’t going to help them solve the problems they have.
Why? Read the whole sentence - not just the first 6 words. He gave his reason.
It amazes me how invested some people are in bashing a product they use for free. I mean if you don’t like it - walk away and be done with it.
So have been a Strava premium member for 2 years now. I was quite happy to renew, whenever that was due. Suddenly I find that my subscription has dropped to the “Free” version, instead of renewing. I received NO notification of my subscription running out, and am frankly puzzled.
I note it has risen from £39 to £48. But that is not the point. I am now looking at Strava and thinking, “What have I really lost?” Completely puzzled why they did not say my subscription was running out or perhaps my card had expired.
Baffled…
Me too. No notification from then to say it was expiring… What are they up to?
I just assumed it was another price hike?
Were you previously paying for only one or two of the Summit packages? If so, that is why you see an increase. The new Subscription is effectively the full price of the old 3 packs or the original Premium plan.
I think the issue with Strava is they straddle a lot of different functions and the most valuable one to their customer base is one that people have been conditioned not to pay for.
At it’s core, it’s social media and public leaderboards, something like ZwiftPower was for Zwift, but less rigorous. This served as a way of building a user base, but most social media then monetizes the data they gather and I’m not sure where the value is in the data they have, and I’m not sure Strava knows that either. The Strava Labs division is a good attempt at building products that may have some kind of value but it’s not quite there.
All the other features it offers are done better (or free) elsewhere:
It’s a great platform, user experience is great, but they have to decide on what their core product is, and that core product should be something people are willing to pay for. The easiest pivot would be to become more of a TrainingPeaks type of system aimed at self-trained athletes where they have an extensive workout library and training plans available to subscribers that could be used outdoors via Garmin/Wahoo, or on Zwift etc. Other than that their options are to sell the platform to a hardware provider like Wahoo or Hammerhead, or to build a completely new section of functionality such as pick-up group rides, or events, or something like that.
Another problem with Strava is that their VC backers want a big score not just a sustainable small company that makes a decent profit. They probably had hoped that Garmin would buy them for a billion dollars.
They have been short sighted with their little nudges that try to get users to pay. First they tried to offer value - Summit, etc. but they offered weak training tools. Serious people go for TR or TP. Super serious people go for WKO, Xert, or Golden Cheetah.
Now they have taken away leaderboards and will only show you the top 10. I bet this hasn’t encouraged many people to pay up. Because, the vast majority of people can’t even crack the top 100. Who wants to pay $60/year to see that they are 655th out of 2500 riders?
The fast people cracking the top 10 regularly don’t need to pay to see their results. So who left is going to want to pay for that? The people in the top 50 who are trying to get top 10s? It’s a very small group.
Anecdotally, I’ve also noticed that the fastest cat 1s in my town don’t even actively play the Strava KOM game. Sure, they get a bunch on their regular rides but they don’t go around town trying to take every KOM.
If Strava goes for people that seriously train, it’s a really small slice of the user base. It’s not going to be hugely profitable.
What Strava needs to do is encourage or provide a feature that 90% of users want to pay for. So far they’ve come up with zilch.
Yeah in hindsight, I think they gave too much for free initially. When they gave the 2 month free trial, I stayed on and the things that I got that I never previously used (training stuff and live segments mostly) didn’t really ring my bell. When the trial finished, I lost a bunch of stuff I never used AND the leaderboards, which I had some interest in. In some respects, the free trial made me less likely to subscribe. I saw that the premium features weren’t really worth it for me and the stuff they took away wasn’t that important to me.
All that said, I could see myself doing a one month subscription here and there to get data. For example, I will likely be doing Leadville next year based on how everything shook out with the cancelation this year. I might subscribe for a month, gather some data about the course based on rider weights, power outputs, time for climbs etc. but I imagine that will be a one time thing…
This is starting to smell like a perfect takeover opportunity for Garmin or Wahoo…instantly become the dominant player and you can lock people into your hardware with the “premium” content being free for a year. Introduce new models every year and use that as an incentive to keep people buying the latest / greatest.