Strava has made major changes to its user experience – including the removal of sponsored integrations, shifting some features to being subscription-only and a move towards subscription at the heart of its business model.
New features for subscribers
- A big Routes update, with planning & recommendations on iOS and Android
- Matched Rides: Analyze performance on identical rides over time
- See full workout history with Training Log on iOS
- Workout Analysis is now available for all activity types
- Grade-Adjusted Pace (GAP) now on iOS and Android
- Coming soon: ‘a whole new way to compete on segments…’
New subscription features that were previously free
- Overall segment leaderboards (top 10 view is still free)
- Comparing, filtering and analyzing segment efforts
- Route planning on strava.com, with redesign launching soon
- Matched Runs: Analyze performance on identical runs over time
- Training Log on Android and strava.com
- Monthly activity trends and comparisons
Recent releases for all athletes
- ‘Favorites first’ feed settings and the return of the chronological feed
- Improved impossible effort detection… False KOMs, QOMs, CRs dethroned!
- Apple Watch uploading and improved sync to Apple Health
- Recorded the drive home by accident? New mobile activity cropping
- All activities now show both elapsed and moving time
- New or improved analysis of power, cadence and swimming stroke rate
In a letter to athletes, Strava founders Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath set out the background to the new-look platform…
Strava athletes deserve an affordable and constantly improving experience, and we hope you’ve noticed how focused we’ve been this year on delivering that. Our small but mighty team of 180 has released 51 athlete-facing improvements already in 2020, from Apple Watch syncing, to new maps and metrics for snowsports, to a huge update to our Routes features, and a lot more.
We’ve also removed some distractions, such as Sponsored Integrations (the closest we’ve ever come to putting ads in the feed). And we returned the option to sort your feed in chronological order. We heard how much that change drove you nuts, and admit it took a really long time to respond.
Dedicating Strava to the community is also a commitment to longevity. We are not yet a profitable company and need to become one in order to serve you better. And we have to go about it the right way – honest, transparent and respectful to our athletes.
Our plan puts subscription at the centre of Strava. This means that, starting today, a few of our free features that are especially complex and expensive to maintain, like segment leaderboards, will become subscription features. And from now on, more of our new feature development will be for subscribers – we’ll invest the most in the athletes who have invested in us. We’ve also made subscription more straightforward by removing packs and the brand of Summit. You can now use Strava for free or subscribe, simple.
This focus on subscription ensures that Strava can serve athletes decades from now, and in an up-front way that honours the support of the athletes we serve today. We plan to take what we earn from these changes and reinvest straight back into building more and better features – not devising ways to fill up your feed with ads or sell your personal information. We simply want to make a product so good that you’re happy to pay for it.
A monthly subscription costs as much as a couple energy bars, and we think that’s money well spent. But we also know, especially lately, that there are athletes struggling to make ends meet and that the free version of Strava must remain high quality and useful. Rest assured that we will always offer a version of Strava for free, and you belong in this community whether you subscribe or not. We’re betting all our chips on you, either way. We hope you’ll bet on us.
