The cycling app of choice for many, Strava, has announced it will now charge its members a small fee to access some of its features.
Its decision has been announced to its users via email
and the move follows a shift in culture by many online content-based companies –
especially in the media – to charge a small fee for content that had always
been free online.
Strava is now asking users who want to continue to access some of its features to pay a fee of $5 per month; roughly €4.60 each month.
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There will be an initial 60-day lead in period starting today - Monday, May 18th - at the expiry of which the charge will kick-in and access to some features will be denied to those who are not paying the $5/€4.60.
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While some cyclists and other athletes my baulk at the idea of paying any fee for features that have been free until now, the sum is very small.
Strava points out that, as a business, it must raise
revenue to pay its staff and fund itself. It added the features that will now
only be available to paying customers are complex and expensive to maintain.
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So what will you lose if you don’t pay?
- Segment leader board: You’ll still be able to see the top 10 for each segment but if your time for a segment is outside the top 10 you won’t know where you are placed on the leader board. You won’t be able to analyse segment efforts or your own efforts unless you are a paying subscriber.
- Matched rides: This feature enables you to compare performance over a particular route that you do more than once. In other words, when you upload your ride it compares your performance over the same ride that you’ve done in the past. Initially this was only available to runners but was extended to cyclists quite some time ago and has proven popular.
As well as Strava users being asked to now pay a fee to be able to continue using those features the San Francisco-based company, which is 12 years old and is not yet profitable, has also improved its offering generally.
It means even if you opt not to pay, you can still use
most of the existing features and you will also be able to avail of a host of
new ones.
These include a new ‘intensity log’ which effectively allows
you to track ‘form’ and you can aim your efforts on a particular week at specific
intensities, all based on your previous rides.
Strava has also added a range of new routes features,
with three layers of mapping enabling you to plan your ride in advance in more
detail than ever.
Those mapping features include a ‘segment explore’ facility
than allows you include particular segments on your route and some of the maps
even offer detail of surface type on particular roads.
Strava users will also be able to add information to the ‘surface
type’ facility so that the information available to Strava users on road
surface can be refined and can change if the quality of the surface changes.
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