Strava moves overall leaderboards to subscriber-only feature
Top ten rankings still free in huge shakeup of features
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Ride tracking app Strava has moved it's overall segment leaderboards to a subscriber-only feature in a huge shakeup of both the paid and free offering. While the top ten segment times remain free to view, the changes are aimed at 'dedicating Strava to our community' - and we assume reaching the profitability that has so far eluded the company.
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The changes now mean that you'll need to cough up the £48 a year subscriber fee in order to view overall segment leaderboards, compare, filter or analyse your segment efforts or use the app for route planning; all features which were previously free. Non-paying Android and web users will also lose their ability to view their training log too.
The shakeup continues for subscribers, with the previous 'Summit' branding of the subscriber version being dropped, a move which comes hot on the heels of the previous multi-tier Summit Packages being dropped in March this year.
It's clear that the changes won't suit all, find out what users are saying over on the road.cc live blog, plus read the social media reactions and replies from Strava.
While the features available to non-paying customers have been severely curtailed, there's a bit of carrot and stick action going on, with Strava now offering a number of new subscriber features. Those include a promised large update to Routes, with planning and recommendations now available to Android and iPhone users looking to explore.
It'll now also be possible to analyse your performances on identical rides over time with Matched Rides, plus Workout Analysis is now available for all activity types. Mobile app users can now look at their Grade-Adjusted Pace and, for those that missed it, you can now crop rides from your phone.
Strava is also somewhat mysteriously promising "a whole new way to compete on segments", which sounds interesting. Many users will also be very pleased to know that chronological listing of activities has returned and it's also possible to have a 'Favourites first' view if you want to Strava-stalk your friends (or frenemies).
It's likely that this pivot to an almost entirely subscriber focused model is due to the failure so far of the company to monetise the service, with the Summit tiers having failed to connect with riders. An attempt to have paid content on the apps with the 'Sponsored Integrations' has also been drawn to a close in this revamp.
Strava's founders Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath said in a statement to app users: "We plan to take what we earn from these changes and reinvest straight back into building more and better features – not devising ways to fill up your feed with ads or sell your personal information. We simply want to make a product so good that you’re happy to pay for it."
It's also very likely that recent data protection legislation across the EU and in the USA had made any chance of making money out of the vast amount of data the app generates while cutting the expensive and complex to maintain free leaderboards will save cash. They do say that they are committed to always offering a free service, however.
As the brand points out, a subscription costs roughly the same as a couple of energy bars a month, but will the new changes be enough to make you subscribe? Or will you be trying to find an alternative? Let us know in the comments at the bottom of the page.
The updates in full
New features for subscribers
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A big Routes update, with planning & recommendations on iOS and Android
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Matched Rides: Analyze performance on identical rides over time
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See your full workout history with Training Log on iOS
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Workout Analysis is now available for all activity types
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Grade-Adjusted Pace (GAP) now on iOS and Android
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Coming soon: A whole new way to compete on segments
New subscription features that were previously free
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Overall segment leaderboards (Top 10 view is still free)
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Comparing, filtering and analyzing segment efforts
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Route planning on strava.com, with a huge redesign launching soon!
Routes is designed to help you unlock that knowledge and make exploring easy
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Matched Runs: Analyze performance on identical runs over time
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Training Log on Android and strava.com
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Monthly activity trends and comparisons
Recent releases for all athletes
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“Favorites first” feed settings and the return of the chronological feed
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Improved impossible effort detection… False KOMs, QOMs, CRs dethroned!
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Apple Watch uploading and improved sync to Apple Health
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Recorded the drive home by accident? New mobile activity cropping
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All activities now show both elapsed and moving time
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New or improved analysis of power, cadence and swimming stroke rate
Strava activity cropping in app
Statement from founder's Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath
"If nothing else, 2020 has been a year of regaining perspective. A silver lining of hard times like these is that they inspire introspection and focus – What matters the most to us? And how do we live up to that?
Our answers to those questions have only gotten clearer in the past few months, and we’re now leading the company with a single purpose: rededicating Strava to our community. Strava athletes deserve an affordable and constantly improving experience, and we hope you’ve noticed how focused we’ve been this year on delivering that. Our small but mighty team of 180 has released 51 athlete-facing improvements already in 2020, from Apple Watch syncing, to new maps and metrics for snowsports, to a huge update to our Routes features, and a lot more. We’ve also removed some distractions, such as Sponsored Integrations (the closest we’ve ever come to putting ads in the feed). And we returned the option to sort your feed in chronological order. We heard how much that change drove you nuts, and admit it took a really long time to respond.
Dedicating Strava to the community is also a commitment to longevity. We are not yet a profitable company and need to become one in order to serve you better. And we have to go about it the right way – honest, transparent and respectful to our athletes.
This means that, starting today, a few of our free features that are especially complex and expensive to maintain, like segment leaderboards, will become subscription features. And from now on, more of our new feature development will be for subscribers – we’ll invest the most in the athletes who have invested in us. We’ve also made subscription more straightforward by removing packs and the brand of Summit. You can now use Strava for free or subscribe, simple.
This focus on subscription ensures that Strava can serve athletes decades from now, and in an up-front way that honors the support of the athletes we serve today. We plan to take what we earn from these changes and reinvest straight back into building more and better features – not devising ways to fill up your feed with ads or sell your personal information. We simply want to make a product so good that you’re happy to pay for it.
"A monthly subscription costs as much as a couple energy bars, and we think that’s money well spent. But we also know, especially lately, that there are athletes struggling to make ends meet and that the free version of Strava must remain high quality and useful. Rest assured that we will always offer a version of Strava for free, and you belong in this community whether you subscribe or not. We’re betting all our chips on you, either way. We hope you’ll bet on us."
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9 comments
Can I take credit for the Matched Rides feature? I suggested this on their support forum years ago, and kept getting emails notifying me that other users had voted for the same enhancement.
The issue is that the basic service was very good - segment performance and ride analysis. Even though I was a subscriber it was hard to see the value added. But the company has to be profitable, so I hope enough users make the leap. At the end of the day, its a good service, I've enjoyed it and I think its motivated me over the years.
The question now is, as no longer so bushy-tailed, is that I've gotten slower and it gets a bit demotivating to see just how much slower I am now vs 6 yrs ago. I'll see how it goes, and consider subscribing again if I miss it.
Exactly (on both points). Leaderboards are not expensive to maintain, it's inherent in saving the segment data in a database, which is, err, what Strava does. I'm not complaining, they need to make money so it's up to them as to what they charge for, and how much. This point is spin however ! They want to charge for this feature, and that's fair enough, they don't owe us anything (also they don't need to re-dedicate themselves to us, or anything like that either). Anyway, I enjoy using Strava, and will see how the revised version affects me. Maybe I should have subscribed anyway, even though I don't absolutely require the former paid-for features, just to support the platform, which I do enjoy using.
Death By Suscription.
There are now so many services that are trying to convice you to shell out for something that "costs as much as a couple energy bars" it becomes a massive drain on your disposable income.
While I understand that they need to make money to survive, this just isn't worth £50 a year to me just to be able to plan routes when I can do this for free on the Garmin Connect web page. The idea of paying to see who is the quickest on certain segments is comical IMHO.
£10 a year and I'd think about it, but so many of these services massively over-value their worth. Even if I used every single feature on the web site I'd struggle to find £50 of value, for the one or 2 features that I actually use it's just not worth it.
Strava seems like the Platform that just likes to remove features rather than give their users more. Last there was the removal of external sensors such as HR monitors for recording activities in app and now they're just moving standard features to their premium tier.
I understand that the company needs to turn a profit but removing features just to charge for them instead isn't a very good way to do it, it's just going to annoy their userbase.
As far as I know the only way they've been able to monetise their data is by aggregating it for sale to transport planners. It's not surpising they're looking at how to encourage subscriptions. I've found the free version very good and haven't previously been tempted to upgrade. However, overall leaderboards and historic comparisons for segments are features I'll miss and they're not available in free rivals such as Endomondo.
The problem with Strava (and many other web start-ups) is that the step from 'free' to 'paid' is too big for the extra value gained. I have used Strava for 5 years and get massive value from it - and am perfectly prepared to pay for even the entry level (actually I just signed up even though I don't need any of the features) - but at £48/year that is over half what I pay (£80) for 5 full Microsoft Office licenses and 5TB of cloud storage (please don't turn this into a Microsoft rant thread - I am just comparing value). I had a similar issue with Dropbox who want £96/year for their lowest tier.
The only app that ever got this right for me was the original WhatsApp at $1/year and no ads. Perfect and then Facebook bought it because it was too successful so now they get nothing from me (except possibly my data
). These websites with huge numbers of users need to provide a cheap and cheerful entry level.
So here's the suggestion (and not just for Strava). A low initial entry tier in the region of £10/year and a very restricted free offering (for example you can only see one year of your data or something).
Sensor sync back? No? Then it's still useless.
My suspicion is that people who actually need data analysis will already be using things like Training Peaks/SufferFest/Golden Cheetah to do proper analysis and structured workouts, and that for the average person (even the average quite keen club rider), leaderboards on the daily commute and weekend coffee runs aren't going to be worth £50/year.They're fun to have, for sure, but don't really add much to the actual riding. I'm also interested to know how many of the features (i.e. heatmaps, the HR->effort estimates, routing suggestions, leaderboards) actually rely on lots of people using the app - I'm not sure I'm happy to feed a company all that data in exchange for...a pretty list of my rides that a bike computer already provides.
I also suspect GarminConnect will see a lot of Strava segments being recreated as Garmin segments, since Garmin users currently get 'free' access to basically all of these features on Connect by dint of owning a Garmin. A garmin Bluetoothed to a phone already does Beacon (for free), and if a Garmin head unit lasts ~5 years it'll be cheaper to buy Garmins and use Connect for looking at data, than it would be to subscribe to Strava.
Fail to understand why segment leaderboards are expensive to maintain. I guess I'll see if I miss them enough to subscribe. Used to be a subscriber in the pre-Summit days but my riding has changed and I don't need all the features like HR & Power. What I'm enjoying in lockdown is the increased amount of social interaction between athletes so I'll see how that's impacted. Overall, services have to find a way to make money or die, and in the subscription economy the only thing that matters is customer service, something that Strava haven't been that good at over the years