The whole bicycle world has been discussing one news over the past two days - STRAVA has become paid! But everything is not so clear. Let's go through all the changes in Strava’s policies and functions in order and see how to live with it further. In a nutshell - under attack users without premium and third-party programs that used the Strava API (which is about 44,000 applications). A complete list of changes can be found here.
Segments. Free users. Death and oblivion.
This is if you dramatize. But in reality - Strava has limited the use of the "Segments" function for free users. From now on, users without a premium subscription will not be able to see the entire standings in a single segment. Only the top 10 participants and TOP10 women will be available. And so, you will not see the results of your friends either (unless it’s Borya Bakurinsky, who is always in the TOP!). Also, you will not be able to look at the selection of results for followers, clubs and years. This makes it very difficult to conduct all kinds of virtual competitions, like the current Chicken challenge.
However, the opportunity to create new segments of non-premium users left. They will also see a screen with segment details and may indicate favorite segments. Although thanks for that.
For free accounts, it will now look like this (screenshots by DC Rainmaker):
Premim now adds the ability to see all the results in the leaderboard, analyze their performance and the passage of the segment and compare the results with other users.
In fact, the following happened. Strava won a large audience with its main chip - segments. And when I realized that the growth of new users has slowed down, I decided to start intensively monetizing the existing audience. Because in fact, Strava's profits are not so huge.
Outside services and programs - everything is over
Strava closes its API for the vast majority of third parties. That is, the leaderboards will disappear from extraneous programs, and if you used some kind of add-on like Elevate or the like, then you can no longer interconnect segment information through them. But this option remains for authorized devices such as Garmin, Lezyne or Wahoo, you can also compete on segments and see the necessary indicators (but only for premium users).
Also stop giving out infa about the configuration of the segments and other necessary data. The same VeloViewer, for example, for premium users will not change. But for free accounts, the gate will be covered.
In fact, this news is probably the worst, because it affects everyone, even premium users, Vikorists and third-party programs for analyzing indicators.
Finally a good route builder! But not for everyone ...
Free accounts are deprived of the opportunity to use the tools for building routes in the web version. Therefore, they are left with alternatives such as Komoote and AllTrails.
At the same time, the route designer itself was significantly improved. Now its functionality is more similar to Komoot, with the coverage showing along which the track will pass. Now it’s easier to do purely gravel or asphalt routes in unfamiliar areas. Plus, they integrated the branded Heatmap, which shows congestions of cyclists and popular routes and added the ability to display the nearest parts. The changes are drastic and have been requested for a long time, plus updated the design of the interface and map display. The mobile version is also available.
The running Dvizhuha was hurt additionally - free users were deprived of the "matched runs" function, which automatically trivially runs along the same routes. However, this is a new feature that was launched only, but only for premium.
Does this mean the death of Strava?
No, not at all!
Did you know that Strava is actually a non-profit company? It's simple - with 5,000,000 users, only 5% have signed up for a premium subscription. Now try to figure out how much it costs to maintain such a user base, developing new chips and optimizing. About 150 programmers are currently working on the product.
Over the past six months, new programs have been added to the program: search for routes, analysis of weekly loads and progress, weather records during a trip, additional compatibility with Apple Watch, Suunto, Fitbit and made native transfer of tracks to Garmin (I will tell about this separately). This is all normal, so it is calculated in terms of wages and server capacities.At the same time, a subscription costs 5 bucks a month, and you are given 2 months of a free, fully functional trial.
I have been using Strava Premium for the second year and have never regretted it. Products that you love must be supported. Otherwise, we will use endomondo or the Komoot curve (so I don’t like it ... and at the same time it’s also paid). Therefore, I urge you to consciously treat the service that you use and support it. Well written about this by CyclingTips.