Strava

Isn't the tier system being dropped?

i pay 18.99 per year. I think that's decent value

How are there 3 tiers? I can only see 2.

They are moving to two, free and £4 a month. Think I pay £18 a year so a jump but a small monthly amount

i see.

Mine only recently came out so assume I'm good for a year...

Me too

RWGPS is good for route-planning iff you want to spend an hour tweaking your exact route.

Newer apps that are terrain aware (Komoot, cycle.travel) are much better for following their routes without modification. Strava is somewhere in the middle, although the editor is buggy AF.

Sorry, I read an outdated article about the premium service.

Still not sure I want to pay £50 a year tho, even if the free is stripped back. And what exactly is getting stripped back I’m still a little confused by.

"Overall segment leaderboards (Top 10 view is still free)"

systematically attacks every local segment

For me RWGPS auto-routing gave better results than komoot's. I got a komoot account with TCR last year and tried using it but much prefer RWGPS. I'd tried Strava a few years earlier and its routes were always longer and lumpier so never bothered using it again.

I reckon they'll remove the heat map access/API/whatever. Otherwise what's the incentive to use their route planner?

For me, there is very little incentive to use any of their stuff. If I thought I 'needed' the heatmaps, like I said, I'd pay up for a bit and cancel. I've have a yearly sub for RWGPS for the last four years and that's where I do my route planning but now and then other tools like their heatmaps come in handy. I mean, via Yemble's site, not directly using Strava. The heatmap is separate to their route planning anyway isn't it? That's what makes it clunky to use in Strava itself. At least it was.

I don't mind paying £1 a week to be honest- I won't miss it (not at the moment anyhow). Its almost what I'd spend on coffee for one day.

I'm more interested to see whether this means Strava is lining up for a buyout, which could be interesting if this is the likes of Garmin, since if Garmin looked to incorporate into their platform they'd really be winning. But I'd imagine if Garmin bought it surely they'd want to make it exclusive to Garmin users?

I use DwMaps on my phone and desktop for route planning. I don't know what the features on Strava are like, but the whole point for me is that I can upload a route to my Garmin watch and use that to follow it. I guess it depends on what device you're using. DwMaps is free, but I paid a one off lifetime membership for something like £20.
I also use Elevate for Strava on Chrome for analytics. I wonder if Strava will try and prevent this connectivity between Elevate and them. I assume Elevate could just take the same raw data from Garmin Connect tho.

Otherwise what's the incentive to use their route planner

It sounds to me like they don't want you to use some of the more CPU intensive services.

Just seen in their update that they have a "small but mighty" team of 180 people. Given how many parts of their platform are close to abandonware, are they all in sales?

The heatmap is separate to their route planning anyway isn't it?

You can enable the global heatmap as an overlay while route planning. But not your personal one.

What does VV do that's not dragged in from Strava? I looked at it years ago but didn't think it did enough to warrant paying for. Same as Strava, basically.

The tile bagging stuff, just a bit of fun and only £10/year.

I've read Jack's posts on that but it didn't get my excited enough to dump all my data into it :)

Will their tile stuff work after Strava changes?

So if I've got this right, they've blocked freeloading peasants from accessing the segment leaderboards, but I still have to compete with them? I'd assumed I'd move up about 40,000 places on 'Col de Sawyer's Hill EMPTY THE TANK steep bit (big ring only)'

:)

waves

Does komoot have a heatmap? I'm happy using RWGPS for route planning and even pay them proper money to do so. I don't use Strava's route planning, just the heatmap.

Will their tile stuff work after Strava changes?

Yes, there's a (tiny) bit more on it in the tile bagging thread here, but that'll carry on as before.

Why can't you use Strava's? You can view it without even logging in, although I think only at lower resolution. I don't see it mentioned in the changes.

If access to the heatmaps isn't restricted as part of Strava's latest cunning plan, then happy days, and I will continue using it. Sigh of relief.

You can still search for segments, so if you know segment names you can still view them.

Apparently part of the upcoming changes is a big update/redesign of the Strava route planner. If they get that working as well then the £4 might look better value. They’ve certainly got all the data they should need to make it happen.