Over the last few weeks Strava has quietly removed the ability to choose an individual Summit Pack, instead offering only a full Summit membership to those that want to pay for premium Strava features. You may remember back in the summer of 2018, Strava renamed their then paid offering from ‘Strava Premium’ to ‘Strava Summit’. As part of that, they also split up the offering into three groupings – Safety, Training, and Analysis.
The idea being that Strava could attract some people willing to part with $2.99/month for a single Summit Pack, rather than the full $4.99-$7.99/month for everything (depending on how they paid). At the time, feelings were mixed. Undoubtedly, some people liked the ability to choose a less expensive option with only the features they needed. However, a lot of people were simply confused.
As many people pointed out then, the nuances of each offering didn’t really make sense. In theory they might have, but in practice once you started to use the platform you realized the gaps of the groupings. Those gaps might have led folks to upconvert to a full membership…or (more likely), it led folks to stop paying.
What’s changed:
This change isn’t actually ‘breaking news’. A DCR reader hinted at the consolidation last week in a post comment (thanks Mark!), and then after a bit of digging I found a Reddit post from about two weeks ago with some of the first people noticing it.
Ironically, it was also about two weeks ago on a call with Strava when I asked an innocent question about which Summit level was required to unlock a premium feature. At the time there was a pause, followed by a muddled answer. Had it not been near-midnight my time, my brain probably would have perked up a bit more and realized something was in the wind.
Nonetheless, I haven’t seen any notice on any news site, nor any widespread communication from Strava to their userbase about it. However, I don’t think it’s actually all bad news (yet).
As of about two weeks ago, Strava has shifted all users onto the full Summit membership plan. That means if you were only paying for one of the individual packs before, you’re actually already getting access to everything. In other words – all Strava paid members are created equal again.
As a reminder, here’s what those packs are/were:
So, if you signed up for only the Training Pack, you now get both the Safety Pack and Analysis Pack for free…for a “limited time”.
In fact, Strava is already informing users. Specifically those that were on individual Summit packs received an e-mail, as well as a notification in the smartphone app. Here’s the e-mail folks got:
The e-mail then goes on to highlight a handful of features from Strava’s full Summit membership, and a quick chart to show key features between the paid and non-paid (Basic) versions:
A link in the e-mail brings the person to this page, in the event they want to learn more.
So how long is “limited time” you might ask? Well, about 3ish months. I reached out to Strava and they confirmed that users will have until July 15th, 2020. After that point they’ll need to either transition down to a (free) basic plan, or continue one of the two paid options (monthly or annual). The company says: “Rest assured that athletes will be officially notified prior to the renewal date.”
So why the change? Well, according to Strava Support when asked by a user (per this thread), it’s all about simplification, and confusion reduction:
“As we continue to expand our Strava offering, we’ve found that breaking out our offering into 3 separate packs (Analysis, Training, and Safety) has created some confusion as our feature functionality no longer cleanly fits into those 3 packs. As such, we’ve decided to consolidate our subscription into 1, and removing the 3 packs.
…Strava Support Team”
Which, pretty much mirrors what Strava stated as well during our discussion last night. They noted that people weren’t super clear on exactly what they were (or weren’t) getting within each pack, feature-wise. Their goal here is primarily simplification of offerings. Obviously, it goes without saying that Strava probably hopes this converts some of those single-player-pack people into full Summit memberships – thus increasing revenue.
They strongly believe that 2020 is the year they’re going to show that to their 50 million users. And to be fair, one has to give them credit for at least the last 4-6 weeks worth of changes, after installing their new CEO back in November. And even the opening statement to their renewal e-mail acknowledges this straight up:
“All through 2020, subscribing to Strava is going to get better. We’re focused more than ever on making Strava great for athletes like you. As we roll out new features, we want you to experience them…”
I suspect the reason for the mid-summer date is to allow some of these “new features” to hit before that timeframe. Or more specifically, to allow them to not just release, but for you to get hooked on them – and thus want to continue paying.
As I’ve noted numerous times in the last few months – Strava is absolutely going to be focusing heavily on delivering new Summit focused features in 2020. Sometimes a feature will be fixing an issue that annoyed lots of people (as we saw with the automated flagging feature last week). And sometimes it’ll be legit cool stuff, big or small. And sometimes, it’ll be undoing the ills of the last few years (as with the chronological ordering bit).
And yet, I suspect sometimes, they’ll also just eff up. It’s a tech company thing. It happens. But I think this is a pretty reasonable way to go about the transition back to a Summit membership.
So to recap, if you’ve been paying for the cheaper packs, you’ve now got all the packs. And you’ve got till mid-summer (or mid-winter if Australian) to decide whether or not Strava should get your additional cash after July 15th.
Wrap-Up:
It’s clear from the last 4-6 weeks Strava is trying to get back to the days of people loving not just their platform, but the company as well. And this seems to be one of those changes as part of that.
And I can’t say I’m that upset about it (then again, I pay the full membership). To me, the way Strava positioned the individual Summit Packs always felt a bit like a used car salesman. They weren’t really what you wanted, but it was supposedly a compromise you made to save a bit of coin. Ultimately, for most people, they came away a bit confused and wishing they probably got something else. Not to mention, very few subscription services (almost none) do well with numerous tiers and offerings. Simplification is the name of the game in the subscription world. The more you overthink it, the less users become convinced of it.
In this case, it appears Strava is doing right by those customers on those lower-level plans – at least till summer. They’re getting full Strava while only paying for mini-Strava. Not too shabby – nobody can complain there. After that point, all 12 of them will have to decide whether to shell out more money or not.
Ultimately, Strava’s basically saying: Give us till summer to prove ourselves worthy. If the last 4-6 weeks are any indication, I’m optimistic. Plus, next week is a new week.
With that – thanks for reading!
FOUND THIS POST USEFUL? SUPPORT THE SITE!
Hopefully, you found this post useful. The website is really a labor of love, so please consider becoming a DC RAINMAKER Supporter. This gets you an ad-free experience, and access to our (mostly) bi-monthly behind-the-scenes video series of “Shed Talkin’”.
Support DCRainMaker - Shop on Amazon
Otherwise, perhaps consider using the below link if shopping on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot. It could simply be buying toilet paper, or this pizza oven we use and love.
I am geniunely excited with Strava again, bring me back to the memory of the summer of 2010 when the world was trump free, virus free, stock market was just about to rebound from 2008 crash and when you could create central parks segments and have the Kom straight away because no one else was on the platform at that time ?
Two years ago, the splitting up of the paid premium was the final push for me to dump Strava. There were other issues over the years (data breach, not listening to customer feedback, pushing as a social network versus being cycling app). Having not used Strava for the past two years… I’m not missing anything. One less data mining app on my devices. I feel no need to return.
I am really glad to see what Strava is doing the past weeks. It is a complete turnaround compared to how things were going before. I have been a Strava user from the very early times (user ID 12529), and I have been a pro user for a long time (up until they introduced the Summit system, when I was so fed up with nothing happening and they not listening to users at all, that I went back to the free option), so I am looking forward to the coming changes and improvements, which might make me a paying user again. I will keep a critical eye out, as always.
I really don’t understand Strava strategy. They steer us into dedicated GPS hardware (they eliminated sensors on their APP) but then release most of their features there. Web vs APP is still a world of difference.
Like, you can’t even “unkudus” someone – a basic thing! Never addressed.
You can fav a profile but you can’t correct elevation on the App.
Why not force a pop up to choose what activity was? ebikes are defaulted as bikes, per instance!
There are guys getting flagged because they don’t know where to change it.
The whole privacy/followers thing is a mess.
Hikes don’t count as exercise! what the?
The interaction is clunky and looks like it was released yesterday without proper testing. Challenges are a fraud, most of them are just marketing tools “do 5 mins workout and get a 10 dolar voucher”.
Strava has a huge name, crowd and everything in their favor but they still cant deliver or hear suggestions or complains about the most basic stuff. Strava’s forums are the epitome of bureaucracy, like a black hole where posts go to die.
Its appalling.
I’m a long time premium member and I feel zero rewarded, specially when you have free software like Golden Cheetah around.
They’re back under management of the founders. The CEO was ousted prior to Christmas so it’s going to take some time for them to get back on track. I have been critical of them in the past few years but I’ve been excited to see them focusing on the product as opposed to dumb features which nobody asked for. Patience.
That’s actually funny… I wonder how much it cost to dump the new/old CEO.
My verdict is on the other side. I am only interested in the Strava Segments. I geht every other feature for free in tools like Komoot, Elevate, Golden Cheetah or even Garmin Connect. I tried to subscribe for Strava Segments two weeks ago as the season started and did not found the option to subscribe to the small package. I decided not to subscribe because I don’t see any other feature worth the money for.
Dear Strava, I am pleased that you appear to be interested in reversing all the damage you voluntarily inflicted on yourself and your reputation. That’s a good first step but it just puts you back where you were 3 years ago and I’m not rewarding you with my money for that.
I will however reward you if you demonstrate actual real improvements to your platform. Run a focus group. Talk to Ray and Shane. Maybe even read your support forums and feature requests. There are browser plugins which are light years ahead of your product. Get out of your ivory tower.
Good luck.
Imagine, what’s next!
HR straps will be enabled again in their phone app?
did anyone ever care about that anyways?
I actually took a Strava subscription for the Analysis segment because the only feature I needed was “Live Segments”. The lowered price convinced me to take a subscription back then. Now prices will be going up again apparently so I don’t think I will be taking the full package to be only using these segments. The higher price is quite costly if I will be only using live segments from it.
I’m not really happy with the “change”.
Bummer.
Same sentiments here.
If they fix fitness and freshness I will be happy. Currently if you change your FTP it recalculates TSS of historical activities. Also I would love to see an actual power chart. Not just zones.
link to support.strava.com
I complained about that at least 2 years ago and it should be simple to fix. TraininPeaks is where it’s at.
Makes you wonder, why the hell they are reverting all changes made in last 3 years. They did lost a lot of time !
YES! This would be so nice
The ever present elephant in the room, you need to be able to search for whole routes not just segments!
Yes. This.
Strava’s lack of this feature is the only reason I have a ridewithgps.com account.
Get Komoot 🙂
I am in the same camp as those who only paid for the analysis pack. I don’t see value in anything besides live segments and fitness and freshness, so if they raise the price for things I don’t need, I’ll be going back to the free version and use other software.
Just reading the comments here we can see that Strava almost has an impossible task on its hands, damn if they do something and damned if they don’t, I cancelled my Sumit because I was getting nothing in return, payment consists if paying for existing feature and funding future new features… which there was pretty much none. I’ve seen lots of new stuff over the past few months and I’ve renewed my membership simply because they need membership to create new features, they are now listening and therefore deserve my support. It is way too easy to criticise them, but remember, they created/invented this MASSIVE ecco-system (Segments) for free for all of us to use, they deserve a lot of credit and now support, I say welcome back from the wilderness and keep moving onwards and upwards.
Another one who only wanted the Analysis Pack. Will probably just cancel in the summer and forgo Fitness and Freshness.
Use the Elevate Chrome extension. You get the Fitness and Freshness and it is actually useful as there is FTP history so changing your FTP doesn’t change all the past results.
Or give intervals.icu a try (unless Strava starts revoking partner API access as well).
All I want is a pack with support for my power meter in the app. I’ve been testing other apps during the winter, but the season starts soon and now would be the right now to roll-back that ridiculous decision on bluetooth/ant+ sensors.
I was also using analysis pack for some data analysis graphs, fitnes and freshness and for live segments. Fitnes and freshness is avaliable in elevate app and so are some data analysis graph. I can also access graphs via garmin connect. The only think worth of summit membership was live segments. 24€ for live segments was acceptable but the 60€ it is just to much. They will need to offer something more or I will be a free member once again. It would be nice to get special membership for segments but I guess no one would pay for the whole membership then so that is probably never gonna happen.
All they got to do for me to come back and pay is bring back “downhill” live segments. That is the only reason I cancelled mine in the first place.
Absolutely. Especially when they allow segments through busy, intercity intersections but think we need to be protected from ourselves down a 5% descent in the hills well away from even outer suburbs. It’s ridiculous.
Oh and removing all the completely false Zwift segment rides would also be excellent. To say they won’t allow flags of rides where the average is 600w because “we won’t permit virtual rides to be flagged” is openly lazy. They created segments. They need to police them.
Good to see Strava learning from their mistakes but for me (and who knows how many others) they lost a paying user and I now pay to use training peaks. Initially I did miss some of the summit features but I’m not sure I care now. Lets see what they bring to the table in the coming months!
Sounds like 3 of the 12 single-pack Summit subscribers that Ray referred to are on this comment thread!
I had been Strava Premium since day one and downgraded to Analysis only in January after years without receiving feature updates and realising that Analysis provides 90% of what I was using. With my annual subscription ending in January 2021, Strava had better not be forcing me up to full Summit come 15th July! The jump from £18.99 to £47.99 is huge for the small number of features it brings.
That is pretty much where I am. I find Training Peaks to have way more value. For that I canceled SP. I came back about two years ago went with the annual summit plan. On one hand, I saw some value in the cheaper plans. But on the other hand, the old premium plan structure was not worth it. unless Strava plans to lower their pricing to get more users paying, I don’t see how this will work with the existing feature set.
Count me in as another that was on only Analysis – I just heard about this today, didn’t notice the email back in March.
“With this release we are adding power charts to the activity analysis page for your rides, runs, rows, ebike rides, and virtual rides & runs.”
I have a Garmin with Stryd and there is still no run power displayed. I imagine that is probably the most popular sensor and watch combination for run power. How can they advertise “run power” and it doesn’t work with Stryd + Garmin?
Also baffled by this..
I guess I’ll put myself in the camp that thinks there wasn’t too much wrong with the individual Summit packs. Strava, like bike computer manufacturers, identified that you need to have a wide range of features to account for all the ways people like to ride, but actually very few people (if any) use all of these features. Saying “OK, you don’t want to pay $6.99 for a lot of stuff you won’t use, so how about $2.99 to just get the stuff you want” does make sense in that context. I will say that charging people for safety features feels crass and leaves a sour taste though.
One of the more confused parts of their approach is that they’ve gone all-in on driving serious cyclists to GPS manufacturers (who support Strava through paid integrations, sponsored challenges, and licensing Live Segments), but there are several Summit features that only work in the app, like Beacon. Monetization seems to be a real battle for them.
(All this is said as someone who hasn’t subscribed to Strava Premium since 2015, so take with a grain of salt.)
Is there a way to remove some activities (runs) from counting in Strava stats.
I don’t want the run with stroller while taking my kids to school to count as pace and effort are all over the place.
Any idea or workaround ?
The workaround is to install Elevate. It is a free strava chrome plug in where you get detailed analysis
If it is marked as a hike It doesn’t count. I guess.
So does this mean the minimum price is going up? If so, I’ll prob cancel summit.
Has anybody tried Garmin Segments instead of Strava Segments? What are the disadvantages, if you don’t compete with your friends anyway?
I don’t agree with that at all. What was confusing about it? It clearly stated what was in each pack, if like me you only really wanted live segments (the fitness chart was a bonus as well) the £18 per year was fine. If you wanted to keep it simple and get everything you could pay for them all, what was confusing people?
Unless there’s some big features useful for runners I’ll be cancelling on renewal, the analysis pack had everything I needed. I’ve now got these ‘extra’ features free but haven’t even noticed what they are…..I can’t justify nearly £50 per year for live segments.
I don’t believe for one minute it’s about simplifying things for the users to be honest, it’s about getting more money out of us, I like Strava and understand it’s a business so it’s fair enough but I think I’ll be using the free version and probably won’t really miss the live segments that much anyway.
I only subscribed for live segments, Anything else I can get elsewhere for free or better than Strava does. My annual subscription just renewed it will be interesting what will happen if I am forced to pay more for features I am not interested in.
Strava has shown they are more focused on what people want, What I am seeing is lots of people are like me! Only want live segments, not training plans or fitness and freshness .
What if you were paying for full Summit all along? I may have missed something in this post. But if not, now for “3ish” months, I am paying incrementally more for all services than someone who was only paying for one package. Why is Strava not crediting their best paying customers the difference in price. Not everyone is being made whole here.
I did a free trial of the “summit” packs when they were first released to see which elements I used. I really wanted to like it, but came away with a “meh”? The one feature I would defo pay money for would be a dashboard filter to get rid of things like 1km warmups and cooldowns; people strava’ing their walks to work; and (most annoying) manual entries that say “2 hour S&C core work” – yeah, right! They’re genuinely lovely people, so I wouldn’t want to unfollow them (or submit them to StravaW****rs) just an option to filter the wheat from the chaff. Given this, I wasn’t surprised to find that its the 16th most requested feature in “Strava Support new feature” discussion board – what I was surprised was that it had been tagged as “not planned”. Lets hope they review this again, now we’re in this brave new world!
My Strava account currently says: “Your annual membership will automatically renew on October 25, 2020 for $23.99”
I went on give the gift of summit and it was £47.99?
My chronological feed still definitely not chronological. Thanks for nothing on that end Strava.
Good, I didn’t renew after it changed, it was to expensive for what I use Strava for, well honestly I don’t use ANY of the “training features” I only used a few premium features and Veloviewer has these now, so I probably wont buy it again!
Also Strava doesn’t REALLY listen to their customers, a few examples (hope someone from Strava reads this because they don’t read twitter)!
-The Routebuilder is still in Beta and it should, t still isn’t that good, and I know, I use it almost every week!
-Still not possible to search in your own routes or order them by distance for example.
-When u upload a Bike-Activity it is still not possible to upload it as an MTB or Gravel-ride, while there are 3 things that u can choose for doing things with your legs (walking/hiking/running)!
-Searching for a city in “discover segments” just doesn’t work, it always looks for cities or places in the US first even if u live in Belgium!
-When u search an Activity it only searches in your own activities (used to be different by the way)!
-…
These are but a few, and I contacted them a few times about these but they don’t listen!
So no I don’t think they listen to people, honestly I don’t think they even use their own website, because if they do these are things they should’ve noticed!
Maybe u can send them to Strava Ray?
Thanks for very very informative and helpful articles!
As a Swedish STRAVA-buyer it seems that the monthly-pay option is gone.
Anyone else noticing that?
Anders in Falun Sweden
Hey Garmin!
I am voluntarily applying for the Technical Director position for the Connect application.
Your mess is growing day by day, but it is never late to turn things right…
I am interested only in a few training features of Summit, specifically setting goals. No other features are even remotely useful for trail running.
It is silly to pay the full pack price just to be able to set weekly and yearly goals. Everything else is road running and cycling oriented. More value is needed to convince me it worth $5 per month.
Well, that would be the end of my subscription.
The paid extra’s aren’t any good. The only reason I had a subscription is that I like strava for the basic (social) functions.
But if they make it more expensive I quit paying. I’ve looked at the full analytics they provide and for me it’s not very useful or something I don’t know already.
Out of curiosity, which single-pack were you on that you were paying for a specific paid social feature?
Meaning, in your case, it sounds like you don’t use the paid features anyway, so just going with a free plan seems like it would have made sense anyway.
Very strange article. If I didn’t know that you are not taking money from companies, I would think this is a sponsored article.
Strava pushed us away from the app by ending support for sensors, so we have to buy Garmins/Wahoos/etc. Therefore we get Live-Track from Garmin/Wahoo. Ironically, Strava then asks for a monthly price for a duplicate? I don’t think that it was only a small fraction who did not pay the full subscription (I had only Analysis like many others here, too).
Also I don’t see it as a good thing to “simplify” when simplifying means just taking away options from us.
And lastly, I haven’t heard from anyone who said “wow, these strava packages are too complicated, I don’t subscribe. If they had just one big package I would be in” lol..
I think one has to differentiate between old CEO and new CEO. Otherwise it just becomes silly. Frankly, I don’t think there’s *ANYONE* that’s been as critical against Strava in the entire industry as I have for their changes up until 2020. Seriously, go back and read anything I wrote. It was a dumpster fire, that includes the sensor removal among many other things.
But I just don’t see that in 2020 under their new CEO. And based on the vast majority of comments, most people aren’t seeing that version of Strava either.
If you’re looking for evidence of the confusion, simply go back to when they rolled it out. Read those comments, they’re still there (200+ of them). When people started looking at individual packs (as I did as well), you realize the gaps. For example, if you wanted HR data you had to enable it in one pack with sensor support, but couldn’t see the analysis unless you bought a different pack.
As for being a small portion of users – the lack of anyone noticing speaks for itself. For real – this change was out for *weeks* and nobody said anything to any media. It was a single Reddit user that noticed it on accident and then followed up. This was despite them sending an e-mail out last week to everyone on those plans, and again, only a single person mentioned it to me.
Ultimately though – Strava is a business. And as I’ve said numerous times before (as have they), they *have* to make money, they have to become profitable. The days of free money are largely gone for them (and even more so given COVID19) – the last round was three years ago. Nobody is going to acquire them (for reasons I’ve outlined numerous times before). I’d personally rather see a healthy Strava for the masses, then one making stupid decisions like they did over the past few years trying to chase dollars that weren’t really what athletes wanted.
The discussion here is demonstrating nicely what I found troublesome about the initial split: it changed the conversation from “I like Strava and I’m willing to support the company financially” to “what to I get for my money?”.
The truth is, none of the premium features is worth it. Dollar for dollar, there are tons of better options. But a Strava that isn’t entirely dependent on advertising or a potential buyout is worth a lot. A return from “features per dollar” to “supporting member” is difficult, that change they are trying to undo might even be a one-way street. But I love that they are trying!
Hats off for being smart enough to revert their paid tiers to something more simple, but not being stupid enough to change the name again (which would have only increased the confusion more).
What about features that have been up there for years but where they’ve done absolutely nothing, like Strava Local?
I will not renew. 65$ per a year is too much. It doesn’t have the value. I’m upset that you condone all of these services charging such high prices. It prevents access to the sport for those of lesser means.
There were plenty of people at 24$ tier. This is why they are raising prices. They are greedy. USAC has realized that they charge too much. Their annual fee is now $40. $60 covers a family with junior versus the hundreds in fees that were required in 2019.
Where is Strava’s family pricing?
Is it odd that everyone at Strava or Specialized leads a life of luxury while they try to get the poor to buy their overpriced commodity ? Yes.
Yet, Strava’s still free.
I’m curious – what specific feature level were you at before, and for what feature?
The fact that virtually nobody noticed for weeks is proof enough that there was virtually nobody on the individual packs.
So if I opted for the more expensive option out of sheer confusion but I just wanted my Premium data – they will take my money while other will for more for less?
The result – you piss off people that wanted Premium as they now get no additional value yet pay more.
The most important feature of Strava are segments and, of course, KOMs.
But in this field they are losing. This is because of the many E-Bikers (Pedelecs, motor assisted riding) that are not caring or not willing to care about correct leaderboard. I‘ve spent hours of time for flagging E-Bike-activites. They have to develop an automatic mechanism to detect E-Bike-rides. One easy step would be to add an E-Bike checkbox in the gear section.
I see that many frustrated non-electric-rides are going to quit Strava, because their efforts are destroyed by motor-riders.
I agree that it doesn’t put forward enough the ability to select/check/realize an e-bike should be in a different category. I think there’s a lot of things it can do there.
Some of it is bigger, like autodetection via various algorithmic ways (albeit, the edge/nuance cases of that will likely cause widespread pain for many users). And some of it is more obvious:
– Perhaps a prompt to remind folks to create bikes and be forward about e-bike classifications
– And then methodolody to tag a bike as an e-bike and associate that by default with certain riding types (for example, a commuter might have an e-bike that would be easily associated with commutes).
– A simple check-box when saving an activity for an e-bike
And so on…
All that said, I don’t think the vast majority of users actually care about Segments KOM’s (perhaps friends PR’s however). I know that might be an unpopular opinion, but it seems rooted in the reality of most conversations I have with both regular consumers and industry folks alike. Why that is, that’s a much bigger and perhaps more important question.
I ride a number of different platforms, Peloton/Zwift/TrainerRoad, and am convinced there are a lot of people that outright lie about their equipment and physicality. People that finish Peloton rides with plus 2,000 watt averages, Zwifters that are firmly in the ‘pro racer’ class, and yet some of their historic data shows otherwise.
But what can Strava do? Detect an e-bike? (Have a Bluetooth ‘tag’ in the data?) Require people have an integrated scale to accurately tell their weight? On the Peloton side, I just have learned to not compare my numbers, or position to anyone. I did my Peloton FTP test, and just ride those numbers.
Segments are interesting, but so many are superhuman, and I’ll never have a KOM, so perhaps Strava needs to have a ‘Super Summit’ class for those superhuman riders that are competing for KOM/QOM, and slay segments? (I claimed a segment by nearly a minute, and apparently some saw that, and now it’s out of reach for me 😀 )
Strava also needs to build the Summit plan so that people see a clear set of capabilities and features they will value and want to pay for. So many people were asking if it was worth it. Maybe the separate ‘classes’ was an attempt to sell to people *something* being better than nothing.
But what of yearly members? I think I am, and always was, a ‘whole package’ member. I don’t remember getting a choice when I signed up. Maybe this choice thing happened after I originally joined.
If Strava want to make money then they need to allow users to choose what sports and activities are featured on the users page. At the moment it is Running, Swimming and Cycling.
I am a bit of a runner but am a little overweight and working to get in shape. I love the stats that Strava provides to keep track and encourage me. I pay for a Summit membership to get all the enhanced data I can.
I don’t swim and I don’t ride much. But I do WALK a hell of a lot. My walking is helping me get up to running more. I walk whenever it’s not convenient to run like most lunchtimes at work with a 4km walk around a few blocks.
What I really want is the OPTION to make Walking into an activity with equal rank to running, swimming and riding. I want to be able to track the stats for my walking at the same level as my running rather than it being relegated to just a XT cross training activity that doesn’t count for much. I’d like to see Strava understand that for many people that are not finely tuned athletes walking does matter.
I know of committed walking friends that see my Strava running tracking and stats and heat maps etc that would sign up in an instant if you could do the same for Walking. Strava must be missing a massive market segment, whether by being elitist or just ignorant. I bet many dedicated runners would also love more detail on their walks for recovery or injury management.
If they want more subscribers then appeal to a wider base. It’s that simple. Must be millions that would love to track walking. Yes there are probably other apps but all my friends that give me the encouragement I need are on Strava.
C’mon Strava, give me a better clearer picture of ALL my activity and not just Running.
I agree. I also think there should be challenges for every type of activiy. It would expand their platform greatly. It would prove exposure to other activities and perhaps motivate people to move!
Hi Ray
I’m one of the pre-split Strava premium users. My premium account recently renewed (17th March) and now I cannot get Summit unless I pay more? Is that right?
Hey Ray,
Been an avid reader for years and rely on your good work and research when buying products, etc. But I can’t help feeling you were a little narrow-minded on this one.
I’m one of the many people who only subscribed for the analysis pack – for live segments on my Wahoo / Garmin. Along with my wife, numerous colleagues and friends as well. We have absolutely no use for the other features as far as our personal interests go.
I have no qualms it this change was made solely based on needing money to fund the service as a whole. I just can’t buy the excuse that it was made to benefit the end-user.
Maybe they end up with higher revenue from fewer paying users overall. I’m sure they have the numbers to back up their decision. All I can say is that they have lost a good number of paying users by making this change, as far as the circle of people I know go.
And as far as not noticing the changes for weeks, it’s hard to miss the splash screen about getting all the packs every time the app opens. We just never read past the “hey here’s all the packs free for a while” message and assumed they were just being nice to users for whatever reason instead of screwing us over (which we weren’t expecting).
You can try some promo links for 30, 60 or 90 days trial account.
All links are here: link to github.com
Summit Analysis Pack
I’ve found the segments part really good but not for £47.99 a year I’d have gladly paid the £18 for just analysis but hey ho, wake up strava not everyone wants everything.
simple and free it is
Funny enough, strava today still tells me, my next billing will be about 23,99 in April next year ? Double the price would be a bummer, although I always found some features in the other two tiers I would liked to have.
If their new explore feature gives me good routes, I would be willing to pay the extra for that.
Perhaps I’m one of those 12 odd users you’re mentioning in the end of the article (although reading the comments here, there appear to be more like me), but I loved the fact that Strava cut their premium membership into pieces to make the separate parts more affordable and reach a broader audience with them. I already had my doubts about the usefulness of many of those Summit features, and over time I found out that all I really need is the “Fitness & Freshness” feature to guard me from pushing myself too hard (and into injury). It has proven to be spot on when it comes to that, doing a far greater job than the very bland training load analysis by my Garmin Forerunner watch/Garmin Connect.
That one Summit feature goes hand in hand with “Relative effort”, which is also great to have, because it perfectly quantifies the intensity of a training and puts it into perspective over weekly load and shows you the trend of your weekly training loads. But other than that… Personalized goals, race analysis, personalized heat maps, training analysis… They’re all nice features for a sports platform, but I wouldn’t pay a penny for them – I’m just as well off without them. I mean, come on, is there actually any single user in the world who decided to buy Strava Summit because it allows them to register their personal goals?!
All of the other features I really don’t care about – either because they’re highly uninteresting to me by themselves (filtered leaderboards, training plans), or because they don’t suit my hardware when I go around running (without power meter, without phone).
So that leaves me with the conclusion: there’s ONE Summit feature I really need, and one that goes hand in hand with it; they’re both part of the Analysis package, but now they’re cancelling that package and forcing me to more than double up what I used to pay for those two features. Can’t say I’m satisfied with this move from Strava at all – far from it. But unfortunately, I can’t do without my Fitness & Freshness graph…
I rarely share my story with people, not only because it put me at the lowest point ever but because it made me a person of ridicule among family and friends. I put all I had into Binary Options ($690,000) after hearing great testimonies about this new investment strategy. I was made to believe my investment would triple, it started good and I got returns (not up to what I had invested). Gathered more and involved a couple family members, but I didn’t know I was setting myself up for the kill, in less than no time all we had put ($820,000) was gone. It almost seem I had set them up, they came at me strong and hard. After searching and looking for how to make those scums pay back, I got introduced to sophiawilliams9615@gmail.com to WhatsApp her +18454500578.who helped recover about 80% of my lost funds within a month
Hey Ray *** Spam Alert ***
Reply #73
I’m with the large number of people that feel live segments are the major feature that is relevant. The social/Kom/relative stats are either not at all useful because it is littered with suspect data, or just not my thing.
In that perspective, the full subscription does not provide sufficient value for money, especially if you are not a pure runner or pure rider and participate in other fitness activities like group fitness and strength that limits your ride or run numbers to one a week.
I would have thought bringing down the total price would be their biggest marketing strategy, and open the client base to include intermittent runners and riders in their user base by providing great value for money. Economies of scale.
I guess that I am in the minority in that I don’t care at all about the leaderboards or live segments on Strava. In fact I can do without many of the social features. Getting kudos from people that I have never heard of and don’t know seems kind of pointless. Really, the analysis features are what mater most to me.
In February I was charged 24 € for the renewal of my Training pack for one year. Does this mean that in the summer I will need to decide whether to pay the full price or downgrade to free version and if I pick the free version that would mean that I payed 24 € for approx 6 months?
What happens with the ones that payed in advance for a summit pack?
Adrian
I am also trying to find out what is going to happen to users that have been supporting Strava for many years and paid for the full Summit packs in advanced? If I have have understood the changes correctly, our monthly fee of £6.99 p/m (all three Summit plan) should be reduced to £4 p/m. Therefore if you / we have paid in advance surely there should be a credit or something???
I have tried to find out What will happen in this situation but can’t find a clear answer as most articles, understandably, relate to the free tier or single Summit packages where users are now going to have to pay to get these features.
I would love to know. I am trying to find out myself before I raise a support ticket with Strava.
The normal way to handle a situation like that would be to maintain the existing subscriptions for their paid-for duration, which would set the deadline for when users with yearly payment have to choose between either paying more or switching to a free account to the end of their current subscription year.
Let’s hope Strava acts at least somewhat like a reasonable company in this regard.
Reasonable-ness confirmed:
(in a mail to existing subscribers):
“Renewals after August 19, 2020 will be at the all-access subscription rate – but don’t worry, we won’t automatically bill you.”
Actually, I’d say even more than reasonable. I had subscribed to a single pack via an annual subscription through the iOS App Store, a subscription that was set to renew at the end of this month (May). Strava offered all single-pack subscribers full access to all subscription services at the single-pack price; regular price will be charged for the first renewal *after* August. Indeed, my annual subscription automatically renewed as scheduled this week, and it’s good until the end of May 2021. So, as a former single-pack subscriber, I get access to all subscription services at the old single-pack price for over a year. Obviously, the timing was very good in my case; folks whose subscriptions renew in September won’t see quite the same benefit. But it seems like Strava is taking a lot of steps to do right by their users/
Same here, I paid for a full year single pack and my subscription ‘Analysis 1-Year $23.99/year Renews Dec 22, 2020.
Strava, I tried to sign up for the free app my friend told me about last week. The only option I was offered after multiple attempts was 2 mth free trial then AUTOMATIC renewal for one year at $59 but could cancel before Aug 8,2020. After trying it for a couple hours I decided I didn’t want even the free trial so I went to cancel. Impossible. I tried 14 times including searching Youtube videos, calling users, etc. Quess what I found out? No one else could cancel when they tried to help. Then they looked at their own accounts. Guess what? Those Strava accounts they thought were free? They were paying for them for months even years! They were stunned. So we’re all trying …. can’t cancel, can’t downgrade (only upgrade), and I’ve followed the Draconian instructions to reach Support to get a “ticket” …. still NO REPLY FTOM STRAVA. Oh what a surprise. In this highly advanced technical age your practices are clearly highly intentional, duplicitous and dishonorable. Shame on you. I hope to hear from the Support ticket or to this email that you’ve cancel my trial and subscription. I’ve also contacted VISA who has assured this process is illegal and they will help. Again …. you know you’re doing this. I would recommend that anyone reading this also check their accounts … I’m sure many will be surprised what their free app is costing them. Oh, and don’t expect to see Strava on your records… it will be an unrecognizable code name.