I have no idea what your comment about Strava means, as you didn’t provide any details, but a family membership has been requested for many years, but Zwift does not appear interested in going that route. You should read that thread and add your vote to it, just in case that turns out to be the tipping point.
Here is one of the threads (I think there are several)
probably that all his wife and son’s rides on Zwift are importing to his strava activities, so Strava says he is riding a lot more than he actually is which can impact all his fitness metrics.
What’s absurd about charging per person for a service where for each person it provides realtime connection and processing when they are active, and long term data storage of activities at other times?
If it is one household, eventually with children, using only one trainer, there could/should be some discounts (don’t forget Zwift trashed free children accounts…). IMHO users like these would be using Zwift services less time than one single “power user”.
I assume the comparison is to for example, a Netflix or Streaming account, and multiple profiles on the account can all be watching their own content at the same or different times on their own TVs. Alternatively also cellphone or cable TV, where additional ‘lines’ or boxes are at less than full rate, etc.
The way I look at it is the customer says I want two accounts and I want a discount. It’s like saying I want to buy two bikes and I want a discount or I’m going to ask a competitor the same question and see what happens. That’s just business from the consumer side. Business from the supplier side asks whether the customer is actually serious and whether the lower margin can be supported.
As someone that spent years in the local shops, unless you had a prior approved discount, we wouldn’t discount the bikes, regardless how many you got. With that said 10-20% discount on accessories, clothes, etc. purchased with the bike was negotiable. Smart customers wouldn’t least try or ask.
I’ve worked in shops that both did and didn’t offer a discount on a second or third bike. Customer has to ask for what they want and see what they can get. Sometimes the margin on the bike wasn’t good enough to discount it. But bikes shops face significant competition from other shops and discounters. Zwift’s competition still seems pretty weak for a customer who likes the social aspect, values their Zwift riding pals, likes well-attended events, and I think that’s why many of their customers were drawn to it and stick to it.
FWIW I’m pro family discount.
Sorta, except for Zwift, it would mean the equivalent of giving discounts to everybody who suddenly qualifies even if they hadn’t asked or threatened going to a competitor.
Yes, it would reduce margins across the board even for people willing to pay the asking price. I have no idea if it would be worth the potential benefits. Plus it’s a situation where the potential losses are easier to quantify than the potential gains.
I’ve voted for this, and still think Zwift should continuously evaluate the monetary benefits and potential losses to see if it ever makes sense for them. There’s a risk of loss from multiple accounts currently paying today that would switch to family accounts, there’s a chance of gain from people not paying for family members who would buy an account, and Zwift has more data than us to know that.
That said, for me I am wondering if what I am looking for is more of a “limited account” type that would cost a lot less than even a family plan would. The reason is, the others in my family do not bike every day, not every week, (sometimes not every month), so they would be using Zwift usually once or twice a month at most. They don’t use most of the features, and have very few scenarios they care about. They don’t do events, they don’t use chat, they either do a workout, or just ride around, and not very often at all.
For those people it’s just not worth $20/month for each of them, and my guess is whatever the “family plan” rate is, would also be more than their usage really would justify.
For them I wonder if it’s better to have the concept of a “Limited Plan” which has some limitations such as number of times a month, maybe limit the types of events they can do, etc. so someone who is super casual would still want a monthly membership to just pop-in every so often. These folks wouldn’t even be willing to spend a discounted $15/month given how little they ride, it would have to be a very cheap account (like $5/month). That’s what I could imagine paying for my daughter who would only use it once or twice a month and some months never use it at all. If there was a discounted family rate to add my daughter ($15/month, or even $10/month) the value still wouldn’t be there for her because of how little she would use the platform.
Anyhow, I do support Zwift continuing to look into family plans, but I also think there is likely a case to be made for a way cheaper “limited plan” that could be upgraded to a normal plan once the person starts using Zwift enough to justify a full subscription.
This is exactly what I mean - and I believe the most families (with one trainer in the household) would not use the Zwift services more than one “power” user. Yes, there would be more than one account - but the time and data use is IMHO (worst case) comparable with somebody riding AdZ twice a day 
.
Which raises the idea whether Zwift could ever figure out how to set up a day-rate option, eg. 24 hrs for $5 or somesuch. Some IRL health clubs have options like this.
Business from the supplier side asks whether the customer is actually serious and whether the lower margin can be supported.
In the case of Zwift, the operational cost of any extra family user would be less than a dollar per account per month.
My family is starting to actively move to a different platform - my younger son was not able to register his child account and has started using another platform, and my older son’s account will become paid starting in June.
Both of them would most likely not use the account for more than 3-4 hours per week (they are both focusing on running and swimming now). So in total, we would have a maximum of 32 hours per month. That means I would need to pay about $1.25 per hour of Zwifting. That’s too much as for me.
Subscriptions these days have become crazy - when you only have a few services, they cost less than $10 its feels fine. But when everything around you is subscription-based, you become very sensitive to any additional costs.
I have the same story with EXRGame - I’ve been using it for the second year with a family subscription. In December 2024, it cost me $139. Last year they charged me $154, and this year it will be $178.80. My kids have used it for about 10 hours per month over the last 6 months. I canceled the subscription renewal right as I’m writing this. I still have time until December, and I hope MyWhoosh improves their rowing mode by then. If not, I will still switch to MyWhoosh.
Speaking about Zwift - I don’t see much dramatic progress in the last 3 years. Yesterday, I wasn’t able to do a training session because I couldn’t connect my Wahoo bike - some sensors connected, some didn’t. And it wasn’t a device issue - I tried it on Apple TV, Apple TV with the Companion app, and Windows. I also restarted the bike and updated all devices. Same issue. At the same time, MyWhoosh connected everything in a second, but after spending an hour trying to fix Zwift, I didn’t have time to train.
p.s. And yes, after a payment issue with my account last month (it took about a week to resolve), I can now believe that Zwift can’t integrate family accounts because their payment system is totally outdated and they don’t fully understand how it works themselves. It’s super slow, it only works if you don’t touch anything, and in case of any changes - it becomes unstable.
How do you work that one out?
What is Zwift? It’s essentially a simple, linear multiplayer simulation with very limited scripted interactions and minimal dependence on other players. Instead of keyboard input, users send a limited set of data from their trainers.
The average server cost per user for a shooter is around $0.5–$5 per month (depend on numbers of users and optimizations. Estimation for CS as example - $0.5-$2 per user). If we take something like AWS GameLift as a model, and use they calculations assume a user plays about 30 hours per month, the cost would be roughly $1–$1.5 per month(with good optimization).
But those are shooters - Zwift doesn’t have the same requirements for latency, bandwidth, or real-time precision. It doesn’t need to process as many parameters as a typical FPS. The server load is more predictable (no heavy calculations, physics, or something like hit detection), and the tick rate is likely 5–10 times lower.
So for the same 30 hours per month, the cost would be at most around $3 if it’s completely not optimized, and most likely closer to $0.5–$1.5.
P.S. OK, that sounds a bit higher than $1 
, but that assumes an average user spends 30 hours per month on Zwift. When I was preparing for my Ironman 70.3, I trained in zwift about 20-25 hours per month.
Over the last 34 months, I’ve logged 370 hours, which is about 11 hours per month on average. That means each hour of training cost me roughly $1.50 (considering I was always on an annual subscription). And my son have pretty same stats - he is level 75, with 367h. Which gave him same 11+ hours per months.
I randomly checked some users stats - most of them have less than 15 hours per month. So I’d say my assumption that the average user spends much less than 20 hours per month on Zwift is probably correct.
The latest MyWhoosh version has integrated the BikeControl application. If I understand this correctly, you can now use Zwift Ride with MyWhoosh without using separate application for virtual shifting.
That’s great! Did you know it’s also possible to transfer all your Zwift experience (levels) to MyWhoosh?
Looks like next year will cost me $800 less than it would have. Better to spend that money on race entries or bikes.
P.S. I’ve also completely switched to intervals.icu instead of TrainingPeaks. I set up an MCP server for intervals.icu, downloaded my entire training library from TrainingPeaks (including detailed workouts from the past 7 years), and set up Claude, which now generates adapted plans every week by analyzing all the changes in detail. Works like magic.