Author Topic: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!  (Read 7631 times)

Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« on: 13 October, 2019, 09:58:56 pm »
My habit with TR has been to lapse the monthly payments for the > 50% of the year that I won't use it. Rejoining, I see that the monthly sub is now $20 (although if you have been paying the original $7 that still stands). Doesn't represent value for me, I can't see how they will succeed where the normal monthly sub is $10 or less. Also, they have removed the video-along-with-workout from the latest release, which is the feature I use. I can still use their "legacy app" but.... $20/month?

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #1 on: 14 October, 2019, 09:03:51 am »
If you use it, it's worth it. I paid for a year to keep a grandfathered price and then haven't used it because Zwift is so much more engaging (for me).
$20/month for 4 workouts a week is still only $1.16 per workout. That's a lot less than a plan from Training Peaks, for example.

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #2 on: 14 October, 2019, 09:29:25 am »
I’m the same and have paid up for the year on the old rate(probably won’t do it again) but in all honesty I probably only use it for 3 months a year constructively  generally I only manage base 1 and 2 by which time I have cabin fever and find the workouts just to hard unless I drop the power down,  then do a few more workouts through the year if the weathers terrible .
I think you just have to find the platform that suits you best but some structure to the training definitely helps per maintaining your power or growing it.
Tried Zwift much more visually engaging but not for me , got a months free sufferfest to try at some stage.

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #3 on: 14 October, 2019, 09:31:45 am »
They changed price twice in the last 12 months. Their justification is that they have added a lot of new features and stuff - the calendar and the analysis stuff is pretty good. They were very clear before the first price rise that it was happening, so you should grandfather yourself in if you wanted to avoid it - there was a big fuss because they didn't do the same for the latest price rise. After that fuss, they actually delayed the price rise so that people could sign up and grandfather themselves in at that point.
I'm paying a tenner a month or something (on an annual basis) - I get much better value from that than I do for my £40pm gym membership.

I looked into coaching last year. Cheapest ones seem to be around £50pm, and they go rapidly up from there. Ric Stern is running some group coaching experiment at the moment at £25pm (I'm on some email list but know nothing else), so maybe that's a useful mid-point for someone who would prefer coaching but thinks TR is too expensive.

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #4 on: 14 October, 2019, 10:22:20 am »
My own favorite is using it to control the Sufferfest vids I bought historically, so my obvious path is the Sufferfest app fo $10, and I can add Zwift if I get the inclination. The rest of the TR stuff I don't use.

Because of my lack of engagement I missed the price hike warning, I may well have locked into the $7 if I could.

simonp

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #5 on: 14 October, 2019, 10:35:28 am »
At the price I went in at, in 2015, the value is incredible. Plus they have their podcast, and they are continually developing the product. This was their justification for the latest price increase, to fund further recruitment (i.e. it's not just for work already done).

My concern is that they will find it much harder to sign up new users at this price point, so it will harm their growth.

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #6 on: 14 October, 2019, 10:44:44 am »
One message going around independent software developers lately is that pricing your product very low to maximise number of users is the wrong strategy, and that increasing your prices doesn't put off as many people as you might fear.

Essentially, amongst the subset of users who are willing to pay *anything* for a product, their sensitivity to what that price is is very small.

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #7 on: 14 October, 2019, 11:02:31 am »
The "going rate" for subs seems to be $5-$10/month, while trying to build subs by undercutting to a low value is unlikely to succeed, $20/month is double that and therefore significant. I suspect that Zwift or one of the other big participant apps will add facilities and eat their breakfast.

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #8 on: 14 October, 2019, 11:23:45 am »
That's the old wisdom. The thing is Zwift is such a big player (at least in terms of marketing) that people will only be using Trainer Road if they genuinely prefer it. So you might as well charge those people a sustainable price rather than go bankrupt chasing market share.

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #9 on: 14 October, 2019, 03:50:58 pm »
It's apples and oranges, you can't compare the quality of training between Trainer Road and Zwift. Zwift is a computer game which may have the side effect of improving your fitness- the workouts are, erm, patchy, it's (relatively) easy to "cheat" [just by weight doping, for a start] and the workout plans not great either- apart from anything else you're stuck in a week long cycle which is poor for anyone over 50 who will probably need more rest built in.
A better comparison would be training Peaks + a coaching plan. That's $99 + tax for TP and the sky's the limit for a training plan. And not all of those are great.
You can use free software to design your own workouts, so really, you don't have to pay anything. You're paying for expertise and I think Trainer Road gives you a lot of that.

[I found it very dull]

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #10 on: 14 October, 2019, 09:08:58 pm »
That's the old wisdom. The thing is Zwift is such a big player (at least in terms of marketing) that people will only be using Trainer Road if they genuinely prefer it. So you might as well charge those people a sustainable price rather than go bankrupt chasing market share.
The only downside to that is that the people who have it and love it are grandfathered in so don't pay all that much.
That said, I agree with fboab - the analysis and calendaring tools are clearly aimed at providing an alternative to TP. I think that's their market - people who would have a personal coach if it weren't too expensive. That's a different market to the likes of Zwift and Peleton, though significantly smaller.
I like TR, but that's probably because I fit very nicely into their nice. I've not tried Zwift, because I don't want to race indoors and I don't have a big screen to view the race/surroundings on. I just want to get faster for when I can ride outside.

rob

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #11 on: 14 October, 2019, 10:14:21 pm »
I pay my coach quite a bit more than that but I don’t really have to think.

telstarbox

  • Loving the lanes
Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #12 on: 14 October, 2019, 10:56:19 pm »
One message going around independent software developers lately is that pricing your product very low to maximise number of users is the wrong strategy, and that increasing your prices doesn't put off as many people as you might fear.

Essentially, amongst the subset of users who are willing to pay *anything* for a product, their sensitivity to what that price is is very small.
Do you think that Strava would also become a paid product one day?
2019 🏅 R1000 and B1000

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #13 on: 15 October, 2019, 05:47:08 am »
They already are for the  "Summit" addon - https://www.strava.com/summit/join

Priced to interest sufficient of their huge userbase to sign up to make it interesting

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #14 on: 15 October, 2019, 08:51:49 am »
They already are for the  "Summit" addon - https://www.strava.com/summit/join

Priced to interest sufficient of their huge userbase to sign up to make it interesting

Strava are still hemorrhaging VC money and haven't really found a way to sustain themselves given they employ somewhere around ~150 people and have relatively little income.

Expect them to raise the prices considerably (as grams has mentioned others have) and to shuffle some of the useful functionality along up to more and more expensive tiers. The main problem with Strava is that they don't have a big unique feature that would get people to pay a lot more for it - their analysis stuff isn't very good at all (and is woeful for running or swimming).

The model for subscription services like these seems to be get people to pay a small amount for something and then once they're paying a small amount you can push them onto higher and higher tiers much more easily.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #15 on: 15 October, 2019, 09:21:35 am »
The model for subscription services like these seems to be get people to pay a small amount for something and then once they're paying a small amount you can push them onto higher and higher tiers much more easily.
This is true for many subscription services, but doesn't apply to TR - they leave existing subscribers on their original price plans and don't have any tiered options. I expect that as well as good PR it means that people are much less likely to drop it in the summer and come back in the winter, ensuring their revenue stream is more seasonally stable.

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #16 on: 21 October, 2019, 10:42:01 am »
I pay my coach quite a bit more than that but I don’t really have to think.

Interesting:  I used a coach last year, which I paid £250 per month for.  However it didn't work well for me because it denied me the opportunity to think and to understand what I was doing / why.  I used TR this year and got on far better with it because I got a lot more of the 'Why' rather than just sessions to do. 

Different people are looking for different things but, for me, TR was far better than someone widely seen as being a good coach.

rob

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #17 on: 21 October, 2019, 11:16:49 am »
I pay my coach quite a bit more than that but I don’t really have to think.

Interesting:  I used a coach last year, which I paid £250 per month for.  However it didn't work well for me because it denied me the opportunity to think and to understand what I was doing / why.  I used TR this year and got on far better with it because I got a lot more of the 'Why' rather than just sessions to do. 

Different people are looking for different things but, for me, TR was far better than someone widely seen as being a good coach.

Ouch.  I pay £60/mth for a personalised plan.   I would love to understand the training process a bit more, but he has dragged quite a lot of improvement out of me for what seems to be a reasonable amount.   He seems genuinely interested in what I do and it's quite different from what some of his other riders do - I suppose there's not that many people pushing to do long distance TTs on fixed.   

Re: Trainer Road ... HOW MUCH ? ? ? !!1!
« Reply #18 on: 22 October, 2019, 09:42:31 am »
Yes, I expect he learned quite a bit from coaching you and, when you started getting results, it must have been rewarding for him.  And for you, it worked well, so good for you both!