I think you could put a different lens on this.
So in 2021, 2022, and 2023, you paid $15/month = $180 a year.
Then, in late 2024, perhaps we could say Zwift made a mistake by offering an annual plan that was lower at $150. I don’t think the press on this reduction was nearly as large as this increase announcement… But presumably you signed up and got $150 for your Zwifting for a full year.
Next year, when time to renew, yes it’ll be $200 (an 11% increase, not 38%, vs the prior $180 annual bill).
2024 at $150 + 2025 at $200 = $350 / 2 years = $175 avg (still less than historical $180).
So, for me (and you,if you wisely were already on the annual plan), I won’t see start to see a net increase in my annual average zwift expenditure over what I had been spending for the past 6 years, until I renew in early 2026
My summary so far for what it’s worth:
Rouvy seems good - lots of routes + group rides. There’s a 50% off for three months code floating around if you search - time enough to try it out properly
Indievelo is new but has many features that Zwift lacks - a draft meter for tiny example. Currently free with some features only available to paying members.
I’ve tried FulGaz a few times, but wasn’t for me. I will be trying it again though for completeness
Mywhoosh - good platform with strong features, Apple TV app very much a work in progress. Free but funded by the UAE which seems to concern some.
A pricing tier that didn’t include the multi-stage events put on by Zwift HQ (including ZRacing) would be awesome for community organizers. Currently they eat almost the entire cake except for group rides with a leader.
I’d be very happy to have a price tier that didn’t include any community events. The impact to me would be zero because they don’t exist at the time of day I can ride.
As they say. Stupid is as stupid does. Not many businesses can justify 30-40% price increases. Long time subscriber gone for the time being. Too many tech problems, poor graphics, woke promotions vs cycling. Enjoy.
yeah. i get why they do it, but the community can be fun to be a part of when they’re not posting on these forums
not as well as RGT used to, at the moment. hopefully the predicted billions of leavers actually do that and attempt to actually use the apps they keep hard selling everyone on
I don’t know that I know what this word woke means anymore on a large scale–seems to mean ‘things I don’t like’ for a lot of people. But it it’s taken to mean roughly ‘social consciousness’ of some kind, I for one am happy to see Zwift paying attention to different kinds of cyclists than I see when I turn on pro cycling. Cycling has always been portrayed as very homogeneous, and it’s nice to see other kinds of people get some attention.
I hadn’t thought of this before–that this may be one of the dividing lines of who stays and who goes. That’s interesting. Zwift’s position on these things is one of the reasons I choose to spend my money here vs other sites.
Yeah, didn’t want to offend you, tried to phrase that reply very carefully. (I’m not saying you specifically don’t know what you mean, for example ) Thanks for taking it that way. Peace.
I suspect it also depends significantly on whether one is a member of one of those groups of people who tends to get ignored historically, or whether one is the sort of person that cycling has always been demonstrated as being for. I suspect some people might appreciate their existence as cyclists being acknowledged, even if they are for example fiscal conservatives.
If people are leaving Zwift for this reason, I can’t say that other services would be better or not. Rouvy’s FAQ used to have a question about their subscription plans that asked “My wife wants to ride too, can she use my account?” Now it talks about “you” being able to add “family members”. That move alone would be seen as ‘woke’ by a lot of people I know. If those other platforms get bigger, will they start to have LGBTQ events and women’s events and Black History Month events and etc? Right now, they’re just struggling to have any events. So we can wait and see. As I said, it’s an interesting development. Will those other platforms try to appeal to larger audiences and wider demographics too, or just ‘the usual’? Will that further impact anyone’s perception of the value of those platforms? Fascinating.
I’m on the indieVelo mailing list and the update today is that the number of registered users has doubled in this past week. Of course, multiplying a small number by two doesn’t make it a huge number but it’s clear that folk are looking around at alternatives. I guess we won’t know much more until northern hemisphere autumn.
I posted a few days ago saying I was going to take a look at other services and decide what to do. I wouldn’t have done this if this price increase hadn’t occurred, because I was happy with the Zwift service as it was. There have been issues of course and I don’t need to list them here, but for the most part it’s been a good experience.
Anyway, having taken a look at other platforms, I’ve decided that at £17.99 per month Zwift just doesn’t offer the value to me that I think it should. I can get done what I do on Zwift elsewhere for significantly less cost. So I have cancelled my subscription.
Member since 2015 (£8 per month back then!).
61,474km ridden
423,208m climbed
Level 100 (1.4m XP approx)
I will miss the coco group chat a bit, but other communities will develop I’m sure. Already seen some of the players elsewhere.
Over the weekend, we as a 2 household group have decided to drop one of the subs.
I took a year offer at £99 so I am getting value for money out of my subscription.
My other half, is solely an ERG user - Coach assigns workout to TP and she does it. This can be done on Indievelo or the other platforms so she has decided its not worth 17.99 so will move on. She used to race on the platform but the lack of development and progress meant she stopped doing that activity a good while back.
I imagine plenty of people who are solely workout users will be reviewing their subscriptions - Lets be honest, no one is staying with Zwift solely for their workout plans. So if they are being assigned workouts they can jump ship with little impact. We are told people doing workouts are more in numbers and therefore more important than the race community - Lets see how that plays out.
Sure. Building it from scratch but knowing what you know of existing systems like Zwift should mean a faster/easier development cycle.
I guess that Zwift could attempt a Zwift 2.0, using the same approach. That would get rid of lots of legacy issues, allow more individual configuration, remove code inefficiences and so on. Doing that while maintaining Zwift 1.0 and then migrating folk over would be difficult and costly but, if we’re speculating, maybe that’s already happening/planned and a bit more money is needed to complete the job.
dunno about pace partners, but nope, most people don’t do group events or races. I wonder what it is most people actually do on zwift, but I would think probably 10% of people online at any given moment at most are in a group event just by eyeballing the “online now” numbers and general social/race attendance at a given moment. I’m not being paid to know any exact numbers though. Getting people to try out group rides, social or competitive, is something I think about a lot. and a source of personal irritation, because the first thing many people see when they come to the community forums and offsite virtual racing discussion areas are cursed hellholes… which would turn me away personally, if i were a reasonable, rational human
) Thanks for taking it that way. Peace.