Well I’m always teasing him with shit talk “bro, how lame is it a guy 45 years older is faster than you on that segment” because if the segment is a minute or less I have a fighting chance of holding the KOM for awhile. It took him 5 years to finally take one of mine this year. Poking the bear 
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I didn’t read every single comment, but I can’t help to notice so many people are:
- upset they don’t have these features for free.
AND - saying Strava doesn’t have features worth paying for.
It’s crazy to think that people think a whole company like Strava that has to pay 350+ employees owes them anything at all and they should be able to just use their services for free. Not only that, get upset that features they want are behind a paywall and then at the same time say those features aren’t even worth it (while wanting them enough to be upset about not having them).
This is freemium 101, give your (good) core service for free and have enough paying customers have access to your payment features to give other users FOMO and hope they convert to paid.
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Please quote anyone that said they were personally upset.
I’m sick and tired of this ‘stop crying over a free product’ argument. Nobody is crying. We all use Strava and are free to discuss their moves.
Honestly, I think everybody here would like to see them do better and be a healthy company for the long term since we all use Strava to stalk our friends. 
Yes, and Strava has failed to create any FOMO over the years. They keep taking away little bullshit features thinking it might move the line for them. I gather that most people could care less about the year end video and their current round of feature cutting will only be a net loss for them in good will and no increase of subscribers.
The fact is that Strava wouldn’t exist without the 98% that do not subscribe. There wouldn’t be enough users left to monetize or look at the rides of the paying users.
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I don’t think that is accurate representation…What people are saying is that they are disappointed / frustrated that features that previously were free are now behind a paywall.
Strava is clearly free to conduct their business as they see fit or as necessary for the survival of the company…just as the users are free to criticize those decisions.
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upset/disappointed/frustrated are all really the same thing. I get what you’re saying, but it’s really still people being disappointed they don’t have a product for free.
People are definitely free to criticize them for their decisions. My comment was more around many people minimizing these features by saying how they are small/dumb/bullshit but at the same time not happy they are behind a paywall. It’s really where we are now with software, there’s an expectation that everything should be free and people at paying 5 bucks a month for a service/app they use multiple times daily.
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No it isn’t….it is about a company changing the agreement that THEY set up.
They set the rules and said “this is what we provide members” and then changed that agreement. Paid or free, that is kinda bogus.
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I keep typing and then erasing it, probably a good sign that I should just move on. Happy holidays everyone. Be excellent to each other!
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Nobody said that. I’m sure people here pay for all sorts of things including TrainerRoad.
Why doesn’t Strava just lock out all non-payers? Answer: because they can’t afford to lose 95% of the user base. They would have no business left.
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Might want to check how many post above are in the “AND” camp. FWIW, I fall in to #2 and wouldn’t care if it folded tomorrow.
Too bad they haven’t found a way to monetize this, 
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They are a great service! If you want premium things it’s ok to pay a little bit of money. 
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People aren’t complaining about features they want that are behind a paywall… the issue is (and this is true with any company) taking something that was not charged for and then MOVING it behind a paywall. New features that are debuted as part of the subscription is a non-issue.
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I started using Sauce for Strava much better value for my needs, chap that made it very helpful also getting a patch done so it would work on my laptop
Most of Strava’s route-creation tools are direct copies of those found in Ride With GPS, which is a much better for route creation in my opinion. RWGPS is constantly innovating…which Strava quit doing years ago.
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Back in the day when I started using Strava you could only upload 5 rides a month for free and had to pay if you wanted to do more than that.
I don’t mind paying the subscription but wish they’d add value by adding features vs going back to the extreme restrictions for free accounts that it started out as
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Yeah, thanks for that. Been poking arond it.
Quick one, where do I find the heatmaps on RWGPS? Or does that come with the Premium Subscription? And the premium subscription is same price as Strava, is it not? $80/year.
If that’s the case, how does RWGPS differ from Strava regarding its top tier pricing plan, other than being more expensive than Strava?
I have always used Movescount (when it was available for its heatmaps) and PlotaRoute for creating routes, together with other mapping apps (Google Maps and maps.me). No one mapping app platform has it all.
I can’t see how this is “an issue”. This is how businesses conduct business. You incentivise people with a freebie and after a while, you charge people for it. Some fish bite and others don’t. As others already have said, Strava does not owe its users anything. They better provide some basic feature to not lose customers (but in the case of Strava: lose them to which platform exactly?).
To me Strava is the Instagram/Facebook of the cycling world and I’d like to see them implement more features in that vein. I don’t pay for it anymore as I don’t get anything out of it besides the social aspect and I can have that for free. Pay for the services you like and don’t for those you don’t like. Easy as that.
Maybe I’m just being slow because it’s early, but I can’t think of another business that has provided something free to end users for years and then suddenly started to charge for it, other than Netflix taking away sharing, and people are in an uproar over that. I’m sure people will now name others that have, but if I can only think of one, I would not say it’s how all businesses conduct business.
I think there is a distinction without a difference here. The distinction being time period (years). But this practice is no different than a free one week trial to Zwift or any streaming platform, or even the free samples they give out at my local Sams club.
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Those are not the same. Those are known trial periods “try this and if you like it, we will begin charging you”. What Strava did was a surprise.
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