New Pricing Survey [August 2020]

Hi Zwift, what’s this all about? Spotted it on Twitter and thought you’d might like to make an official comment. I do wonder how official it is as the pricing and features for each band seem very random. There’s also clearly more to the survey which I haven’t seen.

Looks like they’re considering a tiered pricing model based on certain features (some of which may not exist yet and seemingly need extra funding to develop) being only for premium accounts. Either that or trying to establish the value that subscribers place on all the stuff commonly moaned about. If the results show the vast majority just want it cheaper and don’t care about racing or steering for example, then they can justify not bothering with improving/introducing them. If people would pay more for it, then it’s worth considering. And so on.

Interesting, and about as close to a roadmap as we’ve ever had?

Is this essentially a “pay for new functionality” move, or am I wrong here?

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I’m sure that can’t be right. The last price increase was, to quote Eric Min,

In order to continue to make Zwift bigger, better and more beautiful, we are updating our membership price to $14.99 per month, effective today

I suspected that a tiered model was on the cards, but I thought it would be based on “drops” and you’d be able to purchase some with real money.

Note that the models floated move to an annual sub model - so if you took more than two months off a year you’re paying more.

And the disclaimer at the top is odd - “Remember these are all made up scenarios”. What is the point of a survey where the options and prices are meaningless? Tells you nothing. I’m pretty sure this represents their thinking (or something close to it)

Be curious about the rest of the survey just to see where their thinking is going.

I would want a mix of 2 of the options so I do hope this is just speculative research and not the direction that they’re thinking of going. Why take away the option to have what already exists!

Absolutely. Even as a set of “made up scenarios” this seems horrendously badly thought out.

Not one of those combinations are what I’d want. If this is an insight into where Zwift is going, it fills me with dread.

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This reminds me of Strava and we all know how that worked out!!

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I totally agree Miles.
None of the cheaper options are what anyone really wants. So it’s like forcing us into a price rise. Which again, no one wants.
Has anyone got any good news?
Cheers. Oh and
“Ride Off”

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Totally agree Daren. What a nightmare.

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I only cycle - I will never ever run, and it’s vanishingly unlikely I would row.
I want structured training plans - for the grotty months when I know all my riding will be indoors.
I would like the chance to join all sorts of group rides and races… I thought the social/community side was the major aim of Zwift.

So none of those options would suit me at all. Lucky they’re only hypothetical…

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Hmmm… Where was it spotted? Couldn’t find it on my Twitter feed…

It was shared in our team discord but was on Twitter originally. Eric commented that it was not a Zwift survey, but then that tweet was deleted.

I really don’t understand how unverified speculative rumours get some much attention on this (and other forums). This is clearly something that someone has knocked together outside of Zwift.

One thing is obvious and that is how much Zwift appreciates and values the community and their current subscibers. Eric always mentions this fact on any interviews, so putting a pricing structure like this together is not something Zwift would do.

The next logical pricing change would be to move running only to a paid service. Also add running to a combined service (+cycling) for a specific price and introduce rowing in to Beta. Cycling only subscriptions would likely remain as they are.

This would provide revenue increase from those using running only and the combined service. Add on the new Covid subscriber increase and i strongly expect that Zwift would be happy with the growth (subscriber & revenue) seen during 2020.

Think about it. :rofl:

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Tour de France wasn’t about the current subscribers (event-only for july), it was about the pros, marketing and charity. Rowing (should be here in a few weeks according to Eric) isn’t about current subscribers, it’s about a new market. Recent actions against WTRL and Zwiftpower’s developers aren’t about the community, at least not in it’s current form.

Anti-sandbagging, club functionality and a new UI would have been about current subscribers, but those features got delayed compared to promises no one forced them to make.

For me this isn’t first and foremost about pricing. It just shows the questions Zwift has to ask themselves. Do they want to compete with Peloton with spinning videos? Do they want to compete with other apps for workouts / training plans? Do they want to focus on (verified / Zwiftpower-based) eRacing? Do they want to focus on social group rides? Do they want to invest capacity into braking / steering functionality? Or all of the above at once risking that nothing is perfect?

The survey, whoever did it, is asking those questions big parts of the community, from eRacers to people more interested in workouts and group rides, are talking about. So no wonder it gets attention in light of those questions. And those questions are getting asked because Zwift isn’t answering them in a consistent way so far.

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Which is why I’ve posted it here, on the official forum, to ask Zwift for comment and/or verification or otherwise.

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None of those suit me. They don’t have a combination listed that I would want. This would drive me to other platforms, not even considering prices.

Also, don’t want a one year commitment. I like my outside riding in many months and don’t want to pay for something I don’t use.

However, I do look forward to rowing, braking, and more steering. I’m also interested in instructor-led workouts as long as they have zwift controlling my resistance. Don’t want to lose text workouts!

If they’re going to do this, they should do cafeteria style of a base like it is now, and then pick and choose add-ons like special worlds, braking, more steering, rowing, instructor-led workouts, advanced analytics, etc.

There were other combinations that I’ve seen screenshotted elsewhere. I don’t think any of them are intended to be real actual scenarios, I reckon it’s going to be fed into some algorithm that produces charts and diagrams of what features people would value the most. Presumably to inform resource investment decisions.

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I got it emailed to me today from Zwift. There were 8 pages of choices like the one above. None of them seemed like an improvement I’d be willing to pay for…

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And create anxiety in subscribers? Who at Zwift thought it was a smart idea to run a 100% price increase up the flag pole?

I see on reddit people are talking about receiving this survey so it seems like it might be an official survey from Zwift unless someone at Zwift would like to inform us otherwise.

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