Strava - should I pay for it?

[boywander]

Has anyone stopped using Strava since this change? I’ve been on the fence but not all because of this.

[unterhausen]

It didn't really affect anything that I use it for. I am planning on continuing to pay RWGPS. I know they want to be strava, but so far I am still using strava to send my data to other sites.

[fkelly]

I use rwgps. Have all my rides since 2011 in it and uploaded summary data going back to 2005. I plan routes there and coordinate a group area for my bike club. Club members get a discount (10%) when they want paid features, such as advanced routing.

It's a small local (Portland or Seattle?) company. Check out their "about" page to get a flavor:

https://ridewithgps.com/about

Unlike larger tech companies you can still talk to someone who can talk directly to the programmers and owners and they actually pay attention to your issues.

Our club (Mohawk Hudson Cycling) has about 500 routes saved in a central area. Any user can download them and use them for navigating, including turn by turn instructions with the right Garmin or Cell phone app. I call the central stored routes "curated" meaning that they've been mostly used and vetted and corrected. Any routing software will have gotcha's and glitches ... heck the underlying maps by Google or Open Street Maps which the routing software uses has errors in it that are almost impossible to get fixed.

[unterhausen]

RWGPS just dismissed my most recent bug report even though I gave them a repeatable example. I have no idea who is doing their CS, but dismissing an obvious bug outright is not a good look.

[benb]

Originally Posted by boywander

Has anyone stopped using Strava since this change? I’ve been on the fence but not all because of this.

I stopped when this thread started after my previous posts. I completely closed my account.

I would say it's the same thing as quitting facebook. At 3 months since I quit my overall satisfaction with my cycling is higher. I go out and do my ride and don't care about KOMs or measuring myself against anyone else. And I don't get jealous of any cycling friends who are blowing off work or family to ride 8 hours or whatever when I can't do that regularly. And I don't have to login and see a bunch of Peloton or Trainer Road or Zwift rides that I don't want to see.

The only negative is I had one friend give me a hard time.. he was route planning an area I am more familiar with and he was annoyed I couldn't login to Strava to see his ride/route. I shared my route with him from Training Peaks.. all my Strava rides were logged there as well. Interestingly Training Peaks is not so precious with the data as Strava. You can share a ride with someone on TP and the person you are sharing it with can look at it without signing up or paying.Not so on Strava.. they are more like FB.. you can't even send a link to a single ride and let someone see it unless they join.

I don't really care about losing connections with 99% of my cycling acquaintances by quitting Strava... most cycling "friends" are not really friends.. they are only interested in going for rides and don't really care about anything else. If I show up for a ride they'll still be there and there's no difference at all. The people who are actually my friends are going to be my friends no matter what. Again very similar to Facebook "Friends".

I never went for a single ride that was organized through Strava or required Strava to be aware of.. nothing lost there. Rides that were on Strava were always organized/advertised elsewhere.

[fkelly]

Originally Posted by unterhausen

RWGPS just dismissed my most recent bug report even though I gave them a repeatable example. I have no idea who is doing their CS, but dismissing an obvious bug outright is not a good look.

That has not been my experience over nearly 10 years of dealing with them but your mileage may vary, of course. One constraint that they have and that they are limited in response to, is that they use routing providers such as Google and/ or Open Street Map. So, for instance I've been bugging them for years to allow us to customize that starting location for a ride. They've given me a work around for routes in our club area but it's still a p.i.t.a. Their routing provider just returns a generic name for the starting location (say a county name) and they plug it into the route. It's not easy for them to override that and they tell me that I'm the only one concerned. I've given up. Likewise, the control "lines" that the routing providers send back to rwgps go along the side of a road. If you go out and back the same road it can be almost impossible to distinguish or manage between the control points along that line at say 5 miles "going out" and say 20 miles "coming back". Very difficult, I think, for rwgps to do much about that.

Anyway, sorry you are having difficulties.

[redir]

Originally Posted by Tickdoc

No pay here, but I only use it to track miles and see where my buddies rode. I keep it on my phone only in my back jersey pocket. I hate knowing how far I’ve gone or how fast I’m going until later.

Me too. I can see where my friends rode and give them a kudoz, view pics, upload pics, make comments and see my maps.

I don't even know what the paid part of it offers but that's all I need. If they put an ad on it here and there to make money that would not bother me at all. Ya gotta make money right?

[p nut]

Originally Posted by boywander

Has anyone stopped using Strava since this change? I’ve been on the fence but not all because of this.

No. In fact, moved to a paid membership. I like what they’re doing. I can’t ride with my friends a lot, (work, family, coaching, etc) so it’s nice to see their rides. Which motivates me to get out as well.

Bunch of the neighborhood kids are on the HS MTB team as well and it’s nice to see how (FAST!!) they’re progressing and performing at races. (Yes, I talk to them in-person as well).

[Elefantino]

Paid guy here. Happy to.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[unterhausen]

Originally Posted by redir

I don't even know what the paid part of it offers but that's all I need.

hate to give them ideas, but if they stopped keeping track of my times on segments, I might have to pay. I liked it when everything I needed was $30, but they doubled that. I know that's just a couple of inner tubes, but still it's a frivolous expense.

They stopped letting you see the times for everyone who rode a segment. Now freeloaders only get the top 10. I look at those and laugh and laugh. I recently did a PR on a long climb which I did in 50 minutes. The fastest guy did it in something like 22. Top 10 did it in under 27 minutes. Flat segments have similar discrepancies, but I have to admit I would never go all-out on a flat segment.

They thought they could become facebook for bike riders, but that didn't work out.

Originally Posted by fkelly

One constraint that they have and that they are limited in response to, is that they use routing providers such as Google and/ or Open Street Map.

I try to be sensitive to this, but I feel like rwgps could work around this a lot better. Like detecting when a right turn/u turn/right turn has been inserted when the user moved a control point. My interpretation is they want to be strava.

[benb]

I don't think you can really see OpenStreetMap as a handicap for a site like Strava or Ride with GPS.

The version of it Garmin loads up is flat out amazing, though I'm not sure if they're stacking some of their own data into OSM before downloading it into the GPS.

There is no way in the world I'd want the OSM in my Garmin replaced with Google/Apple/Bing/whatever maps... the OSM map just seems so much better suited to cycling. In particular OSM is on another planet in terms of trails in the woods and stuff like that. Google is at maybe 5% coverage for trails in my town and OSM must be near 95%.

[sparky33]

I pay for the Heat map in the route planner. My terrain isn’t easily mapped otherwise.

That said, the Strava route planner doesn’t allow mid-route edits as easily as other utilities, such as RideWithGPS.

[dem]

I'll never give them another dime after moving free features to paid while ignoring the product for 10+ years.

Activity search - still broken
Ability to tag "Mountain Bike" as a ride - still not there
... and 100s of other requests a decade old

I genuinely hope they go out of business since their monopoly prevents anyone else from really taking over in an even vaguely competent fashion.

I still upload, but I primarily use RWGPS now.

[boywander]

Originally Posted by dem

I'll never give them another dime after moving free features to paid while ignoring the product for 10+ years.



Activity search - still broken

Ability to tag "Mountain Bike" as a ride - still not there

... and 100s of other requests a decade old



I genuinely hope they go out of business since their monopoly prevents anyone else from really taking over in an even vaguely competent fashion.



I still upload, but I primarily use RWGPS now.

Thanks for the honest answer.
I've been using sports-tracker well before Strava came in the game. Has anyone heard of sports-tracker?

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[mktng]

Originally Posted by Clean39T

I pay for the paid version just for Beacon - tracker to alert family of your whereabouts. The other training and calendar and goals stuff is a bonus too. There are a lot of h8t3rs, but if you like the product and can afford to support it, do so.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

I thought about buying purely for beacon. Easier for my family to know where I am. Then found out FB messenger can show live location tracking aswell. Free.