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Follow-up video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3szJ67iM1E&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3szJ67iM1E&t=1s Apparently, Strava rolled out these increa

Follow-up video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3szJ67iM1E&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3szJ67iM1E&t=1s Apparently, Strava rolled out these increases with no explanation or notice to users. And oddly, they refuse to tell journalists what the official subscription fees will be, leaving it to the journalists to dig around and figure it out on their own. I understand prices have to go up to pay for hosting and development, but this is a weird one. Massive increase, no new features announced, and next to zero communication from the company.

bochoh 4y ago
They just needed to show 20% growth in revenue to IPO, and like magic it happened
- operatingthetan 4y ago
  If you go on /r/strava there have been threads about it all week and a large percentage of posters say they are cancelling. It seems like this is blowing up in their faces a bit.
  - beardedetim 4y ago
    I definitely cancelled mine. I decided to switch to using Garmin Connect fulltime instead of that and Strava.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    I'm in the "still shows original price" boat for now. If/when my annual renewal comes due and the price is $80 instead of $50, I'll probably cancel as well.
prepend 4y ago
Prices should not go up for hosting and development. Prices should go down per user as there are fixed costs. Same with development. Unless strava is losing users their costs aren’t going up, especially not 30%. It’s easy to argue that costs go up but that’s not due to development, but due to corporate overhead. Unless they are doing something really wacky with saas costs, they should have low marginal costs so as long as they have a decent growth, costs go down.
- iamacyborg 4y ago
  I suspect their costs are going up because more and more people are buying fitness and sports watches and integrating those services with Strava. Not only are they simply storing the received data but they do a lot with it like calculating segments.
  - kshacker 4y ago
    Even then they may have been able to attract a lot more revenue by keeping the old price, or god forbid, offer a discount. If you grow your free users by 100%, and your run costs are only 5-10% of your business, you do not need that much to absorb those incremental costs. However, if your business model requires 20 dollars profit per paying user, then of course your business model needs looking at. Just like Netflix is trying to say.
- notyourwork 4y ago
  > Prices should not go up for hosting and development. Prices should go down per user as there are fixed costs. Same with development. That's the naive in theory world. In practice, it is not always the case that economies of scale lend to reduced hosting/infra costs. They can in fact balloon, especially for a small population or a small niche use case.
  - prepend 4y ago
    I think it is always the case that it leads to reduced hosting/infra costs. But that doesn’t mean it leads to lower prices as these cost savings aren’t passed on to users. A properly designed saas should have a non-linear cost per user so more users means lower marginal costs. If not, then something is amiss or it’s not a digital product. The “increased costs per user” is just marketing PR blargh.
klabb3 4y ago
> And oddly, they refuse to tell journalists what the official subscription fees will be Probably because there is no one price, but rather determined from a formula. Individual price setting is a wet dream of any business with low marginal cost. This is, to my understanding, the force behind DVD region locking (which later transitioned into digital services) - the optimal price depends on the consumer purchasing power, which varies significantly by region. Now region ≠ individual, but the more cohorts and factors you have, the closer fit you can theoretically achieve. In other words, Strava would probably love to charge premium from Bay Area power users on FAANG compensation. At the same time, they’d love to acquire and retain paying users in the lower brackets, rather than none at all. I’m not sure of the legal risks, but in the court of public opinion this is akin to scalping your own product. If I get a different price than my friend, I’ll feel ripped off. To me, it’s surprising that this isn’t happening more. This is an almost inevitable consequence of the surveillance capitalism paradigm of the digital landscape. The incentives are there, and most importantly, the data needed for individual prices is there.

bochoh 4y ago

They just needed to show 20% growth in revenue to IPO, and like magic it happened

operatingthetan 4y ago
If you go on /r/strava there have been threads about it all week and a large percentage of posters say they are cancelling. It seems like this is blowing up in their faces a bit.
- beardedetim 4y ago
  I definitely cancelled mine. I decided to switch to using Garmin Connect fulltime instead of that and Strava.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  I'm in the "still shows original price" boat for now. If/when my annual renewal comes due and the price is $80 instead of $50, I'll probably cancel as well.

prepend 4y ago

Prices should not go up for hosting and development. Prices should go down per user as there are fixed costs. Same with development. Unless strava is losing users their costs aren’t going up, especially not 30%. It’s easy to argue that costs go up but that’s not due to development, but due to corporate overhead. Unless they are doing something really wacky with saas costs, they should have low marginal costs so as long as they have a decent growth, costs go down.

iamacyborg 4y ago
I suspect their costs are going up because more and more people are buying fitness and sports watches and integrating those services with Strava. Not only are they simply storing the received data but they do a lot with it like calculating segments.
- kshacker 4y ago
  Even then they may have been able to attract a lot more revenue by keeping the old price, or god forbid, offer a discount. If you grow your free users by 100%, and your run costs are only 5-10% of your business, you do not need that much to absorb those incremental costs. However, if your business model requires 20 dollars profit per paying user, then of course your business model needs looking at. Just like Netflix is trying to say.
notyourwork 4y ago
> Prices should not go up for hosting and development. Prices should go down per user as there are fixed costs. Same with development. That's the naive in theory world. In practice, it is not always the case that economies of scale lend to reduced hosting/infra costs. They can in fact balloon, especially for a small population or a small niche use case.
- prepend 4y ago
  I think it is always the case that it leads to reduced hosting/infra costs. But that doesn’t mean it leads to lower prices as these cost savings aren’t passed on to users. A properly designed saas should have a non-linear cost per user so more users means lower marginal costs. If not, then something is amiss or it’s not a digital product. The “increased costs per user” is just marketing PR blargh.

klabb3 4y ago

> And oddly, they refuse to tell journalists what the official subscription fees will be Probably because there is no one price, but rather determined from a formula. Individual price setting is a wet dream of any business with low marginal cost. This is, to my understanding, the force behind DVD region locking (which later transitioned into digital services) - the optimal price depends on the consumer purchasing power, which varies significantly by region. Now region ≠ individual, but the more cohorts and factors you have, the closer fit you can theoretically achieve. In other words, Strava would probably love to charge premium from Bay Area power users on FAANG compensation. At the same time, they’d love to acquire and retain paying users in the lower brackets, rather than none at all. I’m not sure of the legal risks, but in the court of public opinion this is akin to scalping your own product. If I get a different price than my friend, I’ll feel ripped off. To me, it’s surprising that this isn’t happening more. This is an almost inevitable consequence of the surveillance capitalism paradigm of the digital landscape. The incentives are there, and most importantly, the data needed for individual prices is there.