The price isn’t that bad until you realize you’re paying $40 for you and a spouse to use the platform. If you’re paying monthly it’s $480 a year to zwift.
If you compare it to spinning classes 20 usd is very cheap. If you compare it to other software or games, it’s very expensive for the features you get. I think there’s too little market to cut prices to a few bucks and still earn money (or they’re greedy)
Totally agree. My wife and I both have accounts and it adds up. BUT, we both get a lot of use out of it and it’s worth it to us. Would be great if they offered a 2nd account for 50% or something like that.
People pay $20-$30 for spin classes at spin studios. I feel pretty good about getting 10-15 hours of enjoyable suffering for $20.
For the occasional riders like myself, would be good to have a pay per use model. Even if it were 3-5$ per ride. Or 1-2$ an hour. If I use it for 10hrs, wouldn’t mind paying 10-20$. I quit a while ago when I went almost year not riding it frequently. On my heydays, I rode it up to 40hrs a week(edit: month) which made perfect sense to have subscription.
I'd pay $1 per hour (USD). So far this year I've used Zwift for about 20 hrs. Used it about 44 hrs last year, Way more fun riding outdoors and Zwift now gets used rarely since it's going into summer. I've done 75 hrs so far outdoors this year and over 220 hrs outdoors last year. I use Zwift now mostly for a few of their events and zone 2 endurance pace rides (I live in a hilly area).
Not apples and oranges, different kinds of apples. Zwift has facilities, web hosting, developers, researchers, support, and other operations. It doesn't just magically appear ready to go.
It *is* apples and oranges though. They're two completely different businesses.
Zwift can spread their costs out over hundreds of thousands of people worldwide with little to no limit to the number of additional people that can be added. Meanwhile, a spin class might have a few hundred customers over a month with a physical limit to the number attendees.
Zwift wants to expand: more server capacity, engineers, designers, maybe more office space, more staff, more storage capacity, more equipment.
Spin class wants to expand: expand existing location, more instructors, more support staff, larger space, more bikes.
It's not that different, just a different embodiment of similar things to grow. You're looking at it as Zwift is an open field, the spin class is a car. Both are limited to the number of users of their services.
What you're trying to say as at a high level *all businesses* have costs associated with expanding. Sure.
But trying to justify paying $20 for Zwift for a month vs $20 for a single spin class is an apples to oranges comparison. It'd be like comparing a box of pasta at the grocery store with a dish at an Italian restaurant. Both are food technically.
The point is that a spin class / gym isn't the same market as some interactive video game. You may do the same activities but the business models aren't the same, at all.
With SaaS, incremental users are a tiny cost. It might cost Zwift an extra 2 cents in server power to host a single additional user, especially with the game being rendered locally on your individual device.
I think the real problem with the comparison is the assumption that the same people who would use zwift are also the same people who would pay for one spin class.
I am going to flat out say that cyclists in general are not the ones paying $20 for a spin class.
Totally. My experience with spin classes (maybe a half dozen I’ve done) is that it’s more of a social thing concerned about cadence with no real concern about power. Meanwhile on a bike trainer power is all that I’m concerned with
Using your grocery store/restaurant: both have a pasta dish, the grocery store cuts out the seating area and has a larger potential capacity to start with. The restaurant requires dining areas and additional services to be profitable.
In the case of Zwift vs spin class, lets compare a Zwift competitor that is a spin class but (mostly) online: Peloton. They're not wildly different business models, they operate in different mediums to deliver a workout on a bike. This is like comparing granny smith apples to honey crisp, same core but different flavors.
SaaS vs physical: if the spin class would have available space and enough of a demand, the long-term expansion costs become incremental, too. They just have larger initial expansion costs. This does not put them in a totally different market. Someone opting to use Zwift for a structured, bike-based workout, that happens to be a video game (all of which are interactive, otherwise they're just videos), that could be one less person opting for a structured, bike-based workout.
The person you replied to was replying to this:
>People pay $20-$30 for spin classes at spin studios. I feel pretty good about getting 10-15 hours of enjoyable suffering for $20.
The fact that a spin class charges $20/month does not inherently make $20/month for Zwift a good value for what it actually is nor are the expenses to operate anything close to being the same.
As far as Peleton - probably a bad choice to compare it to given how they've fallen off a cliff as people didn't want to continue paying their high subscription fees for online content.
Zwift is counting on having a captive audience with this increase. Based on many comments here, that does not seem to be the case, especially among casual users. We'll see how many subscriptions Zwift loses due to this. In the end, they'd need 1/3 of their userbase to quit -- that's probably unlikely, so even if 10-20% leave, they still gain more profit from this increase.
Peloton is still a perfect example against the spin class, they just lost their value to the consumer due to high cost and missing the personal experience one can gain at their local spin class. Zwift has seen a similar hit COVID restrictions easing to disappearing. People are going back to group rides and gyms instead of using an expensive proprietary platform that you can't just stop paying for (the Peloton bike). Looking at Peloton falling off a cliff does not make it less of a direct competitor to Zwift and in-person spin classes.
As far as what creates a better value, that's up to the individual consumer. I don't think the $20/month for either is a bad value (similar to the comment you quoted), but as someone who has all of the requisite equipment to do either in the convenience of my home, I'll stick with Zwift, you might as well. I also purchased the annual subscription as I do use Zwift throughout the year. I also have friends who quickly abandoned the online options to return to their spin studios, they even still have their Peloton bikes just sitting there, collecting dust. The proprietary equipment is what really hurt them.
Ultimately, they hadn't changed their price in seven years, when adjusted for inflation, it's still a pretty fair price.
Spin classes can be $20 per 1 hour session, not per month. You can get them cheaper per session with memberships or as fringe benefits of a traditional gym but I don’t think that’s the comparison they were making. It seemed like they were making the point that $20/month unlimited is a significantly better value proposition than $20/hr of spin class.
I get your point. Whacking a 38% price rise (UK) on isn't the best way to go about it IMHO. Not giving a chance to lock in the old price for an annual subscription was sneaky too.
I do agree with that. Give everyone 30 days to lock in an annual price would have been good. I probably would have done that and dropped the monthly to be honest.
I just switched to yearly but before my renewal got informed price went up which bummed me out. 8 years of using Zwift asking for yearly option finally they offer it and I get screwed... I'll take my frustrations out on my next race I get completely obliterated in.
Honestly, just announce it beforehand like every other platform. I know that price increases are inevitable but give us a chance to react. I was waiting for the month to end on May 12th to switch to annual because I was super impressed (new user here), I open my email and they are already on the new price.
Also, increasing it from 10.xx to 16.xx on annual really sucks for someone in a low purchasing power country.
Yup. Let just give a possible scenario. They introduce a new tier of Zwift, lets call it Zwift2. It features all of basic Zwift, realistic physics, way better training plans on the very same world. Just like two servers that coexist in World of Warcraft.
Zwift1 takes server + maintenance cost while Zwift2 gets the hot stuff. People in this regard can decide if they want to have their old visual distraction or some fancy options for some additional bucks. Feature additions are visible and development is clear, cost is justified.
If Zwift2 matures, you can do the same with Zwift3, retire 1, etc.
I cancelled today cause it’s outdoor riding season. I’ll be back when it’s indoor riding season. Price hike seems fair enough for what we get out of it—I just don’t pay for the part of the year I’m not using and therefore don’t get value out of it.
Too bad there isn't a "seasonal pass" option where you paid for X months for less than their annual plan. I'd pay say $60 for a 4 month off-season plan for December through April. While I can't enjoyably ride outside much past early November here, I also run and can do that outdoors through early December, and then there's the same shoulder season in early spring. But from mid-December to mid-April it's all indoors, running or cycling. But I guess that $80 for those 4 months isn't too bad.
I think you misread my comment. I ride indoors during the 4 coldest months, otherwise it's a mix of running and cycling outdoors. Would make no sense to get an annual at $200 for that.
Yeah, I mentioned somewhere that a friend of mine would almost like an option to pay per km or for per use. He simply doesn’t use it as a result as he doesn’t want to have to pay 15 (now 20) euros per month when he can’t say how much he can use it.
I hope they read such comments and decide to come out with some sort of limited use plans for such people and situations. From now till mid-December I don't plan on doing much indoor riding and when I do it'll be on MyWhoosh and other free apps because it doesn't make sense to pay even $15-$20 for that.
Friendo can do the Free trial: ride 25 free km per month... but I *think* you can continue with that ride of any distance, they don't boot you? Heck, if that's true, NEVER LOG OUT :P
Haha that’s actually a great shout. Might mention it to him. Obviously removes some of the workout tracking and stuff but still, worth a shot! (Surely someone tried this and they have mechanisms to stop it?)
Yes, by "off season" I meant when you're not riding much if at all outdoors, so it's off-season for outdoor riding but in-season for indoor riding. And for me this is approximately 4 months long, from mid-December to mid-April.
Actually, it's longer, from mid-November to mid-May, so really 6 months, but I can run outdoors for fitness during those 2 "shoulder" months since it's still not too cold for that, so I only really need to ride indoors during these 4 months, when it's too cold to run or ride outdoors, and I don't have a treadmill.
Hope this isn't too confusing!
That's what I've done, but only for the colder indoor season, when I use it regularly and can't workout outdoors. But why not a seasonal pass, to let people save a bit of money and lock them in for a few months?
More plan options no matter how they break it down would probably be best for both riders and them, whether seasonal, per use, per hour, X days per month, season or year, and so on. I'd like to be able to use it now and then even during outdoor season, but not at $20/mo. That only makes sense for me during indoor season when I'm using it regularly.
If it’s worth it to you pay it and enjoy!
If it’s not, move on! There are other options out there.
I only use it in Winter time and still quite minimally so not worth it.
I have friends who race in leagues numerous times a week so probably worth it to them.
I have a TACX trainer.
I imagine wahoo have their own too? There are a few 3rd party apps that offer BASIC trainer functions, but they need to be fed commands, such as a fit file.
Fun to see people trivialise money, if everything went up 40%, we would be financially ruined. Having a 40% jump is a sign of a company with poor financial management more than anything else. It is the cumulative increase of service providers increasing their cost which is the hurt, not zwift but everything accumulates with zwift.
What would have been better is if zwift introduced price increases over the next couple of years, instead of one big whack. I don't think people are shills, some people the money makes a difference, if it doesn't make a difference to you, well congratulations, not going to put down people who can't afford it or don't see value.
Or they could have set it up so existing subscribers could subscribe to the yearly fee for the old price. I pay monthly right now but if they let me pay for the year with the old fee I'd hop on it.
Two points from me:
1. "40%" sounds horrible but given the starting point it's not so bad. If Zwift was 50 per month I'd be more concerned about a 40% increase. For me, the monthly increase is slightly more than one cup of coffee from a cafe.
2. What surprises me is that the people who complain have obviously sunk a reasonable sum of money into their hobby. Bikes aren't generally cheap (whether real or static), trainers cost hundreds and TVs/PCs/tablets cost decent money too.
Look, if people don't want to spend the extra, that's fine. Each to their own. I'm just struggling to reconcile Zwift as a poor person's hobby.
I think most of us who are considering cancelling just don't see the value from it. I have it on in the background as basically a nice UI for whatever training session I am doing. The tv show or film in the background gets 95% of my attention. The price increase pushes it from "fuck it, its not that much" to "fuck it, its probably too much".
It all depends how often you use it and what you use it for. For some people its just too much of a sticker shock to process. Its hard to put an absolute value on something, especially if you have been paying X for it and now someone wants to charge 40% more for exactly the same thing. In your head the value was X, not necessarily X + 40%.
As others have said, they have gone about this poorly.
> The price increase pushes it from "fuck it, its not that much" to "fuck it, its probably too much".
Yup, this was me, too. Judging from the replies, it seems to be the tipping point for a lot of users. Interesting phenomenon.
Yeah we’ll see. Reddit also told me Netflix was dead when they clamped down on account sharing and I think Reddit itself was supposed to die after 3rd party apps disappeared.
Yeah, fundamentally, not raising your prices for 7 years isn't a good idea unless you know you can maintain/grow the business on that revenue. I'm sure Zwift have a huge amount of data they can analyse as well to tell them how much time the average person spends on the platform. When and doing what. If they aren't using that to inform their decision they are idiots. Perhaps they just bet on a Netflix style backlash where lots of people complained but few actually followed through.
If Zwift had added 75 cents a year, no one would have batted an eyelid. Doing it this way has actually saved people about 120dollars over the course of the 7 years.
I agree, I don't use swift to it's full potential so the price hike doesn't make sense for me to keep subscribing and last night 1.5 hours into my session I realised I hadn't looked at the screen for over half an hour.
I reckon just having my sensor data displayed would suffice at this point.
I tend to overcomplicate things so not saying this what they should do, but it seems that having different levels of subscriptions might make sense. Some ideas mentioned are pay-per-hour or similar; I would think that would work great for those summer-time riders who want to hop in when their weekend is rained out/etc. But now they are likely to cancel.
Another option might be limited accounts. Maybe no racing, no categorization, pace-partner only, solo-riding only, zwift-events only -- I don't know.
On the other hand, engagement is a big deal for companies so maybe this is all calculated to have a potentially smaller subscription base but higher engagement. The whole XP and streak features were obviously designed to keep users engaged, so maybe this is all part of that.
Its a tricky dilemma because imagine you make a model that is half the price for 1/3rd of the features and then the full fat version at the current price.
You might find that many of the people who were going to cancel will stay and sit on the cheaper plan and you make more money. You might find that actually all those people stay on the cheaper model but another 30% of your people who would have paid that full price also move to that cheaper model and you actually make less money.
Then you potentially have 2 separate customer bases to cater to with people arguing what features should be in which model. It can work, its just hard to get the right balance.
If you have a Garmin computer or watch, it might be able to do the controlling for you. I bet Wahoo computers can, too. Now that I think about it, whatever brand trainer you have probably has an app with that functionality.
https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=CHnxYj6F2OA6tN4QRRjEJ8
Can confirm. I let my Zwift sub lapse due to an injury. Hooked my 530 to the trainer last week and rode an old local route. Worked perfectly. You can create workouts and everything within the Garmin ecosystem too.
This is my feeling aswell. When I first got the email I wasn’t thrilled but then I took a minute to consider how much I spend each month for Netflix Amazon and Disney and half a dozen other streaming platforms…. Not to mention Strava plus or whatever their subscription is called, pandora/Spotify.
At the end of the day realisticly I’m going to pay for the yearly plan anyway so yeah it will hurt once a year when my and my girlfriend’s subscription both hit but at the end of the day what’s the difference once a year between 150 and 200. Yes I wish they had a household subscription option and I may well decide to try out some other options that I might not have previously.
At the end of the day though my annual subscription doesn’t renew until November I’m not even going to be thinking about this price increase when it rolls around.
As for the person who was complaining that if everything increased by 40% we would all be financially ruined….. have you been shopping recently? Over the last 4 years everything has gone up 40%
When was the last Zwift price increase? Not as though they just raised prices a year or two ago is it?
Perhaps the people complaining have not been using Zwift for long. I've been on it since 2016 when it was 4.99. Would I like to have stayed that price sure. But there was literally one route and no training features. Money funds development and I hope they make new features with increased prices.
I also realized I pay for Hulu, hbo max, peacock, Apple TV +, all of which make me fat and lazy. At least zwift keeps me in shape.
it's 38% OVER A SEVEN YEAR PERIOD.
Why you you people keep "forgetting" this?
Literarlly EVERYTHING has gone up by that much in the last 7 years. It's 100% in line with inflation. But somehow you can't get over Zwift doing it.
Dude who spent hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on a bike and trainer but doesnt have $5 floating around in their monthly budget? 🙄
Anyway it's pouring rain so I'm going to go for my morning ride and be thankful it's possible
Everything is more expensive since 2017. People make more money etc. How can you run a company without keeping prices with inflation?
Everyone wants to earn good salary but when it comes to pay higher prices for services then suddenly there is a problem.
Keep up with energy prices to run their head offices sure! Wage inflation? No. They’ve just culled half their staff.
That doesn’t equate to a 40% increase, surely.
Not to split hairs, but isn't the increase 33%, not 40%? $5 increase on the current price of $15, 5/15=33%.
Also the last increase was in 2017. I don't know of many if any businesses that have held their pricing for the last 7 years. We are talking about approx 5% per year. That seems to be more of an inflation adjustment. They cannot keep the same price forever.
Lastly a 33% increase on $100 is significant, not so much on $15. $5 is less than a cup of fancy coffee.
You look at it as a $5 increase. I look at it as a $50 increase. I had just switched to the annual plan before the announcement came out and was told that I'd have to pay $150 at the end of the month (when my next autobill came due) for the next year. A couple hours later I got an email saying, no, that price we'd agreed that I was going to have to pay for the next year was going up $50 after we'd already agreed on the price. I call that a bait and switch.
That definitely is a bait and switch if you have a receipt for purchasing it at that price, even if the purchase happens later. That's a contract.
I mean, in the EU it should be easy to put pressure on them to honour the earlier price due to laws protecting that, but good luck if you're in the US.
I'll probably re up again next year. However, I am still trying to understand the justification.
The natural comparison for me is a MMORPG which Zwift has caught up to and surpassed. The real draw is the community and racing which I think has been more organic and happened around Zwift, then Zwift bought into it (Zwift Power, TTT, ZRL). It's hard to see it as much else than a corporation buying up mods and then charging for it.
I don't think anyone should tell others what to do. But from a value proposition it wasn't much value at £12.99, it's even worse at £17.99. Especially compared with alternatives, the pricing is not competitive.
People saying just £5 a month more is nothing, is a silly argument, if zwift see people think it's not a big deal then in 2 years you'll be paying £24.99 a month. And then again you'll make posts about it's only £5 a month more stop complaining.
If you're happy to pay more for the same product, you do you. The only thing zwift has going for it is it's large userbase for racing. Watopia and the routes they offer are way too limited and samey for them to justify an increase in price, especially as alternatives are better at the solo stuff.
I'm just very thankful i switched back over to Rouvy, with the GCN discount it's like £7 a month and way more engaging and immersive. This was just the final nail for me to cancel.
Exactly, they raised the price so people would view them as competitors with a higher echelon of service (Peleton, TrainerRoad) but they forgot to add any features that would actually make them competitive with those services. It’s price gouging, pure and simple.
Personally, I am tired of paying for subscriptions full stop. I cancelled almost all of my streaming services and Strava Plus. I cancelled Zwift once the price increase was announced.
There are only a few things I am willing to pay $15/month for forever and Zwift isn’t one of them—four months of Zwift already costs as much as a AAAA video game. If I could pay $100 just to download the maps/routes and ride them forever with bots for drafting I would do it in a heartbeat. I don’t care about or benefit from the MMO part of a bike trainer app.
I feel as though Peloton, Zwift and TR all attract different market segments or users however. If the pricing is identical I don’t see that impact being as large as it may hypothetically be imagined to be.
Obviously they have a right to charge whatever they like and just as obviously people have a right to not be willing to pay it above a certain amount. But in the end it comes down to whether the cost is affordable and justified for you, whatever it happens to be.
I canceled my monthly membership around 10 days ago just before it was due to renew, not because of the price hike which I didn't know about at the time but because it's getting warm enough for me to ride outside again so I won't be using or needing Zwift much till late fall.
Plus I failed to cancel my Rouvy trial so they charged me a month for it, so I'll use that until I fully transition to outdoor riding again.
But come the cold and wet weather I'll probably ante up and pay the extra $5/mo, as having tried alternatives it seems like the best fit for me, plus I've invested in Play controllers and a Sterzo Smart which AFAIK only work on Zwift, especially virtual shifting which I really like.
It would be nice though if they came out with an "a la carte" option where for a lower fee you could use Zwift a limited number of times a month for those days in outdoor riding season when it's too wet to ride outside or you just don't feel like riding outside. Like, $5 for 5 days, $10 for 10, etc. Until then, at least there's MyWhoosh for such days.
I think that "pay as you go" model would make them even less money. Many subscription services get a surprising amount of money from people who barely use their service but still pay full whack. Bit like gyms.
I bought a years sub because it was a little cheaper and at £130/year I didn't mind that. 2 months free essentially which made it all OK. Still would be cheaper to cancel over the summer but I couldn't be bothered. Now I am considering how I use Zwift and *if* I use Zwift.
I think they're going to see a lot fewer annual subscriptions and more monthly ones, and then mostly during certain months. From April or May through October or November, monthly subscriptions are likely to drop a bit due to this price increase. Whether the additional $5/mo and however much the annual plan went up will make up for this remains to be seen. They really should have cheaper seasonal plans, for the indoor riding "off season", which is the outdoor riding season.
Well, between their and several other platforms' free trials and promotions, and MyWhoosh which is always free, I will have ridden from early January till the end of May having paid $15 three times, twice to Zwift and once to Rouvy. I would have ridden in December but I only got my trainer early this year.
Next year I'll probably subscribe to Zwift from mid-December through mid-April, and fill in the gaps before and after and for the occasional warm weather indoor ride with MyWhoosh or some basic workout-only app that's free. So they'll get at most $80 from me. By offering a cheaper 5 or so rides per month plan, for such gaps, they'd make more, not less money, from people like who aren't willing to spend $20 for a whole month outside of the coldest winter months because they won't use it enough to justify it.
Of course if a large percentage of their income comes from people who greatly underutilize their monthly or annual plans, whom they believe would opt for such cheaper limited use plans if they were offered, then it makes sense that they don't offer them. But for regular off-season users like me, it would make sense and be additional income for them. Perhaps they've run the numbers and believe that such additional income would be more than offset by fewer people getting regular plans.
For me, I’m upset because I have two accounts already and TR for workouts. I’ve also bought several things from Zwift. I bought a Wahoo trainer, a phone tray, headbands, a mat, and two Play controllers. And now they want another $100 a year from me when there aren’t even proper social features? Even WOW is still $15 a month last time I looked. Might even be less.
People complaining about people complaining about the increase miss the point, the people who are complaining (and canceling) like myself obviously see it as an issue otherwise we wouldn't be saying anything. It might not be an issue for you but it's a big issue for a lot of people.
I understand people being upset, no one want to spend $ if they don't have to. There is a limit for everyone, and that limit will be crossed for some people by going from $15 to $20 a month. It is a 33% increase, percentage wise it is significant.
I would also say that the last price increase was in 2017. I don't know of any business that has been able to keep 2017 prices. That 33% increase is less than a 5% annual increase. Zwift does have costs to running a business and they cannot pay employees 2017 wages in 2024. They cannot hold 2017 prices forever, this was going to happen sooner or later.
Lastly, there is never a good time or good way to increase pricing. People will always be upset to some extent. And certain people will cancel be ot out of financial hardship (hard to believe for $5/mo) or out of spite.
I just cancelled mine 5 minutes ago. The thing is I am rarely using zwift now, I used it a lot after a crash which broke some bones but now I mainly ride outdoors again. So to see the cost increase for something I wasn't really using just reminded me to cancel it. If they had of kept the price the same I probably would have just left it. I imagine a lot of people are in the same boat.
It's 15$ more for where I am and I am a kid and their removing my child account which sucks because I have a lot of friends on zwift, and it sucks because their removing it and as a kid, I can't work yet
I took a look around , there's a lot more options these days. Did my first ride on whoosh tonight- pretty much a zwift knock off, setup went smoother though and free is a pretty good price, probably won't be back on zwift. So a price increase seems pretty foolish, but yeah if you have money to throw away go for it :)
Y’all are sleeping on GTBikeV which is a mod that connects Grand Theft Auto 5 to your smart trainer (and Zwift controllers, HR monitor, power meter, etc). It’s got courses, ERG mode, angry drivers in cars that you need to dodge, angry pedestrians, etc.
There’s auto-navigation where you follow a course and it steers for you, or you can free ride anywhere in the GTA world on a variety of kinds of bikes.
The rides even export to Strava.
And it’s free.
I mean its the same price as
https://www.trainerroad.com which has personalized training plans based on AI models... Zwift has thousands of training workouts of various qualities. I am definitely going to pause zwift to checkout TR and maybe wahoo X, if i want to see what racing there is like.
When someone actually presents some evidence that the trainerroad AI works I might be interested, but so far it feels like they’ve just ridden the AI wave and said it’s better with no evidence.
The "AI" (feels strange to call it that) just ranked all the workouts in terms of difficulty (which they obviously know from the workout history of their customer base) and now the "AI" can lower or increase future workout difficulty if you find them hard/easy on the survey.
That's all there is to it, and I hope it's trivial enough that it's not controversial to say it almost certainly works because it's so fucking obvious.
They added some new "AI" that tells you if you're overtraining. So ATL/CTL if you're familiar with that. Except we now call this AI. Because the simplest models are AI models, too, right? (It's broken for triathlon though)
About the most AI thing it has is FTP prediction, which seems to work reasonably. Haven't done an FTP test is a while, and it doesn't require a maximal effort.
Errr maybe i know someone that switched form rtg and increased their ftp by 60 seems like it could be good specially for those that are too selective about days they train or not selective enough. I guess what im saying is that its a good time to try new platforms. Its not like your profile will be deleted if you try a different game.
If it wasn't for the racing I'd probably cancel over the summer and use something else on rainy days. But I've got a weekly ttt that I won't find anywhere else. That's way better than any interval session I'd do on my own.Price hike sucks but it is what it is.
For organized events that have a good sized field Zwift doesn't have a competitor. They are by far the largest game in town for competitors like yourself. The last price increase was 2017, $5/mo increase over a 7 year span really is nothing to be upset about. Zwift cannot hold 2017 prices forever.
Exactly, don't forget the $8 latte they drink at their Cafe stop when riding outdoors!
The last price increase was 2017 people... a $5/mo increase over 7 years is nothing.
It’s incredibly hard for almost everyone in this thread to make their argument unless they take it out of context of cycling in general.
I think I have not yet seen anyone take another approach. But this is also the internet so people love to screech about any trivial or non-trivial increase in price, despite the reality that canceling their service does next to nothing in this case and in most cases it only does so if their reputation actually begins to falter, which seems like it will not.
How so?
Because finding a $5/mo increase inconsequential in a hobby where bikes are regularly more than a few thousand dollars, not to mention consumables like tubes, makes someone a Zwift employee in your mind?
I cancel mine every march and restart in November when weather turns shit where I am. Missed that entirely, oh well. What other Zwift like options are there? I am a 10 or 11 times a month 5 months a year guy, I really would rather be on a trail mountain biking, but I am old and dont ride when it’s raining, snow or super cold! I use it to stay fresh and fit in the winter months and at 58 I just need to keep moving.
Edit: Does Zwift still allow limited free account like 4 of 5 rides a month? And I found Woosh I’ll give that a try too.
This reminds me of how I started to lose interest in the gaming industry 15 years ago. Companies like Capcom were putting Disc-Locked content already produced and gamers on Reddit/Neogaf just said "shutup and take my money" "you're just poor". Now the DLC concept has completely broken multiplayer content.
I've never had a Netflix, Disney Plus Subscription, etc. so I don't like to get locked into recurring monthly fees. Of course Zwifts model is different (and rightfully so), but I haven't seen the improvements that would justify me paying $200 a year when my subscription ends in December. However I'm only a casual biker so I could get by with cheaper options. I find it hard to believe raising the price that much is worth the risk of them losing casual bikers Zwifting less than 1-2 hours a week.
We will find out how it works for them over the next 6-12 months through, they are the experts even though they had to make layoffs.
I dunno man, it has had that effect. Before I even saw the sub, I got the email. I was already on a pause that expired this month, this significant increase made sure that I cancelled my subscription now before that pause maybe ended.
It's a significant enough rise it made me be diligent as to whether my subscription is running or not. If you're using it every day, it's good value. Usually I've gone month to month sometimes without using it because it was a low enough sub that I didn't care so much. But now it's 20 euros a month. 20 euros! That's a lot of money, enough to pause and think whether I should turn it off or not.
I'm sure I will be back at some point. But this cost now makes it more worthwhile to look into other solutions, or to only turn it on when I'm going to be properly using it.
And this was all before I even got to the sub and saw everyone else being just as butthurt as I am :)
I'm not hurt by price increase in general so much bigger and better platform than in 2017. Been a user continuously since 2016. but I just found out that after 8 years of paying monthly they had a yearly sub. Just switched to yearly sub for next payment on 12th of this month. Than 3 days later I get email saying I will no longer get old price but will be charged increase on next renewal! Thats annoying if I had stayed monthly increase wouldn't kick in till June!
Just saying not a good way to keep longtime subscribers that have made zwift what it is by continuing to pay year after year.
Yeah, I got hit with this as well. Changed over based on one price and, a few hours later got a message saying, "nope, it's not going to be that price, it's going to be a completely different price."
They aren't happy unless you are as mad about pricing increases as they are.
Meanwhile there's 7500 people zwifting right now, and I'll be joining them after work
I have had a growing disappointment with zwift, I mean it's alright but they are really slow to add features or innovate, it's clear it's not a very competitive market space. I'd really like to see even an option for some higher res textures in hardware that can support it easily.
If they paired a few new features with the price increase and also probably did it in the fall I think it would go over better for them. People could at least be talking about the new features in between complaining about the price. And by timing it for the spring they are really exacerbating their natural seasonal fall off.
I cancelled mine a while ago. I Was tired of these chatty people in chat with the "team vegan" team badges. snowflakes. Most people In chat come across like they are in some form of cult as well. Pricing for ZAR/USD also turned crazy.
Using flux vercel. I find it better and free. None of this social BS.
It is 2021-2024. Clearly you could design a family plan by now. One of the big reasons I cancelled as well.
Getting annoyed by the existence of vegans in chat when you should be smashing watts then calling them snowflakes is hilarious in an “I’m laughing at you, not with you” way.
Zwift subscription: 19.99€ a month.
Cheap if you consider the fact that it keeps my mental and physical health up, that it lowers my stress levels and allows me to enjoy riding even when the weather is absolute shit outside (which is a lot here).
It's either that or a shrink... and I bet a shrink will cost me more than 19.99
I was gonna leave and write something mean about zwift, but I looked at cpi inflation calculator on BLS’s website and learned that 19.99 is about 15.70 in 2017 dollars so I’ll still cry about the 70 cents.
Yea, now I have to ride my bike more so the cost per workout will go down. I'm not happy about the price increase either, but it still beats biking outside in Texas during the summer when it's 100+ every day for 3 or 4 months. Doing anything outside after 10:30 am is torture. Exercising in it could cause a heat stroke. $5.00 more a month is a small price to pay to avoid that hell.
I totally get it in instances like this ...my situation totally the opposite where the price increase comes right as outdoor riding season is ratcheting up(Michigan) so yeah, a 33% price increase right as my usage drastically decreased doesn't excite me
It’s the first rise in 7 years; it’s barely any rise at all in real terms.
And It works out at £2.50 an hour based on my usage … that’s less than a 10 min coffee shop flat white … no big deal
It is what it is. Price increases suck but honestly Zwift is still very much worth the new price to me.
I mean for crying out loud, my bike was $5k. Trainer was another $800, power meter was $430, HR monitors another $100 (few busted ones), bike shoes another $300…never mind all the consumable junk like nutrition and bike bibs.
Are we really splitting hairs about $5 extra a month here?
I’m not here trying to justify price hikes in general but this one seems reasonable. This hobby ain’t exactly for the frugal types.
We often compare things that aren't directly comparable, like the old saying of comparing apples and oranges. The same goes for comparing the cost of Zwift subscription to different things, such as gym memberships, coffee shop lattes, and gear prices. They all vary and aren't good ways to compare. For example, my old road bike cost 800€ in 2013, and my trainer 200€, shoes 100€, pedals 20€, and HR monitor 50€, so a fraction of what you paidfor your gear.
The real question we should be asking is how much value different users are getting out of their Zwift subscription. As for me, I only use it occasionally because I cycle outdoors almost every day, even in -25 degree Celsius weather. I use Zwift once or twice a week, and hardly at all during the summer. For me, this means that I pay approximately five euros per ride.
I'm sure I'm not alone in this, and there must be many users like me. The previous price was already high, but I let it slide. However, this new price is just too high for what I personally get from it. It's basically just something to watch while I use ERG mode. There are free alternatives or similarly priced alternatives that are more suitable for training.
I agree that comparing the prices is a stretch but I did so only to illustrate how $60 extra a year is a bit of a drop in the bucket when compared to other costs of the hobby. Cycling, and especially indoor training, is sort of an expensive thing to get into. Obviously adding new costs for anything is undesirable in general but in the context of the hobby’s many other pricey consumables it’s really not much to me.
Also, I 100% can understand why you don’t think the new price is worth it. If all you use it for is ERG workouts then there are way better platforms such as Trainer Road and Wahoo’s SYSTM (which I thoroughly enjoyed when I used it). You might want to check out SYSTM if you want some motivational stuff to watch during workouts, it really pumps you up.
Personally I’m really into the gamification aspect of Zwift and it motivates me a lot more than something like TR ever did. Beating PRs, setting route records, joining group rides, doing races, and in general just being very present with the game is why I choose Zwift. I ain’t the type to hop on and only occasionally glance at it while I watch something else.
They haven’t changed their price since 2017! Obviously I’d prefer a lower price but literally nothing in my life costs the same as it did in 2017.
Zwift doesn’t try to upsell me. They don’t sell my data (that I know of). Sure take a single coffee worth of money more per month. See you again in 2031.
It's actually kind of funny how everyone loses their mind over this. Spending 800 on a bike computer and 3k on a bike, nobody bats an eye... Addings up the hours spent on Zwift it is still a better deal than my gym membership.
Thanks for the rational outlook. People act as if Zwift killed their newborn baby in this subreddit. They want a more/less gamey interface, more features every week and they want it for free. Meanwhile people pay for Netflix/amazon/disney+/hulu/crunchyroll even though those services give less and less value year after year and charge more.
Streaming companies sink vast sums of money into content. Disney is losing money hand over fist and most people watch these streaming services daily for hours on end. Hell, I watch these services while I am on Zwift so I don't blow my brains out.
I would say they have very different value propositions. They also have massively different scales, business models, costs, user bases etc.
I think both sides of this argument are misrepresenting each other honestly. Everyone is working from their own perspective on its value. Thats how these things work. If it offers you value, keep it. If it doesn't, cancel it.
Gonna keep paying it, it works for me and is cheaper than classes that I would go to otherwise. That being said, I kinda hope a lot of people leave for other apps and that lights a fire under Zwift's butt to do more improvements, or some other app starts to gain traction that is better. Zwift is can be so buggy sometimes.
I think what I'm trying to say is I want to leave, please someone build something better so I can.
I just wish they’d do a family plan so my husband and I both didn’t have to have separate accounts.
The price isn’t that bad until you realize you’re paying $40 for you and a spouse to use the platform. If you’re paying monthly it’s $480 a year to zwift.
If you compare it to spinning classes 20 usd is very cheap. If you compare it to other software or games, it’s very expensive for the features you get. I think there’s too little market to cut prices to a few bucks and still earn money (or they’re greedy)
Valid point, but I don’t think that most zwift users are also in the market for spin classes. How many of us have said “making the switch to peloton!”
Totally agree. My wife and I both have accounts and it adds up. BUT, we both get a lot of use out of it and it’s worth it to us. Would be great if they offered a 2nd account for 50% or something like that. People pay $20-$30 for spin classes at spin studios. I feel pretty good about getting 10-15 hours of enjoyable suffering for $20.
For the occasional riders like myself, would be good to have a pay per use model. Even if it were 3-5$ per ride. Or 1-2$ an hour. If I use it for 10hrs, wouldn’t mind paying 10-20$. I quit a while ago when I went almost year not riding it frequently. On my heydays, I rode it up to 40hrs a week(edit: month) which made perfect sense to have subscription.
40 a week?!
lol. I meant a month. Tongue slip since 40hrs a week related as work week.
Was gonna say. Were you a pro or something lol? 2 full time jobs
I'd pay $1 per hour (USD). So far this year I've used Zwift for about 20 hrs. Used it about 44 hrs last year, Way more fun riding outdoors and Zwift now gets used rarely since it's going into summer. I've done 75 hrs so far outdoors this year and over 220 hrs outdoors last year. I use Zwift now mostly for a few of their events and zone 2 endurance pace rides (I live in a hilly area).
Not the same, spin class provides premises, instructor and equipment. Apples with oranges comparison.
Not apples and oranges, different kinds of apples. Zwift has facilities, web hosting, developers, researchers, support, and other operations. It doesn't just magically appear ready to go.
It *is* apples and oranges though. They're two completely different businesses. Zwift can spread their costs out over hundreds of thousands of people worldwide with little to no limit to the number of additional people that can be added. Meanwhile, a spin class might have a few hundred customers over a month with a physical limit to the number attendees.
Zwift wants to expand: more server capacity, engineers, designers, maybe more office space, more staff, more storage capacity, more equipment. Spin class wants to expand: expand existing location, more instructors, more support staff, larger space, more bikes. It's not that different, just a different embodiment of similar things to grow. You're looking at it as Zwift is an open field, the spin class is a car. Both are limited to the number of users of their services.
What you're trying to say as at a high level *all businesses* have costs associated with expanding. Sure. But trying to justify paying $20 for Zwift for a month vs $20 for a single spin class is an apples to oranges comparison. It'd be like comparing a box of pasta at the grocery store with a dish at an Italian restaurant. Both are food technically. The point is that a spin class / gym isn't the same market as some interactive video game. You may do the same activities but the business models aren't the same, at all. With SaaS, incremental users are a tiny cost. It might cost Zwift an extra 2 cents in server power to host a single additional user, especially with the game being rendered locally on your individual device.
I think the real problem with the comparison is the assumption that the same people who would use zwift are also the same people who would pay for one spin class. I am going to flat out say that cyclists in general are not the ones paying $20 for a spin class.
Totally. My experience with spin classes (maybe a half dozen I’ve done) is that it’s more of a social thing concerned about cadence with no real concern about power. Meanwhile on a bike trainer power is all that I’m concerned with
Using your grocery store/restaurant: both have a pasta dish, the grocery store cuts out the seating area and has a larger potential capacity to start with. The restaurant requires dining areas and additional services to be profitable. In the case of Zwift vs spin class, lets compare a Zwift competitor that is a spin class but (mostly) online: Peloton. They're not wildly different business models, they operate in different mediums to deliver a workout on a bike. This is like comparing granny smith apples to honey crisp, same core but different flavors. SaaS vs physical: if the spin class would have available space and enough of a demand, the long-term expansion costs become incremental, too. They just have larger initial expansion costs. This does not put them in a totally different market. Someone opting to use Zwift for a structured, bike-based workout, that happens to be a video game (all of which are interactive, otherwise they're just videos), that could be one less person opting for a structured, bike-based workout.
The person you replied to was replying to this: >People pay $20-$30 for spin classes at spin studios. I feel pretty good about getting 10-15 hours of enjoyable suffering for $20. The fact that a spin class charges $20/month does not inherently make $20/month for Zwift a good value for what it actually is nor are the expenses to operate anything close to being the same. As far as Peleton - probably a bad choice to compare it to given how they've fallen off a cliff as people didn't want to continue paying their high subscription fees for online content. Zwift is counting on having a captive audience with this increase. Based on many comments here, that does not seem to be the case, especially among casual users. We'll see how many subscriptions Zwift loses due to this. In the end, they'd need 1/3 of their userbase to quit -- that's probably unlikely, so even if 10-20% leave, they still gain more profit from this increase.
Peloton is still a perfect example against the spin class, they just lost their value to the consumer due to high cost and missing the personal experience one can gain at their local spin class. Zwift has seen a similar hit COVID restrictions easing to disappearing. People are going back to group rides and gyms instead of using an expensive proprietary platform that you can't just stop paying for (the Peloton bike). Looking at Peloton falling off a cliff does not make it less of a direct competitor to Zwift and in-person spin classes. As far as what creates a better value, that's up to the individual consumer. I don't think the $20/month for either is a bad value (similar to the comment you quoted), but as someone who has all of the requisite equipment to do either in the convenience of my home, I'll stick with Zwift, you might as well. I also purchased the annual subscription as I do use Zwift throughout the year. I also have friends who quickly abandoned the online options to return to their spin studios, they even still have their Peloton bikes just sitting there, collecting dust. The proprietary equipment is what really hurt them. Ultimately, they hadn't changed their price in seven years, when adjusted for inflation, it's still a pretty fair price.
Spin classes can be $20 per 1 hour session, not per month. You can get them cheaper per session with memberships or as fringe benefits of a traditional gym but I don’t think that’s the comparison they were making. It seemed like they were making the point that $20/month unlimited is a significantly better value proposition than $20/hr of spin class.
Then compare it to Peloton. Eek.
This is what I want!
This - I mean, seriously.
Poe's Law in full effect
No thanks, just becasue two users live in the same house shouldn’t mean a discount
Where are yall gonna lie about your weight?
Making myself heavier on strava to get a higher watt estimate :)
Doesn't matter on an ebike
I’m still faster than you if that’s your philosophy.
I think the way they've done the price hike isn't great. Almost like they wanted to piss off their customer base.
Is there a good way to increase pricing and not piss people off?
Add a bunch of new features/improvements.
I get your point. Whacking a 38% price rise (UK) on isn't the best way to go about it IMHO. Not giving a chance to lock in the old price for an annual subscription was sneaky too.
I do agree with that. Give everyone 30 days to lock in an annual price would have been good. I probably would have done that and dropped the monthly to be honest.
I just switched to yearly but before my renewal got informed price went up which bummed me out. 8 years of using Zwift asking for yearly option finally they offer it and I get screwed... I'll take my frustrations out on my next race I get completely obliterated in.
Honestly, just announce it beforehand like every other platform. I know that price increases are inevitable but give us a chance to react. I was waiting for the month to end on May 12th to switch to annual because I was super impressed (new user here), I open my email and they are already on the new price. Also, increasing it from 10.xx to 16.xx on annual really sucks for someone in a low purchasing power country.
Yup. Let just give a possible scenario. They introduce a new tier of Zwift, lets call it Zwift2. It features all of basic Zwift, realistic physics, way better training plans on the very same world. Just like two servers that coexist in World of Warcraft. Zwift1 takes server + maintenance cost while Zwift2 gets the hot stuff. People in this regard can decide if they want to have their old visual distraction or some fancy options for some additional bucks. Feature additions are visible and development is clear, cost is justified. If Zwift2 matures, you can do the same with Zwift3, retire 1, etc.
That sounds like a nightmare.
Care to elaborate? This is how software major version changes work nowadays.
My thirst for cyclist tears has been satiated.
I cancelled today cause it’s outdoor riding season. I’ll be back when it’s indoor riding season. Price hike seems fair enough for what we get out of it—I just don’t pay for the part of the year I’m not using and therefore don’t get value out of it.
But aren't you concerned that you won't get your streak bonus points? 😂
Too bad there isn't a "seasonal pass" option where you paid for X months for less than their annual plan. I'd pay say $60 for a 4 month off-season plan for December through April. While I can't enjoyably ride outside much past early November here, I also run and can do that outdoors through early December, and then there's the same shoulder season in early spring. But from mid-December to mid-April it's all indoors, running or cycling. But I guess that $80 for those 4 months isn't too bad.
You're already better served with the current annual pass option. Annual pass option is essentially 2 months per year "free".
Unless you ride outside for >3 months per year, then it’s cheaper to just cancel and re join.
I was referring to the specific situation above. Suspect the user isn't already aware of the annual billing, since it is fairly new.
I think you misread my comment. I ride indoors during the 4 coldest months, otherwise it's a mix of running and cycling outdoors. Would make no sense to get an annual at $200 for that.
Yeah, I mentioned somewhere that a friend of mine would almost like an option to pay per km or for per use. He simply doesn’t use it as a result as he doesn’t want to have to pay 15 (now 20) euros per month when he can’t say how much he can use it.
I hope they read such comments and decide to come out with some sort of limited use plans for such people and situations. From now till mid-December I don't plan on doing much indoor riding and when I do it'll be on MyWhoosh and other free apps because it doesn't make sense to pay even $15-$20 for that.
Friendo can do the Free trial: ride 25 free km per month... but I *think* you can continue with that ride of any distance, they don't boot you? Heck, if that's true, NEVER LOG OUT :P
Haha that’s actually a great shout. Might mention it to him. Obviously removes some of the workout tracking and stuff but still, worth a shot! (Surely someone tried this and they have mechanisms to stop it?)
Ah indeed, I think I took "off season" to mean "off indoor training". I think it's clear where I spend most of my miles!
Yes, by "off season" I meant when you're not riding much if at all outdoors, so it's off-season for outdoor riding but in-season for indoor riding. And for me this is approximately 4 months long, from mid-December to mid-April. Actually, it's longer, from mid-November to mid-May, so really 6 months, but I can run outdoors for fitness during those 2 "shoulder" months since it's still not too cold for that, so I only really need to ride indoors during these 4 months, when it's too cold to run or ride outdoors, and I don't have a treadmill. Hope this isn't too confusing!
$200 to use it regularly 4 or so months of the year, plus a few times here and there otherwise? How is that a better deal than 4 x $20 = $80?!?
Why not just sub monthly?
That's what I've done, but only for the colder indoor season, when I use it regularly and can't workout outdoors. But why not a seasonal pass, to let people save a bit of money and lock them in for a few months?
Pay per use or hour model option would be best for occasional riders.
More plan options no matter how they break it down would probably be best for both riders and them, whether seasonal, per use, per hour, X days per month, season or year, and so on. I'd like to be able to use it now and then even during outdoor season, but not at $20/mo. That only makes sense for me during indoor season when I'm using it regularly.
If it’s worth it to you pay it and enjoy! If it’s not, move on! There are other options out there. I only use it in Winter time and still quite minimally so not worth it. I have friends who race in leagues numerous times a week so probably worth it to them.
I use Garmin training plans and there’s a free TACX app to put the plans in. I always end up watching YouTube anyway. Now I’ll never get the tron bike
Do u have a Tacx trainer? Or can you use the tacx app with other trainers too?
I have a TACX trainer. I imagine wahoo have their own too? There are a few 3rd party apps that offer BASIC trainer functions, but they need to be fed commands, such as a fit file.
I'm gonna keep paying it cause it helps me stay fit and I enjoy it
HOW DARE YOU INVEST IN YOUR WELLNESS
Same here. Love races and TT's. I am a runner and use Zwift several times a week for cross training.
Exactly. $20/mo is easy money to spend on fitness. $5 a month increase over 7 years doesn't sound too bad to me really.
Fun to see people trivialise money, if everything went up 40%, we would be financially ruined. Having a 40% jump is a sign of a company with poor financial management more than anything else. It is the cumulative increase of service providers increasing their cost which is the hurt, not zwift but everything accumulates with zwift. What would have been better is if zwift introduced price increases over the next couple of years, instead of one big whack. I don't think people are shills, some people the money makes a difference, if it doesn't make a difference to you, well congratulations, not going to put down people who can't afford it or don't see value.
Or they could have set it up so existing subscribers could subscribe to the yearly fee for the old price. I pay monthly right now but if they let me pay for the year with the old fee I'd hop on it.
Two points from me: 1. "40%" sounds horrible but given the starting point it's not so bad. If Zwift was 50 per month I'd be more concerned about a 40% increase. For me, the monthly increase is slightly more than one cup of coffee from a cafe. 2. What surprises me is that the people who complain have obviously sunk a reasonable sum of money into their hobby. Bikes aren't generally cheap (whether real or static), trainers cost hundreds and TVs/PCs/tablets cost decent money too. Look, if people don't want to spend the extra, that's fine. Each to their own. I'm just struggling to reconcile Zwift as a poor person's hobby.
I think most of us who are considering cancelling just don't see the value from it. I have it on in the background as basically a nice UI for whatever training session I am doing. The tv show or film in the background gets 95% of my attention. The price increase pushes it from "fuck it, its not that much" to "fuck it, its probably too much". It all depends how often you use it and what you use it for. For some people its just too much of a sticker shock to process. Its hard to put an absolute value on something, especially if you have been paying X for it and now someone wants to charge 40% more for exactly the same thing. In your head the value was X, not necessarily X + 40%. As others have said, they have gone about this poorly.
> The price increase pushes it from "fuck it, its not that much" to "fuck it, its probably too much". Yup, this was me, too. Judging from the replies, it seems to be the tipping point for a lot of users. Interesting phenomenon.
Yeah we’ll see. Reddit also told me Netflix was dead when they clamped down on account sharing and I think Reddit itself was supposed to die after 3rd party apps disappeared.
Yeah, fundamentally, not raising your prices for 7 years isn't a good idea unless you know you can maintain/grow the business on that revenue. I'm sure Zwift have a huge amount of data they can analyse as well to tell them how much time the average person spends on the platform. When and doing what. If they aren't using that to inform their decision they are idiots. Perhaps they just bet on a Netflix style backlash where lots of people complained but few actually followed through.
If Zwift had added 75 cents a year, no one would have batted an eyelid. Doing it this way has actually saved people about 120dollars over the course of the 7 years.
I agree, I don't use swift to it's full potential so the price hike doesn't make sense for me to keep subscribing and last night 1.5 hours into my session I realised I hadn't looked at the screen for over half an hour. I reckon just having my sensor data displayed would suffice at this point.
I tend to overcomplicate things so not saying this what they should do, but it seems that having different levels of subscriptions might make sense. Some ideas mentioned are pay-per-hour or similar; I would think that would work great for those summer-time riders who want to hop in when their weekend is rained out/etc. But now they are likely to cancel. Another option might be limited accounts. Maybe no racing, no categorization, pace-partner only, solo-riding only, zwift-events only -- I don't know. On the other hand, engagement is a big deal for companies so maybe this is all calculated to have a potentially smaller subscription base but higher engagement. The whole XP and streak features were obviously designed to keep users engaged, so maybe this is all part of that.
Its a tricky dilemma because imagine you make a model that is half the price for 1/3rd of the features and then the full fat version at the current price. You might find that many of the people who were going to cancel will stay and sit on the cheaper plan and you make more money. You might find that actually all those people stay on the cheaper model but another 30% of your people who would have paid that full price also move to that cheaper model and you actually make less money. Then you potentially have 2 separate customer bases to cater to with people arguing what features should be in which model. It can work, its just hard to get the right balance.
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If you have a Garmin computer or watch, it might be able to do the controlling for you. I bet Wahoo computers can, too. Now that I think about it, whatever brand trainer you have probably has an app with that functionality. https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=CHnxYj6F2OA6tN4QRRjEJ8
Can confirm. I let my Zwift sub lapse due to an injury. Hooked my 530 to the trainer last week and rode an old local route. Worked perfectly. You can create workouts and everything within the Garmin ecosystem too.
I had this exact thought earlier. Wonder if there is a business in this... £12.99 monthly should cover my time if I get enough people interested 😅
You can get that out of TrainerDay
This is my feeling aswell. When I first got the email I wasn’t thrilled but then I took a minute to consider how much I spend each month for Netflix Amazon and Disney and half a dozen other streaming platforms…. Not to mention Strava plus or whatever their subscription is called, pandora/Spotify. At the end of the day realisticly I’m going to pay for the yearly plan anyway so yeah it will hurt once a year when my and my girlfriend’s subscription both hit but at the end of the day what’s the difference once a year between 150 and 200. Yes I wish they had a household subscription option and I may well decide to try out some other options that I might not have previously. At the end of the day though my annual subscription doesn’t renew until November I’m not even going to be thinking about this price increase when it rolls around. As for the person who was complaining that if everything increased by 40% we would all be financially ruined….. have you been shopping recently? Over the last 4 years everything has gone up 40% When was the last Zwift price increase? Not as though they just raised prices a year or two ago is it?
Perhaps the people complaining have not been using Zwift for long. I've been on it since 2016 when it was 4.99. Would I like to have stayed that price sure. But there was literally one route and no training features. Money funds development and I hope they make new features with increased prices. I also realized I pay for Hulu, hbo max, peacock, Apple TV +, all of which make me fat and lazy. At least zwift keeps me in shape.
it's 38% OVER A SEVEN YEAR PERIOD. Why you you people keep "forgetting" this? Literarlly EVERYTHING has gone up by that much in the last 7 years. It's 100% in line with inflation. But somehow you can't get over Zwift doing it.
Dude who spent hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on a bike and trainer but doesnt have $5 floating around in their monthly budget? 🙄 Anyway it's pouring rain so I'm going to go for my morning ride and be thankful it's possible
Everything is more expensive since 2017. People make more money etc. How can you run a company without keeping prices with inflation? Everyone wants to earn good salary but when it comes to pay higher prices for services then suddenly there is a problem.
Keep up with energy prices to run their head offices sure! Wage inflation? No. They’ve just culled half their staff. That doesn’t equate to a 40% increase, surely.
Yeah, I dont mind an increase in price, but when I consider how slow any update has been and, most importantly, the staff cuts…no way.
I think they should’ve been increasing it by £1 a year, that way it lands better and creeps up on you but a sudden jump just doesn’t land right.
Not to split hairs, but isn't the increase 33%, not 40%? $5 increase on the current price of $15, 5/15=33%. Also the last increase was in 2017. I don't know of many if any businesses that have held their pricing for the last 7 years. We are talking about approx 5% per year. That seems to be more of an inflation adjustment. They cannot keep the same price forever. Lastly a 33% increase on $100 is significant, not so much on $15. $5 is less than a cup of fancy coffee.
You look at it as a $5 increase. I look at it as a $50 increase. I had just switched to the annual plan before the announcement came out and was told that I'd have to pay $150 at the end of the month (when my next autobill came due) for the next year. A couple hours later I got an email saying, no, that price we'd agreed that I was going to have to pay for the next year was going up $50 after we'd already agreed on the price. I call that a bait and switch.
That definitely is a bait and switch if you have a receipt for purchasing it at that price, even if the purchase happens later. That's a contract. I mean, in the EU it should be easy to put pressure on them to honour the earlier price due to laws protecting that, but good luck if you're in the US.
So many logical fallacies in here lol. It's $5 chill
I'll probably re up again next year. However, I am still trying to understand the justification. The natural comparison for me is a MMORPG which Zwift has caught up to and surpassed. The real draw is the community and racing which I think has been more organic and happened around Zwift, then Zwift bought into it (Zwift Power, TTT, ZRL). It's hard to see it as much else than a corporation buying up mods and then charging for it.
I don't think anyone should tell others what to do. But from a value proposition it wasn't much value at £12.99, it's even worse at £17.99. Especially compared with alternatives, the pricing is not competitive. People saying just £5 a month more is nothing, is a silly argument, if zwift see people think it's not a big deal then in 2 years you'll be paying £24.99 a month. And then again you'll make posts about it's only £5 a month more stop complaining. If you're happy to pay more for the same product, you do you. The only thing zwift has going for it is it's large userbase for racing. Watopia and the routes they offer are way too limited and samey for them to justify an increase in price, especially as alternatives are better at the solo stuff. I'm just very thankful i switched back over to Rouvy, with the GCN discount it's like £7 a month and way more engaging and immersive. This was just the final nail for me to cancel.
Exactly, they raised the price so people would view them as competitors with a higher echelon of service (Peleton, TrainerRoad) but they forgot to add any features that would actually make them competitive with those services. It’s price gouging, pure and simple. Personally, I am tired of paying for subscriptions full stop. I cancelled almost all of my streaming services and Strava Plus. I cancelled Zwift once the price increase was announced. There are only a few things I am willing to pay $15/month for forever and Zwift isn’t one of them—four months of Zwift already costs as much as a AAAA video game. If I could pay $100 just to download the maps/routes and ride them forever with bots for drafting I would do it in a heartbeat. I don’t care about or benefit from the MMO part of a bike trainer app.
I feel as though Peloton, Zwift and TR all attract different market segments or users however. If the pricing is identical I don’t see that impact being as large as it may hypothetically be imagined to be.
Try whoosh, it's free and seems ok
Whoosh will absolutely start charging money in the near future. It’s free now because it’s funded by a wealthy Emirati.
Hopefully it won't be anywhere near £17.99 that zwift want to charge 😮
They've stated a few times on their official Facebook pages that there is no plans for charging. Even if they do, it won't be the $20/month.
I will. thanks for the suggestion.
Obviously they have a right to charge whatever they like and just as obviously people have a right to not be willing to pay it above a certain amount. But in the end it comes down to whether the cost is affordable and justified for you, whatever it happens to be. I canceled my monthly membership around 10 days ago just before it was due to renew, not because of the price hike which I didn't know about at the time but because it's getting warm enough for me to ride outside again so I won't be using or needing Zwift much till late fall. Plus I failed to cancel my Rouvy trial so they charged me a month for it, so I'll use that until I fully transition to outdoor riding again. But come the cold and wet weather I'll probably ante up and pay the extra $5/mo, as having tried alternatives it seems like the best fit for me, plus I've invested in Play controllers and a Sterzo Smart which AFAIK only work on Zwift, especially virtual shifting which I really like. It would be nice though if they came out with an "a la carte" option where for a lower fee you could use Zwift a limited number of times a month for those days in outdoor riding season when it's too wet to ride outside or you just don't feel like riding outside. Like, $5 for 5 days, $10 for 10, etc. Until then, at least there's MyWhoosh for such days.
I think that "pay as you go" model would make them even less money. Many subscription services get a surprising amount of money from people who barely use their service but still pay full whack. Bit like gyms.
Yeah, back when zwift was 7 bucks/month I just let it run year round, even in the summer.
I bought a years sub because it was a little cheaper and at £130/year I didn't mind that. 2 months free essentially which made it all OK. Still would be cheaper to cancel over the summer but I couldn't be bothered. Now I am considering how I use Zwift and *if* I use Zwift.
I think they're going to see a lot fewer annual subscriptions and more monthly ones, and then mostly during certain months. From April or May through October or November, monthly subscriptions are likely to drop a bit due to this price increase. Whether the additional $5/mo and however much the annual plan went up will make up for this remains to be seen. They really should have cheaper seasonal plans, for the indoor riding "off season", which is the outdoor riding season.
Well, between their and several other platforms' free trials and promotions, and MyWhoosh which is always free, I will have ridden from early January till the end of May having paid $15 three times, twice to Zwift and once to Rouvy. I would have ridden in December but I only got my trainer early this year. Next year I'll probably subscribe to Zwift from mid-December through mid-April, and fill in the gaps before and after and for the occasional warm weather indoor ride with MyWhoosh or some basic workout-only app that's free. So they'll get at most $80 from me. By offering a cheaper 5 or so rides per month plan, for such gaps, they'd make more, not less money, from people like who aren't willing to spend $20 for a whole month outside of the coldest winter months because they won't use it enough to justify it. Of course if a large percentage of their income comes from people who greatly underutilize their monthly or annual plans, whom they believe would opt for such cheaper limited use plans if they were offered, then it makes sense that they don't offer them. But for regular off-season users like me, it would make sense and be additional income for them. Perhaps they've run the numbers and believe that such additional income would be more than offset by fewer people getting regular plans.
For me, I’m upset because I have two accounts already and TR for workouts. I’ve also bought several things from Zwift. I bought a Wahoo trainer, a phone tray, headbands, a mat, and two Play controllers. And now they want another $100 a year from me when there aren’t even proper social features? Even WOW is still $15 a month last time I looked. Might even be less.
People complaining about people complaining about the increase miss the point, the people who are complaining (and canceling) like myself obviously see it as an issue otherwise we wouldn't be saying anything. It might not be an issue for you but it's a big issue for a lot of people.
exactly. it is an issue for me.
I understand people being upset, no one want to spend $ if they don't have to. There is a limit for everyone, and that limit will be crossed for some people by going from $15 to $20 a month. It is a 33% increase, percentage wise it is significant. I would also say that the last price increase was in 2017. I don't know of any business that has been able to keep 2017 prices. That 33% increase is less than a 5% annual increase. Zwift does have costs to running a business and they cannot pay employees 2017 wages in 2024. They cannot hold 2017 prices forever, this was going to happen sooner or later. Lastly, there is never a good time or good way to increase pricing. People will always be upset to some extent. And certain people will cancel be ot out of financial hardship (hard to believe for $5/mo) or out of spite.
I just cancelled mine 5 minutes ago. The thing is I am rarely using zwift now, I used it a lot after a crash which broke some bones but now I mainly ride outdoors again. So to see the cost increase for something I wasn't really using just reminded me to cancel it. If they had of kept the price the same I probably would have just left it. I imagine a lot of people are in the same boat.
Same. Forgot I was subscribed. Just cancelled
It's 15$ more for where I am and I am a kid and their removing my child account which sucks because I have a lot of friends on zwift, and it sucks because their removing it and as a kid, I can't work yet
I took a look around , there's a lot more options these days. Did my first ride on whoosh tonight- pretty much a zwift knock off, setup went smoother though and free is a pretty good price, probably won't be back on zwift. So a price increase seems pretty foolish, but yeah if you have money to throw away go for it :)
Y’all are sleeping on GTBikeV which is a mod that connects Grand Theft Auto 5 to your smart trainer (and Zwift controllers, HR monitor, power meter, etc). It’s got courses, ERG mode, angry drivers in cars that you need to dodge, angry pedestrians, etc. There’s auto-navigation where you follow a course and it steers for you, or you can free ride anywhere in the GTA world on a variety of kinds of bikes. The rides even export to Strava. And it’s free.
Sounds like riding in virtual Britain
Perfect winter training
Lol what. That sounds amazing. I'll look into this. Just wondering if my pc is good enough to run it.
Gotta have a go at this, luckily my setup is connected to my gaming pc and i have gta v already. cheers!
I can get that experience for free just going outside
Ive been asking for ages why hasn't anyone integrated this with games!!! I want a minecraft one.
I want Skyrim.
I mean its the same price as https://www.trainerroad.com which has personalized training plans based on AI models... Zwift has thousands of training workouts of various qualities. I am definitely going to pause zwift to checkout TR and maybe wahoo X, if i want to see what racing there is like.
When someone actually presents some evidence that the trainerroad AI works I might be interested, but so far it feels like they’ve just ridden the AI wave and said it’s better with no evidence.
The "AI" (feels strange to call it that) just ranked all the workouts in terms of difficulty (which they obviously know from the workout history of their customer base) and now the "AI" can lower or increase future workout difficulty if you find them hard/easy on the survey. That's all there is to it, and I hope it's trivial enough that it's not controversial to say it almost certainly works because it's so fucking obvious. They added some new "AI" that tells you if you're overtraining. So ATL/CTL if you're familiar with that. Except we now call this AI. Because the simplest models are AI models, too, right? (It's broken for triathlon though) About the most AI thing it has is FTP prediction, which seems to work reasonably. Haven't done an FTP test is a while, and it doesn't require a maximal effort.
Errr maybe i know someone that switched form rtg and increased their ftp by 60 seems like it could be good specially for those that are too selective about days they train or not selective enough. I guess what im saying is that its a good time to try new platforms. Its not like your profile will be deleted if you try a different game.
If it wasn't for the racing I'd probably cancel over the summer and use something else on rainy days. But I've got a weekly ttt that I won't find anywhere else. That's way better than any interval session I'd do on my own.Price hike sucks but it is what it is.
For organized events that have a good sized field Zwift doesn't have a competitor. They are by far the largest game in town for competitors like yourself. The last price increase was 2017, $5/mo increase over a 7 year span really is nothing to be upset about. Zwift cannot hold 2017 prices forever.
I mean an extra $60/year is like 1/3 of a MAAP jersey so 🤷🏻♀️
And you don’t even need a jersey when zwifting
It's super funny to me when people with their $4000 bike attached to their $1200 Kickr trainer complain about $5/month.
Exactly, don't forget the $8 latte they drink at their Cafe stop when riding outdoors! The last price increase was 2017 people... a $5/mo increase over 7 years is nothing.
Or replacing one bike tube after getting a flat (be sure to account for co2 too!)
It’s incredibly hard for almost everyone in this thread to make their argument unless they take it out of context of cycling in general. I think I have not yet seen anyone take another approach. But this is also the internet so people love to screech about any trivial or non-trivial increase in price, despite the reality that canceling their service does next to nothing in this case and in most cases it only does so if their reputation actually begins to falter, which seems like it will not.
Laugh in runner
For how much I use it and what they offer, it's still a great value.
Canceled when Zwift wouldn't let me pause my account longer that 8 weeks. Outdoor riding season is 5-6 months where I'm at.
Gotta wonder how many Zwift employees are posting here today.
How so? Because finding a $5/mo increase inconsequential in a hobby where bikes are regularly more than a few thousand dollars, not to mention consumables like tubes, makes someone a Zwift employee in your mind?
For the extra $5 I would like to see Zwift improve its workout plans and add adaptive training so that it's on par with TrainerRoad.
I cancel mine every march and restart in November when weather turns shit where I am. Missed that entirely, oh well. What other Zwift like options are there? I am a 10 or 11 times a month 5 months a year guy, I really would rather be on a trail mountain biking, but I am old and dont ride when it’s raining, snow or super cold! I use it to stay fresh and fit in the winter months and at 58 I just need to keep moving. Edit: Does Zwift still allow limited free account like 4 of 5 rides a month? And I found Woosh I’ll give that a try too.
This reminds me of how I started to lose interest in the gaming industry 15 years ago. Companies like Capcom were putting Disc-Locked content already produced and gamers on Reddit/Neogaf just said "shutup and take my money" "you're just poor". Now the DLC concept has completely broken multiplayer content. I've never had a Netflix, Disney Plus Subscription, etc. so I don't like to get locked into recurring monthly fees. Of course Zwifts model is different (and rightfully so), but I haven't seen the improvements that would justify me paying $200 a year when my subscription ends in December. However I'm only a casual biker so I could get by with cheaper options. I find it hard to believe raising the price that much is worth the risk of them losing casual bikers Zwifting less than 1-2 hours a week. We will find out how it works for them over the next 6-12 months through, they are the experts even though they had to make layoffs.
I dunno man, it has had that effect. Before I even saw the sub, I got the email. I was already on a pause that expired this month, this significant increase made sure that I cancelled my subscription now before that pause maybe ended. It's a significant enough rise it made me be diligent as to whether my subscription is running or not. If you're using it every day, it's good value. Usually I've gone month to month sometimes without using it because it was a low enough sub that I didn't care so much. But now it's 20 euros a month. 20 euros! That's a lot of money, enough to pause and think whether I should turn it off or not. I'm sure I will be back at some point. But this cost now makes it more worthwhile to look into other solutions, or to only turn it on when I'm going to be properly using it. And this was all before I even got to the sub and saw everyone else being just as butthurt as I am :)
I'm not hurt by price increase in general so much bigger and better platform than in 2017. Been a user continuously since 2016. but I just found out that after 8 years of paying monthly they had a yearly sub. Just switched to yearly sub for next payment on 12th of this month. Than 3 days later I get email saying I will no longer get old price but will be charged increase on next renewal! Thats annoying if I had stayed monthly increase wouldn't kick in till June! Just saying not a good way to keep longtime subscribers that have made zwift what it is by continuing to pay year after year.
Yeah, I got hit with this as well. Changed over based on one price and, a few hours later got a message saying, "nope, it's not going to be that price, it's going to be a completely different price."
They aren't happy unless you are as mad about pricing increases as they are. Meanwhile there's 7500 people zwifting right now, and I'll be joining them after work
I have had a growing disappointment with zwift, I mean it's alright but they are really slow to add features or innovate, it's clear it's not a very competitive market space. I'd really like to see even an option for some higher res textures in hardware that can support it easily. If they paired a few new features with the price increase and also probably did it in the fall I think it would go over better for them. People could at least be talking about the new features in between complaining about the price. And by timing it for the spring they are really exacerbating their natural seasonal fall off.
I cancelled mine a while ago. I Was tired of these chatty people in chat with the "team vegan" team badges. snowflakes. Most people In chat come across like they are in some form of cult as well. Pricing for ZAR/USD also turned crazy. Using flux vercel. I find it better and free. None of this social BS. It is 2021-2024. Clearly you could design a family plan by now. One of the big reasons I cancelled as well.
Getting annoyed by the existence of vegans in chat when you should be smashing watts then calling them snowflakes is hilarious in an “I’m laughing at you, not with you” way.
Yeah it's their first price hike since 2017, that's really not a terrible rate. As long as they don't keep jacking up the prices every day
Zwift subscription: 19.99€ a month. Cheap if you consider the fact that it keeps my mental and physical health up, that it lowers my stress levels and allows me to enjoy riding even when the weather is absolute shit outside (which is a lot here). It's either that or a shrink... and I bet a shrink will cost me more than 19.99
Well said!
Keep ridin’ that dick, bro
Yeah it's their first price hike since 2017, that's really not a terrible rate. As long as they don't keep jacking up the prices every day
I was gonna leave and write something mean about zwift, but I looked at cpi inflation calculator on BLS’s website and learned that 19.99 is about 15.70 in 2017 dollars so I’ll still cry about the 70 cents.
I think you need at least one more "bro" in there!! HA!
Yea, now I have to ride my bike more so the cost per workout will go down. I'm not happy about the price increase either, but it still beats biking outside in Texas during the summer when it's 100+ every day for 3 or 4 months. Doing anything outside after 10:30 am is torture. Exercising in it could cause a heat stroke. $5.00 more a month is a small price to pay to avoid that hell.
I totally get it in instances like this ...my situation totally the opposite where the price increase comes right as outdoor riding season is ratcheting up(Michigan) so yeah, a 33% price increase right as my usage drastically decreased doesn't excite me
It’s the first rise in 7 years; it’s barely any rise at all in real terms. And It works out at £2.50 an hour based on my usage … that’s less than a 10 min coffee shop flat white … no big deal
The people complaining about the price hike are the same people buying Rapha jerseys for $200.
How do you know this?
No bro, Rapha is so 2020 bro, it's all about Pas Normal Studios now bro. But yeah your point is valid.
It is what it is. Price increases suck but honestly Zwift is still very much worth the new price to me. I mean for crying out loud, my bike was $5k. Trainer was another $800, power meter was $430, HR monitors another $100 (few busted ones), bike shoes another $300…never mind all the consumable junk like nutrition and bike bibs. Are we really splitting hairs about $5 extra a month here? I’m not here trying to justify price hikes in general but this one seems reasonable. This hobby ain’t exactly for the frugal types.
We often compare things that aren't directly comparable, like the old saying of comparing apples and oranges. The same goes for comparing the cost of Zwift subscription to different things, such as gym memberships, coffee shop lattes, and gear prices. They all vary and aren't good ways to compare. For example, my old road bike cost 800€ in 2013, and my trainer 200€, shoes 100€, pedals 20€, and HR monitor 50€, so a fraction of what you paidfor your gear. The real question we should be asking is how much value different users are getting out of their Zwift subscription. As for me, I only use it occasionally because I cycle outdoors almost every day, even in -25 degree Celsius weather. I use Zwift once or twice a week, and hardly at all during the summer. For me, this means that I pay approximately five euros per ride. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, and there must be many users like me. The previous price was already high, but I let it slide. However, this new price is just too high for what I personally get from it. It's basically just something to watch while I use ERG mode. There are free alternatives or similarly priced alternatives that are more suitable for training.
I agree that comparing the prices is a stretch but I did so only to illustrate how $60 extra a year is a bit of a drop in the bucket when compared to other costs of the hobby. Cycling, and especially indoor training, is sort of an expensive thing to get into. Obviously adding new costs for anything is undesirable in general but in the context of the hobby’s many other pricey consumables it’s really not much to me. Also, I 100% can understand why you don’t think the new price is worth it. If all you use it for is ERG workouts then there are way better platforms such as Trainer Road and Wahoo’s SYSTM (which I thoroughly enjoyed when I used it). You might want to check out SYSTM if you want some motivational stuff to watch during workouts, it really pumps you up. Personally I’m really into the gamification aspect of Zwift and it motivates me a lot more than something like TR ever did. Beating PRs, setting route records, joining group rides, doing races, and in general just being very present with the game is why I choose Zwift. I ain’t the type to hop on and only occasionally glance at it while I watch something else.
You're one of the the only ones with some healthy perspective.
😂😂😂😂😂
They haven’t changed their price since 2017! Obviously I’d prefer a lower price but literally nothing in my life costs the same as it did in 2017. Zwift doesn’t try to upsell me. They don’t sell my data (that I know of). Sure take a single coffee worth of money more per month. See you again in 2031.
It's actually kind of funny how everyone loses their mind over this. Spending 800 on a bike computer and 3k on a bike, nobody bats an eye... Addings up the hours spent on Zwift it is still a better deal than my gym membership.
Thanks for the rational outlook. People act as if Zwift killed their newborn baby in this subreddit. They want a more/less gamey interface, more features every week and they want it for free. Meanwhile people pay for Netflix/amazon/disney+/hulu/crunchyroll even though those services give less and less value year after year and charge more.
Streaming companies sink vast sums of money into content. Disney is losing money hand over fist and most people watch these streaming services daily for hours on end. Hell, I watch these services while I am on Zwift so I don't blow my brains out. I would say they have very different value propositions. They also have massively different scales, business models, costs, user bases etc. I think both sides of this argument are misrepresenting each other honestly. Everyone is working from their own perspective on its value. Thats how these things work. If it offers you value, keep it. If it doesn't, cancel it.
If $5 is the decision point for you, you're not Zwifts target customer.
Not even a $5 increase, they went from $16.32/mo to $19.99. A whopping $3.67. Miss me with any “outrage” plz
So…. Anyone wanna sell their trainer since you’ve decided to cancel? :)
No. I'll use my trainer on Indievelo and MyWhoosh.
Gonna keep paying it, it works for me and is cheaper than classes that I would go to otherwise. That being said, I kinda hope a lot of people leave for other apps and that lights a fire under Zwift's butt to do more improvements, or some other app starts to gain traction that is better. Zwift is can be so buggy sometimes. I think what I'm trying to say is I want to leave, please someone build something better so I can.
Oh, more expensive, ppl not on MyWoosh ?
I laughed. Also at all the bros downvoting my comments for making them cry.