It’s been a confusing ride of price changes at Strava this year. The company announced pricing increases in January that caused what could be described as a s--tstorm among their customers. We thought it had come to a close after a public apology from the company.
Turns out, that wasn’t the end of it after all. At least not for us here at Bicycling.
Here’s the full timeline of the Strava pricing saga, and what your annual subscription in the U.S. will actually cost this year.
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January, 11: Price increases that did not get Kudos
Strava started the year off with the announcement that it would be raising its monthly prices.
The news came on the heels of the company laying off about 15 percent of its staff the month before. And that news had come after the company announced it had reached over 100 million users just a few months prior. It’s fair to say that this sequence of events left a bad taste in the mouth of many Strava subscribers. And that bad taste continued to get more sour.
The reason was that how much someone was going to end up paying for their trusty Strava subscription depended on several factors, and Strava wouldn’t clearly tell anyone what those factors were.
It seemed to depend on where in the world you were when you registered your Strava account and whether you were a monthly or annual subscriber. We say “seemed” because the information wasn’t actually posted anywhere.
The most bizarre part of the whole thing was that the Strava communications department seemed to be M.I.A. while the internet was aghast and Reddit had nothing but questions— along with a few conspiracy theories— surrounding what to many seemed like an intentional lack of transparency.
The company simply wasn’t releasing any explanations to clarify anything, wasn’t responding to customers, and wasn’t responding to the media, including Bicycling.
Eventually we were able to figure out that in the U.S. at least, the monthly cost of a Strava subscription was changing from $7.99 to $11.99, representing a substantial 50 percent increase.
January, 20: “Our messaging was very confusing.”
About two weeks later, Strava published an apology on their blog, stating “In an effort to roll out pricing updates for our subscription, we made a mistake by not providing enough information directly to our community. We sincerely apologize for the confusion and concern this has caused many of our valued subscribers.”
January, 23: Strava buys FATMAP
Three days after the public apology, Strava announces that it has purchased the outdoor adventure platform FATMAP which offers a global proprietary 3D mapping technology.
February 6: CEO and co-founder Michael Horvath steps down
Three weeks after the company’s public apology, Strava co-founder and CEO Micheal Horvath stepped down. He announced the move on Strava’s blog, saying that “Strava needs a CEO with the experience and skills to help us make the most of this next chapter.” He doesn't mention the pricing kerfuffle.
Today: Matt gets an email from Strava, Matt is not stoked, and Matt has thoughts
A big part of the confusion that happened during the initial “roll out” of the price increases was that Strava said it was raising prices for annual subscribers on a “rolling” basis. There wasn’t a single kick off date for the new rates, but rather it would go into effect when the annual subscribers term was set to renew for another year.
For some, this means that one day you check your email and are surprised (because who really keeps track of when their annual subscription to anything set to renew) with a notice that your Strava sub is going up to $79.99 from $59. This is what happened to our Senior Gear Editor, Matt Philips.
And frankly, he wasn’t too happy about it.
“I’m personally, not super stoked about this price increase,” he said. “A lot of what Strava calls ‘new features’ or ‘enhancements’ are just worthless bloat to me. FatMap and Recovery? Don’t care. Don’t need them, don’t use them, didn’t ask for them.”
Matt has been a Strava subscriber since 2011, and he also has somewhat of a wish list of what he thinks Strava should do.
“They need to improve their route building tools, improve their mountain bike trails and terrain knowledge (hello Trailforks), and find some way(s) to fix the rampant cheating (intentional or not) on the segments,” he says. “Oh, also: give us back downhill live segments on our computers.”
We reached out to Strava for comment for this story and the company hasn’t responded. If they do, we’ll update our timeline with the next episode of the Strava Pricing Chronicles of 2023. Stay tuned!
Natascha Grief got her first bike shop job before she was old enough to drink. After a six-year stint as a mechanic, earning a couple pro-mechanic certifications and her USA Cycling Race Mechanics license, she became obsessed with framebuilding and decided she wanted to do that next. After Albert Eistentraut literally shooed her off his doorstep, admonishing that if she pursued framebuilding she will be poor forever, she landed an apprenticeship with framebuilder Brent Steelman in her hometown of Redwood City, CA. After that, she spent several years working for both large and not-so-large cycling brands. Somewhere in there she also became a certified bike fitter. Natascha then became a certified personal trainer and spent nine years honing her skills as a trainer and coach, while also teaching Spin. During the dumpster fire that was the year 2020, she opened a fitness studio and began contributing regularly to Runner’s World and Bicycling as a freelance writer. In 2022, she joined the staff of Bicycling as News Editor.
