31 thoughts on “STRAVA *Free* – Fit for purpose in 2021?”

1. I already stopped using it once, Its on the border for me – the only gain I have is the social part and I could live without it. Sometimes its fun to play the encounters game and see if any runner i met are using Strava and what paths they are running – but that too is something I can live without.

   1. ah the flybys…i forgot about that and confessing to doing the same as you sometimes !

      1. It’s oddly entertaining to stalk other runners that way, but it was a good way to get ideas for new routes as well. After a while its just the same people though and the same routes so I becomes less interesting by time. But – already using Garmin Connect, Stryd Power Center and Final Surge and Polar Flow (out of habit), now I mostly just upload data to Strava and sometimes check in to give kudos.

      2. what do you think of Final Surge.
         I meant to move over to them in earnest this year, jsut never quite pulled the lever. (plus waiting for some of their upcoming software to ‘come’)

2. I made my profile private as the whole social thing was proving a distraction to my training. I had a premium account at one time but changed it back to the free version as I found myself preferring the likes of Runalyze and elevate for my geekfill of stats anyhow.

3. At this point, I’m not sure there’s anything left for them to put behind the paywall without actually denying free users access to their own data, or am I missing something? I found Strava useful mostly for the shoe tracking (now available in Stryd app AND Runalyse, among the services I use) and the ability to view matched runs (now behind the paywall but can possibly be implemented in more powerful ways in Runalyse if you tag your runs right), and I quite liked but didn’t really need the training log (now behind the paywall). I couldn’t care less about segments or leaderboards, and I can take or leave the social stuff. So all in all, there isn’t enough there to make it worth my while to pay €60 per year, but I’d sign up for €15.
    
   If, however, they figure out a way to cripple the free service still further, I may reconsider whether I want to hand them any more of my data on a plate. One way or another they ARE monetising the data from free accounts, even if it’s just to enhance the experience of paying users, and why would I make them a gift of mine if they’re giving nothing back?

4. I already cancelled the Free Subscription they gave me. Whatever metrics they are offering, are already either in the device i’m using, or I get from other systems that don’t cost anything.
    
   I get no insight about my training from relative effort that I don’t already get from my device or from my own natural ability to tell if I’m overworking, underworking myself.
    
   The only reason I can see people using Strava, is for the social aspect I guess. And since i’m both a introverted person and a lone trainer not looking to share anything with anyone for any reason, Strava is pointless for me.

   1. This.
      All the recovery and training load metrics are already on my Polar watch and Flow platform.
      Strava doesn’t give me more than i already have, it gives even less imo.

5. I cancelled my Summit membership a couple of months back, as I was getting no value from the premium features. Much of the analysis stuff is linked to road riding; I do a lots of other stuff: MTB, run, swim, row, hike, canicross, climb, workout in the gym, etc….. but I don’t have a road bike (a whole world of expense I can’t justify). So over 50% of the features that Strava made such a big thing of are valueless to me. The thing I got Summit for was live segments whilst running and, for exactly the reasons TFK has articulated, tracking segments over routine training has lost its allure over time. Flybys is something I’ll miss and the ability to compare segments with friends after a group MTB ride or run, but not worth the Summit price. I know Strava don’t want multiple pay tiers, but all my friends agreed we’d likely pay £10/year for a ‘social’ membership, to get the full segments and flyby type stuff back. As it is now, if Garmin were to open up Connect a tiny bit more and enhance the social bit, we’d probably all ditch Strava free and go there instead.

   1. interesting conclusion.
      and probably a correct one. Garmin will be rubbing their hands in anticipation.

      1. I suspect it won’t be as straight forward as I would like to think though. To ‘open up’ Garmin Connect as the universal replacement for Strava, they’d have to: make sure you can auto-upload activities from all their competitors’ platforms, add a way to record activities on your phone using Garmin Connect Mobile (perhaps seen as creating competition for their devices) and allow newcomers to create a Connect account in the app without pairing a Garmin device. The self created competition might be worth it though; if everyone gathered in Garmin Square instead of Strava Circle as their exercise social meeting point of choice, Garmin’s name would be laser etched on people’s minds as they make future device purchasing decisions (let alone the monetisation of mass global activity data for marketing angle).

6. what if someone else decided to fill the gap in the market that Strava free used to occupy, it wouldn’t be that hard would it, say #Relive?

   1. well. that has been going through my head over the last few days too.
      I’m involved in an app devt at the moment (not related to strava in this way) and am tempted to get the whole team to jump ship over to a similar idea to what you are hinting at.
      it would have to be different to STRAVA…but I have some ideas on how to fill the gap you talk about.
      having said that garmin do segments and IIRC RwGPS do as well. as per the article though, its getting RELEVANT segments that matter and one element of that is the critical mass of people giving free data to make them relavent.

      1. there’s the critical mass in the free subscribers on Strava, they’re not loyal to Strava, there’s just no other option out there which aggregates all the different watch manufacturers. I think Strava should have done more monetising the data rather than charge the people who create the data, imagine if Google or similar tried such a thing? It can’t be hard to do, strop out the stuff people don’t need (like using it to record runs in the first place, that’s what the watches are for), get challenges and segments sponsored, a few adverts on the social feed, and that is enough to start. even running heroes app could be expanded to include this

      2. I don’t even think you need to develop an app, those companies mentioned already have that, if you can build something that integrates into those apps on a b2b or b2b2c basis then you could sell that integration to multiple apps if they want it, that’s where the smart money is from what I’ve learnt working with others

7. I think if the monthly subscription is something like 0.49-0.99 dollars they will get millions of new subscribers. Which is definitely much better than a mere 5000 new subscribers with their current expensive rate.

   1. I agree but I guess STRAVA disagree

      1. Well, they should try! I am ready to be a paying subscriber at a sub-1-dollar monthly rate, but not for 5 dollars a month.

      2. I would like to pay 5 $ / month but the actual cost is 8 $. Why is everyone talking about $ 5 as there is no such fee.

      3. If you pay a year at a time, it’s $60, which works out to $5 a month. If you pay month to month, then yes, it’s $8 a month. If it was $30 a year, I’d sign up right now. At $40 a year, I’d probably grunt and sign up. I get that they need to make a profit to keep going, but for the things I use it for, $60 a year is excessive. Of all the things they took away, right now I only really miss the matched runs.

      4. The annual fee is annual. I don’t understand the comparison for a month.

8. I was a paying supporter for some time and it was not for the paid for features but to support an app I like, I stopped that when it became clear that what strava wanted and what the users wanted were not even in the same universe. Instead of fixing bugs we got “blog posts” instead of new features we lost features. Instead of encouraging us to pay by listening to us and giving us what they want, they decided to alienate us and give us even less reason to pay and even more reason to simply not use it.

   The actual reason I ended up buying a garmin is purely because strava data quality is abysmal. I personally found over 3 months of activity tracing up to 40% differences is elevation and up to 15% difference in millage. Most of the times strava was short by those margins. For some reason only garmin data is treated as gospel truth, if you where to use TomTom, suunto or any other wearable sports device strava would simply obliterate your data.

   Personally I would have dropped it long ago, but for 1 simple useful thing for me, my MTB service tracking app only integrates with strava for getting my bikes and millage, that is the single, solitary reason I still use it, segments are a nice to have at the best of times. If I were to loose it it would mean nothing to me.

   They would need to work hard to even keep me once my service tracker no longer needs them and even harder to convince me to pay them again.

9. For me I think it’s about time that Strava recognised the sub categories under “cycling”, road bikes are not the only 2 wheeled option,MTB, E-MTB etc should be catered for both in your personal settings and gear settings so as the different categories show up on leaderboards etc, roadies get peeved when someone beats their times on an E-Bike but if there were specific categories within leaderboards then miaybe everyone could get along, there’s a great deal more that Strava need to achieve before it’s worth paying for.

   1. “great deal more that Strava needs to achieve before it’s worth paying for.” yes, if STRAVA wants to appeal to ‘everyone’ then they need to provide features that everyone wants to keep getting our free data. As you perhaps suggest, will an e-MTB user have the same ‘needs’ that I have? Maybe, maybe not. What are the common threads that link us all as cyclists and runners? Is it just ‘sociability’ and ‘segments’?

10. I’ll be sad to lose the leaderboards and the matched runs when my free trial membership expires, but not enough to shell out for the ongoing fee. At 99p a month, or similar, I’d be happy to support them. I’m quite a casual runner, though. Maybe there are enough fanatics to fund their plans.
    As for moving to another app, the hard part is getting all your friends to jump to the same alternative. The value is in the network.

    1. “The value is in the network.” indeed so. The danger to STRAVA is that singing up to link your data to an additional network is easy and you can do both but i agree there would be inertia.

11. 8 USD / month for too much. More than spotify. Spotify, shares $ creators. Maximum 3-5 USD per month.

12. I cancelled my subscription the day they made the recent ‘Segements to Paid’ change… It’s not about the money… just that they’re %^$%ing the overall community value of the platform.

    What it’s become now is a data collection platform.

    If Garmin want to do something reasonably incendiary they should show a prompt every 3 months of so for users to confirm their 3rd party app pairing.

    “You are syncing data from Garmin Connect to Strava. Do you want to continue sharing data to Strava or delete this connection?”
    Continue/Delete

    Almost certain I’ll forget to remove the sync once I’m done and likely that as long as they still get my data they’ll be happy… so Garmin/Wahoo et al ought to force their hand on that.

    1. that would be interesting if it happened! and would almost certainly pan out how you suggest.

       Garmin and strava have a somewhat symbiotic, yet in a way one-way relationship.
       Garmin has a commercial backup with their own GC-based segments.
       I suspect garmin will adopt a ‘do-nothing’ strategy in the short term.

13. Great customer value perspective, but this won’t determine Strava’s future. You need to look at the paths to profitability for venture based freemium services. There are three obvious ones:

    1. Exit from an acquisition
    2. Premium subscription revenue
    3. Monetize free accounts

    All of these avenues in 2020 are now problematic for Strava, and the clock is quickly ticking.

    #1. This requires a company to see value to monetize the customer list. Since they aren’t profitable, this essentially means buying a customer list to upsell them on different products. The major apparel companies tried this route 5 to 6 years ago at crazy valuations. But the fitness tech market is very different now, and honestly Strava doesn’t compete with the customer numbers compared to the Runkeeper and Map My Run worlds. Been there done that. Do the math on the current funds raised in venture rounds, multiply by the necessary VC return, and divide by the number of monthly visitors to Strava. There is your cost of acquisition for an email. Then do the math on conversion rate to sell them a new product and profit margin from the product you are selling. None of this pencils out. And if it does, it means Strava becomes frozen in amber to minimize costs, since they acquiring company now has it’s hands on what they want – the email list of customers.

    #2. Requires increasing the value to premium customers to increase the conversion rate. I think you covered this well. This ship has probably already sailed right?

    #3. So… advertising? And maybe combine with #2 where premium becomes an ad-free experience? But this means Strava is no longer a sports fitness company, it is a media and advertising company, and it’s customers are brands looking to market products, not cyclists. And it’s fighting against Facebook and Google. Oof.

    There’s a fourth strategy which is to become profitable by drastically cutting costs and shrinking their customer base to in effect increase conversion to premium. This doesn’t allow them to pay back their VC, but maybe keeps them above water so they don’t have to close. Except there’s a problem with this idea – the core value of Strava is based on social network effects. When the customer base gets too small, the value drops. And this curve is brutal. A vicious downward spiral.Hello MySpace.

    My money is on a pivot to advertising, or closing the doors within 12 months.

    1. thank you for the considered comment – much appreciated.
       I love to argue….but find it difficult to argue with what you have said. (#4 won’t work it needs user volumes to create ever-changing relevant data.)

       I write about STRAVA on and off and have done so over the years. I did some back of a cigarette packet calculations on the advertising and the $ number appears big for STRAVA (I’m not a big strava fan but I would probably have 6 strava page impressions a day and two ad units would be cool – those stats link into the maths if anyone wants to do it – I’m maybe worth 0.5 cents a day to them? something like that IIRC). It seems the obvious route to go but they must not be doing it for a reason which might be the number of real users (eg I have 3 accounts and my partner’s friends all use strava for couch to 5k…2 months time none of them will use it)

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