Only because the less that a user is already using Zwift, the more likely an increase will cause them to leave – they’re simply not as vested in the experience. We don’t know how many ‘casual’ users there are overall, and to what extent this is a cause for concern. But every dollar in the increase will net more lost subscribers. The catch22 means that to recoup this loss, the remaining subscribers will be left to somehow make up the difference.
The current monthly fee has been in existence for a long time (forever?). Equilibrium has been reached. A change in fee will disrupt that equilibrium. Tiered pricing can mitigate that disruption.
You are neglecting the fact that power users are good for Zwift. They are more likely to engage with other users, which in turn makes them more likely to keep coming back.
Your idea of ppkm is quite frankly awful. I would quit.
Pay more to get more stuff is different though - if you paid more and got to ride more worlds or different roads on existing worlds that would be different to restricting how much of the things available to you you could use. I don’t think either is a good idea btw!
I think the speculation should be on how and not if’s and but’s. The price will go up, no question. What we want is more options for example: Monthly / Quarterly / Annually and Family option’s.
Yeah, I’m not saying it’s a great idea but, in terms of Zwift costs, I’d hazard a guess that racing requires more work than free riding, and training is somewhere between the two. Would folk support the idea of a recreational vs racing price differential?
Sure, but they could probably still do that by growing the subscriber numbers or offering those family plans.
On the latter, two $15 subs is OK for some; but not others. Offering a $23 two-user plan or a $35 three-user option might be more within reach. Zwift get a little more money than they otherwise would have.
(On the other hand, yes that might also mean they lose out with some people going from $30 for their household to $23; I guess Zwift’s research would tell them whether they’d gain more than they lose.)
As others have noted, the relationship between users and server load is not likely to be linear; so if Zwift doubled subscribers by lowering the cost, the infrastructure costs probably wouldn’t double; so they could still be better off overall. (Maybe concurrent users would be the factor here, not active subs.)
I realise the price of things almost never goes down, but it’s always worth asking the question about whether a lower price point would dramatically increase uptake. Maybe not in Zwift’s case as the subscription is small compared to the setup costs, particularly for anyone without a bike and trainer already.
I’m hypothesising, but one thing’s certain; if it went pay-per-usage I doubt I’d stick around.
It seems a bit contradictory - if Zwift increases prices then they will reduce users (although potentially not profit). Yet they also envision an increase to 10 million users. This seems a bit having your cake and eating it. OK - different timescales, but even so it seems a bit odd.
I’m totally unconvinced by the 10million target - the proportion of cyclists who have the income/kit to subscribe to Zwift but haven’t heard of it must be pretty small so I don’t see 9 million coming from there.
The wider finess community is a possibility but … it’s been 8 years and they have done nothing to penetrate the wider gym community (that is visible to us at any rate). I had imagined that Gym based Zwift clubs with local leader boards, inter-gym competitions and generally setting up an ecosystem would be the route, but nowt in this direction either.
That leaves the home user who would be interest (possibly) but the barriers to entry are to high (and getting Zwift to work can be very tedious at times). I assume that was the aim with the fitness bike - a turnkey package that you jump on and it just works. But that has gone.
What’s left for growth seems to be organic growth which seems to a flattened (if not declined) post covid.
This suggests that we’ll be moving on to “sweat the assets” stage as the focus switches from growth as the prime metric to profitability. Interesting times ahead.
As someone who never races I’d 100% support this move! haha!
just kidding, i think any kind of different pricing for usage would be a mistake - the interview seems like Eric wanted to encourage people to use zwift more and push the social side of things and having price brackets that mean certain people can do certain things and others can’t or you could only zwift for certain times or at different times of the day would completely go against this
me neither - it definitely wouldn’t be cost effective for me! wI just checked and i spent 2 days 3 hours zwifing in the past 30 days! I spend 7% of my life in zwift! haha
Just to be clear - there’s a gulf between discussing options and advocating them. Short of a User Council threads like this might be the best way of communicating group feelings to the Zwift team.
I don’t see a tired option working for Zwift. That will focus people’s attention on what they really use Zwift for and that will make them compare if it is really worth paying.
I would also not like a pay per use, I use Zwift a lot and if I have to think should I ride another 30min and pay more or just pedal and watch a Netflix show, I guess it will be netflix.
here’s an idea for cost cutting… don’t pay to have two CEO’s (assuming they are getting paid around 300 times more than the median staff), maybe just one is enough
Since Zwift wasn’t programmed from the beginning to support multiple riders on one account, providing that feature would likely mean a major rewrite of multiple parts of Zwift. Are we ready for all that could entail? Endless bugs, potential lost data, more ominous popup messages. Is it possible that they have hooks in the software to support it? I would hope so, otherwise it’s likely going to be a huge task to add that ‘simple’ feature.
