Strava family plan?

Anyone else get this spam email this morning? Apparently I can sign the whole family up for ~£100 a year.

If I had a family of 4 that used it, then it could be tempting. All the metrics I get free from Garmin and I’m not social enough or fast enough to be fast, so still doesn’t tempt me. I don’t have 3 other friends who’d be interested in becoming a family for it either.
I suspect it’ll attract new subscribers though.

I didn’t get that email

I think I got it because I’m a long time account holder and frequent uploader, but I only had a premium account for one year, by accident because I didn’t cancel before the end of a ‘free trial’ window and in like 2015 or something… Which is the whole point, it was a largely useless subscription then, I’d maybe be interested in the mapping/route generation features now, but who GAS about Strava KOMs and ‘leader boards’ anymore? (not in any way bitter)…

The text of the offering:

Get up to four subscription accounts to share with anyone in your crew.

It’s never been more affordable to reach your full potential. Family Plan is just £99.99/year, or as low as £25.00/person.

Choose your family.
Friends, relatives, even rivals. It’s all up to you! Everyone in your plan gets a subscription with premium features.

So they’re very clearly trying to get four people (not necessarily family) to club together for a cheap premium account each.

I had to check but currently they’re after £55p/a for a single premium account, or £108 if you opt for monthly billing (assuming you sub for the whole year. Student account is 50% off (£27.49).

While I do have four whole entire friends and/or family members who might be into the idea, the ones who’d be keenest already have their own paid for Strava account already.

I wonder if you can group together 4 current, active accounts. I.e. no data loss. There will be lots tempted who are part of clubs etc.

I ended up getting premium last year because I discovered Fat maps – more a winter mountain think than a Lyra road bike thing. But it’s somehow getting amalgamated into Strava soon so not sure how that’ll work.

I read it the other day and I have a feeling you can’t use existing accounts or something similar (would need to Double check T&C’s). For that reason I pretty quickly binned the idea of trying to convince my friends to club together and reduce our existing subscription cost

If you’re already a subscriber, you must cancel your existing plan and wait for it to expire before joining or creating a Family Plan. Your subscription features and workout history will carry over to your new plan.

That’s from the Strava FAQ.

If you/your friends are currently Free members, or paying monthly then it’s just a question of cancelling then rejoining. Not so much an option if you’re already paying annually.

Well, I’d happily be someone’s family member. Sadly I don’t renew until 20th Dec.

If you’re already a subscriber, you must cancel your existing plan and wait for it to expire before joining or creating a Family Plan. Your subscription features and workout history will carry over to your new plan.

Yeah, and then having persuaded three other people to faff about cancelling Subs early or take on another, they’ll go an put the price up in 12 months(?)

I’m not sure it really works apart from under some quite specific circumstances.

I actually reckon enabling the monthly sub for a short period of say 2-4 months kind of has the right sort of flexibility, I don’t have to stump up 55 quid for a thing I’ll probably ignore most of the year, it’s just a smidge too pricey for what it is though hence they’re looking for more ‘creative’ subscription models.

The thing is, what is the actual ‘Value’ of a Strava sub? you can be utterly mugged and pay £108 a year in monthly subs, or rustle up £55 once a year, if you can prove you are a student it’s £27 p/a, or if you have three mates in a similar boat it’s only £25… For pretty much the exact same thing.

IIRC They used to have different flavours of premium didn’t they for a bit? and when I fell into the trap of paying for a year up front I think it was about ~£80 at the time which irked me. they pissed about with the pricing towards the end of last year again

They’ve always struggled to monetise Strava, because it’s value to users is so variable, a bit like FB:

“Yes we’re flogging data analytics and advertising push to corporate customers in the background, testing the limits of GDPR where we can, but we’d also like to dip directly in your wallet too, how much do you reckon you’d like to pay to see your name on some spreadsheets and to be able to plot a route?”

I feel like maybe £25 a year would actually be fair, but I’m not getting all ‘pyramid schemey‘ with my mates for it…

They’ve always struggled to monetise Strava

I was a subscriber from day 1, even though I didn’t make much use of the premium features, as it was unique (initially) and I liked it & what they (as a company) were doing & wanted to support them. I knocked it on the head a few years ago though, as the cost increased quite a bit & obviously money a bit tighter these days for everyone!

Re-subscribed at chrimbo as they were doing 25% off, which I thought was an OK price. The route-planner with heat map is really good, use it loads, so interested to see what happens when they integrated OS maps into it, as that will probably dictate whether I keep the sub up. (hopefully they run the same offer again!)