Anyone who uses the social-fitness app Stravaundoubtedly noticed the host of new features that the company steadily rolled out this spring.They ranged from the flashy (a robust new route-planning tool) to the mundane (splitting moving time and total elapsed time).
Those new features were part of a larger plan. Collectively, they’rethe carrot to lure back lapsed members who’ve grown frustrated with the service’s drift away from core users amid an ever broadening focus on growth. Then, on May 18, Strava swung the stick: most of itsnew features, and many popular existing ones, like segment leaderboards, were movedbehind a $5-a-monthpaywall.
Strava has always been a “freemium” service, with access to some features reserved for members who paid an annualfee (afee that changed over the years). Butas I reported last year, many nonpaying users didn’t see the need for premium access; they got most of what they wanted gratis. After years of trying to adhere to its original business model, Strava’s decisionamounts to an abrupt shift. The company is bettingthat it can transition to a subscriber business model, whichcomes with massive, possibly existentialrisks.
Reaction to the paywall announcement was split. A number of nonpaying users that Strava’s move was an affront tototheir loyalty over the years. Others pointed out thatif you faithfully use a service,, especially as Strava’s ask isn’t exactly a huge amount.
There’s a lot more logical weight behind the “pay for what you use” argument. What value free users offer a consumer service is unclear at best. But there’s also something vital missing from that message. Namely: Strava needs to prove to users that it really is worth paying for. The problem? Itstrack record there is uneven.
The shift, which cofoundersMark Gainey and Michael Horvath announced in ,marks both a beginning and an end for the business. Launched in 2009, Strava began as a scrappy startup geared toward cyclists and runners. It attracted athletes who loved the opportunity to virtually measure themselves against their own best efforts, and those of others, on real-world routes, spurringeverything from “” memes to a Twitter account called to theterm.
Through its first tenyears, the company’sstrategy focused on adding ever more users, but itstruggled to monetize them. Strava has never disclosed how many of itsaccountsbelong to people who subscribe. Cosmo Catalano, a longtime Strava user (), has done the most detailed analysis I’ve seenand estimates that just 2.2 percent pay to use the app.
The $79million in annual incomethat those roughly 1.3 millionsubscriptions net sounds more flush than it probably is, when you factor in the payfor 180 employees (likely well over $20 million a year based on average software-engineer salaries and a for employee costs), office space in high-rent areas like downtown San Francisco, and considerable server and data expenses.
With the freemium model, Strava wasn’t going to be able to convert enough nonpayingmembers into paying subscribers to get it to break-even status. Nevertheless, under the leadership of former CEO James Quarles, who was hired in May 2017 and left in November 2019, Strava effectively doubled down on the approach. The company added more integrations with fitness brands, fromBarre3 to LiveRowing. It unveiled a Facebook-likepostsfeature thatletusers publish photos, videos, and journal entries. And controversially, it began an advertising program called Sponsored Integrations, which essentially turned its users into unwitting brand pitchmen and women by tacking ads ontoany workouts done using equipment from a paying company.
The goal is clear:Strava has long been overwhelmingly reliant on subscription revenue and is finally making peace with that.
Some of those changes, like posts, were met with indifference. Others—principally Sponsored Integrations—. Worse: amid Strava’s ever broadening focus, the core product began to suffer. The company struggled to fix bugs and became increasingly remote and unresponsive to users’ concerns.
In November, Quarles , along with a number of other employees (including some engineers, in what seemed to be a cost-cutting move). Horvath replaced him, marking his second stint as CEO,Gainey assumed the role of executive chairman, and the pair put in place their new plan to win back users.
Some of the Quarles-era initiatives are being dropped outright, like the widely loathed Sponsored Integrations. Others, like third-party app integrations,are being quietly back-burnered in favor of new features that Strava says better serve its core users’ needs.
You can tell Strava has pivoted away from Quarles’s expansive “all athletes” vision, because almost all of the 50-plusfeatures Strava has introduced this year focus on the core outdoor endurance sports thatStrava started with. The Routes feature offers algorithm-driven recommendations for new rides and runs at home or in a new city. Matched Rides/Runs analyzes changes in user performance on a given route over time. Improvedworkout-analysis tools track metrics like power output or, for swimmers, stroke rate.
And crucially, all of that stuff is now available witha subscription that costs $5 per month. (The company did away with the àla carte “pack” pricing structure it tried last year). The key move, however, was putting Strava’s original killer app—segment leaderboards—behind the paywall, too(though some segment features remain in the free version, including PRs and search capability). The top-tenleaderboard rankings are still part of the free version as well, but unless you’rereallyfast, you’re gonna have to pay to see how you rank on that climb.
The goal is clear:Strava has long been overwhelmingly reliant on subscription revenue and is finally making peace with that. Rather than gently prodding users to pay and looking for new ways to make money off thosewhodon’t, it’sfocusing intently on user revenue and being far more strict about what itgives away.
“We are not yet a profitable company and need to become one in order to serve you better,” wrote Gainey and Horvath in their letter to users. Short on specifics, Stravasaysthat subscription earnings will go towardan increased effort to develop new, improved features for paying members.But new features alone probably aren’t going to lure back lapsed subscribers, who should be the company’s prime target.
For one, there are already bugs to fix. The recommendation engine of the new Routes featurehas been plagued by the entirely foreseeable hiccup of. Other updates marketed as new are underwhelming. For example: a few weeks ago, I got an email toutingStrava’s efforts to clean up segment clutter. This is absolutely welcome, but is it really new?Or is it just basic product maintenance that the company should have been doing anyway without expecting kudos?
Strava’s biggest challenge is to prove to users that it’s changed. The companyhas to show that it’s responsive to users’ concerns,wants, and needs. It has to listen. That means devoting as much effort to fixing bugs as itspends developing new features. It means visibly engaging with users in its support forumsand on channels like Reddit’s r/Strava community, which has become the default home for core users looking toask questions, problem-solve, and complain. It means being quicker to respond to legitimate concerns about issues like privacyand making its communication strategy . All of this is something Strava can only prove over time butsomething that’s as important a resource here as money.
Ultimately, success or failure depends on genuine patience by the company’s board. Only a year ago, everyone I spoke with at Strava was—publicly, at least—devoutly in support of the Quarlesplan, which the company dumped wholesale mere months later. And there may have been resistance to the new plan, too. If Strava’s latest course change doesn’t yield positive progress (profitability or a steady advance toward it) in a year, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an investor revolt and yet another pivotor a sale.
But if Strava can pull this off, its success might be even more meaningful than the typical tech story of exponential growth. It could result in a durable, sustainable product built around a community that loves and values itand feels valued in return. It’s how Strava started. It’s what it always should’ve been.