Strava Premium

[GB]

What are the benefits of Strava Premium?

What looks most tempting to me is:

the heat map, kinda cool.
and not sure if it does this or not, but if it shows you on the map where your friends (follow(er/ies)) are, that would be a big plus for me.

I know with the free andriod app it tells who’s riding, but I don’t know where they are riding so I can’t go meet up with them. I’ve gotten around this with the life360 app. The down side of this is that it’s on all the time, so ppl know where you all the time, and it sucks the battery pretty hard.

So I’m most interested to know about the friends on the map thing, but what are the other benefits?

Topic

[americancyclo]

Greg-
I just looked around my Android (I’m a premium member) and then dug up the info on Strava’s zendesk FAQ that should help answer those questions. Basically it’s an “opt-in” feature for premium mobile users.

https://strava.zendesk.com/entries/22638795-Real-Time-Segments-for-iOS
https://strava.zendesk.com/entries/22309179-Real-Time-Segments-for-Android

This feature lets you see a list of Premium members that you follow who are currently out riding or running. When you choose to share your activity status, athletes who follow you can see that you are out riding or running, as well as the distance traveled and start time. You can enable Enhanced Privacy to manage your followers.

So it sounds like you will know they are out running strava somewhere, but it won’t give you their location or route.

[vvill]

I think Endomondo will give you a friend’s location and route ridden so far if they’re tracking on their phone, although I haven’t checked for a long time.

veloviewer.com can generate a heatmap for you from your Strava data – for free

Strava Premium will show you certain training data/graphs based on power data (obviously more accurate if you have a power meter rather than estimates based on your ride data and weight). If you have HR data it will also give you a “Suffer Score”.

[GB]

thank you very much for that info, too bad it doesn’t show you their location.

Any other really great perks I’m missing out on?

[vvill]

I don’t think the other stuff (e.g. goals) is that great, although if you ride an indoor trainer, free access to those videos is a good recent addition imo

http://www.strava.com/hpremium

[americancyclo]

@GregBain 69042 wrote:

thank you very much for that info, too bad it doesn’t show you their location.

Any other really great perks I’m missing out on?

I’m with will, the only other feature is the ability to download a GPX of other people’s rides, but I usually just map them with Ridewithgps. I’ll most likely let my premium lapse this year when it expires. not really getting enough out of it, and their API decisions have disenchanted me with giving them money.

[KLizotte]

So then the question becomes, how does Strava make money? We all like the utility of the site but if no one is paying for it…. It’s the classic conundrum of the internet age: supremely valuable but free information.

[GB]

@KLizotte 69048 wrote:

So then the question becomes, how does Strava make money? We all like the utility of the site but if no one is paying for it…. It’s the classic conundrum of the internet age: supremely valuable but free information.

I would pay if they could tell me where my friends were so I could meet up with them. Other than that, the information is nice to have but not critical.

I think they’d be a good position for ads, they know where you are when, and that you like biking/running, and I’d guess most users are not in bottom income bracket. Should be a gold mine for ads, not sure why we don’t see those.

[vvill]

Ads are definitely possible – doesn’t endomondo do that?

The Garmin 510/810 models I think feature live tracking (by communicating with your phone).

@KLizotte 69048 wrote:

So then the question becomes, how does Strava make money? We all like the utility of the site but if no one is paying for it…. It’s the classic conundrum of the internet age: supremely valuable but free information.

As far as I remember, they’re not (yet) but they have venture capital backing.

[jrenaut]

I just upgraded to Premium when they started the heatmaps. I’d been thinking about it, because I use the app a lot, but they weren’t really offering anything extra for premium that was worthwhile to me. Of course I looked at the heatmap once and haven’t gone back, but whatever.

They certainly are well-positioned for targeted ads (I see you ride that old Fuji hybrid 30 miles a day. Wouldn’t a carbon cross bike make your commute a lot more fun?). But they have to be really careful. When people are using their app, they aren’t shopping. One of the reasons a lot of Google ads are successful is that they often show you ads for stuff you are currently in the process of shopping for. I can’t see myself out riding, checking my ride on Strava, and suddenly deciding I just HAVE to stop riding and buy that new saddle they’re advertising.

That is the problem with a huge number of websites. It’s relatively easy to build a site that people want to use. It’s really hard to find a good way to make it profitable (though in some sense that doesn’t matter – look at Twitter).

[Tim Kelley]

@GregBain 69034 wrote:

What are the benefits of Strava Premium?

Power data.

And you’re supporting a cool company.

[Tim Kelley]

@americancyclo 69045 wrote:

I’ll most likely let my premium lapse this year when it expires. not really getting enough out of it, and their API decisions have disenchanted me with giving them money.

The API stuff is annoying, but hopefully they’ll get that figured out. Membership helps support their great customer service.

[KLizotte]

Maybe they could hold quarterly fund raising drives like they do on PBS.

[hozn]

Yeah, I agree with Tim. I don’t have a power meter so a good percentage of the premium features don’t really apply to me. But I like the company and strava.com; they have built a superior product and I am happy to support that — and very happy it is ad free. I think they are wrong about the API restrictions they introduced, but I will take their explanations of limited resources to devote to managing that at face value. I expect that situation will improve.

[americancyclo]

@Tim Kelley 69090 wrote:

Power data.

And you’re supporting a cool company.

If strava bought me a power meter, I would totally re up for another year, and I’d think they were cool ay no extra cost.

[vvill]

@hozn 69104 wrote:

Yeah, I agree with Tim. I don’t have a power meter so a good percentage of the premium features don’t really apply to me. But I like the company and strava.com; they have built a superior product and I am happy to support that — and very happy it is ad free. I think they are wrong about the API restrictions they introduced, but I will take their explanations of limited resources to devote to managing that at face value. I expect that situation will improve.

Agreed! For all the API/open data issues, support has always been pretty good when I contacted them, and they certainly have the most polished product in their space.

I’ve had premium membership once before but I didn’t have a power meter then.

[Author]

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