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news
2024 Zwift summer update“I’ll see you in the winter”: Zwift accused of “taking subscribers for granted” as monthly subscription rises from £12.99 to £17.99 – but company says price hike “necessary” for platform’s development
Zwift has been accused of “taking its subscribers for granted” after the popular virtual online training app announced yesterday that the cost of its monthly subscription was rising from £12.99 to £17.99 – a 38.5 per cent price hike.
However, Zwift says the prise rise, the first time the company has raised its fees since 2017 and coming just three months after co-CEO Kurt Biedler resigned amid further redundancies, is “necessary” to support the “future development of the platform”.
Yesterday, Zwift users were sent an email informing them that the cost of using the virtual training app was set to rise to £17.99 per month from £12.99, a price that had been in place since November 2017, when the monthly cost jumped from £7.99. US-based users will see their fees rise from $14.99 to $19.99 (an increase of 33 per cent), while European Zwifters will now have to shell out €19.99 a month to use the platform.
The changes are set to come into effect across the world from 6 June, and will apply to both new and existing members.
In the email sent to consumers, Zwift said: “We hope you’re enjoying your time on Zwift. We have worked hard to keep prices locked since 2017 and have made this change to allow us to continue making indoor cycling fun with more content experiences and product innovation.”
> Zwift users unhappy over price increase from £7.99 to £12.99 a month
However, despite Zwift being one of the last virtual training platforms to increase its prices in recent years, the decision has come under fire from customers, who accused the company of treating them like “cash cows”.
“It appears Zwift have introduced a new climb – a 40 per cent price hike,” British comedian and writer Stephen Grant posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Not sure I’m fit enough for that. And oh look, it’s sunny. Byeeee!”
“Wow! Zwift proving to be the latest company to take their subscribers for granted. £18 per month? Goodbye,” wrote James.
“Wonder how many people cancelled their Zwift membership today?” asked Chris. “£12.99 was just about justifiable for something that was a fun distraction, but I don’t ride indoors anywhere near enough to spend £17.99 a month.
“Bold move to increase prices by 40 per cent just as the weather is improving.”
“If Zwift had explained to me why their prices were increasing – such as improvements to the platform – then I’d have contemplated staying,” added Bob. “However, it’s just a basic ‘f*** you, we’re hiking prices, deal with it’. So I’ll see you in the winter, lads.”
> Strava criticised after monthly subscription price rises by almost 30 percent
Responding to this widespread criticism, a Zwift spokesperson told road.cc that while it is “never an easy decision” to raise prices, this latest hike is necessary due to the increased costs of running and growing the popular platform.
“We have worked hard to keep prices locked since 2017. In response to rising costs and inflation, we have changed our membership fee to support the continued development of our platform experience,” the spokesperson told road.cc.
“It is never an easy decision to increase prices but it now costs more to run the business than it did in 2017 and it is necessary to raise prices in order to support the future development of the platform.
“Zwifting today is a very different experience to 2017 when there were just three worlds and Group Workouts were just starting to be experimented with.
“We are proud of the additional platform benefits introduced since 2017 that Zwifters now enjoy daily. With an additional seven worlds, two event maps, plus a host of new experiences like the always-on Robo Pacer group rides, or the Climb Portal that transports Zwifters to iconic climbs from the world over. The possibilities on Zwift have never been greater.
“And yet the best is to come. Zwift will always be investing into the future of our member's product experience. The most recent edition of This Season on Zwift revealed some of the highlights Zwifters can expect to see over the coming months.
“We are committed to delivering more user benefits, new game features, and content experiences in the months and years ahead.”
As noted earlier, the price hike set for June comes in the wake of a turbulent few years for Zwift, whose co-CEO Kurt Biedler resigned in February following the third wave of staff lay-offs in the space of two years.
Those February job losses – the exact number of which Zwift refused to clarify, except to note that they impacted “all areas of the business” – came after around 150 staff were let go in May 2022 before a further 80 jobs were cut the following March, that second round of redundancies accounting for around 15 per cent of the workforce.
Despite the redundancies and boardroom turbulence, Zwift nevertheless insisted that the company “remains a healthy, global business with a passionate community”.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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33 comments
If you're searching for a different experience, one where the visuals on-screen come from Google Street view, check out drumuri.bike. Runs within a browser. I've used both Win11-Chrome and a Samsung Tablet successfully.
Could Road CC please ask Zwift why UK subscribers have to pay 13% more than those in the USA and 5% more than those in Europe? I am genuinely interested.
I will just cancel my monthly memembership for a couple of "quiet months", when I used to leave it running, to ensure they don't actually get any more money out of me
Currency exchange costs & data centre costs are higher in the UK, would be the logical guess, but maybe the reality is simply because we still pay it in the UK
See also Netflix,Disney, Apple, Amazon prime
I think they're seriously delusional and aiming for the pelaton brigade who will pay £££ for the "online experience.". I stopped paying in 2018 and only use it for running - guess that's still free?
Prefer to watch Netflix and keep an eye on my Watts per 3 seconds - when the weather is so bad or I'm sick of washing my bike!
I think this is the only data that they probably can't really assess accurately. They can tell how often, how long, what sort of stuff people do in Zwift but they can't tell what attention people are actually giving it.
I am like you, I have zwift as basically a UI for HR, power and duration of workout but I barely look at it. I watch a film or tv show. £130/year wasn't too much for that. £180/year? Maybe that is.
I switched to MyWhoosh sometime ago and I can't ever see myself switching back. They are still saying it will always be free and the constant improvements they keep rolling out are excellent. I don't care though about racing or training plans or community. I just want something I can jump on for an hour or two with some nice routes. With the impending World Championships on the platform I wouldn't be shocked to see another big update in the next few weeks.
The presence of UAE money backing it troubles me. I disagree with their attitude to human rights.
I struggled to justify it when it went up to £13.. and only stuck with them to ride with mates.. there are other alternatives out there.
I very much doubt I'll be rejoining at £18 a month this winter. I suspect I shall very much be shopping around the other online training software options come winter.
FWIW I have not had an in line with inflation payrise or indeed any payrise since before COVID. So justifying inflation based hikes can get fucked.
I've thought about this since yesterday, and I'm going to keep going with Zwift. I won't see the increase until January as I'm on the annual subscription. I've been using it since 2015 (it was free in beta then), and I don't there's much else out there that compares in terms of user volume, immersion and the right mix of training & gamification (I think TR would be a bit too plan focused for me). MyWhoosh is free yes, and has big money behind it, but I can't see it staying free forever, and it's ad supported, if you're not paying for a product or service, you are the product or service.
As others have pointed out, the price rise is broadly similar to where it would have been had it it been a little more incremental, and there are many other cycling related things I spend more on. I've got it running in 4K 2160p with the ultra graphics profile so it looks great for me - the rest of my indoor kit wasn't exactly low budget (Tacx Neo Smart bike, GeForce 4050 RTX graphics, surround audio, 43" 4K TV), so an extra £1 a week is worth it for me, particularly if it means they stay solvent.
Is the main picture above the headline demonstrating how it'll look in the future as it looks pretty cool?
Wish they'd get rid of the Zwifter's nearby thing on the right of the screen though as I really couldn't care less!
Unsure as to whether this increase will prompt me to cancel; Trainerroad is pretty much the same price and none of the alternatives seem that great to me.
Yep, new HUD coming in the summer, it's configurable too...
https://zwiftinsider.com/tsoz-pr-summer-2024/
Another nice feature was released last week - "My List" in the companion app, you can pre-select routes and workouts in the companion app on your phone, and then when you log into Zwift to ride, they're presented on screen to choose.
Yeah, I spotted the new "My List" the other day but it doesn't appear to feature workouts which auto-import for that day from Training Peaks. Although that being said, the workouts do now automatically appear on the "For You" bit of the landing page when you log in on the laptop which means I don't have to go searching for them anymore!
There is a Zwift-like alternative that I've been using over the winter which I'm pretty happy with aside from stability issues (crashes) which the devs have improved upon recently with a "Go" version for Windows. It's the one advertised on the back of Tadej Pogacar's shorts (something Whoosh). It doesn't have the large community of Zwift, but they do have Sunday races and some other events if that's your thing (not into events personally - just want to get in a good structured workout for about a hour usually).
Not everyone is comfortable with the Abu Dhabi's stance on human rights.
I cancelled my subscription in March, now contemplating whether to bother re-activating this winter. (you can cancel without deleting your account, for pauses longer than 8 weeks)
But to try and play Devil's Advocate, I did a quick check on the figures.
Zwift price in the UK has been £12.99 since 2017.
The Bank of England has an inflation calculator. This only works for entering whole pounds for input so I had to round up the figure by 1p. Inflation puts a cost or value of £13.00 in 2017 to £16.73 in 2024. So by that figure the Zwift subscription increase is £1.26 above inflation.
It's not massively over, but the fact that Zwift held off price increases previously means that being forced to do a bigger jump later seems to be biting them on the backside. £16.99 is closer in line to inflation, but it's still a near 25% jump. The backlash would still be there, but smaller and more easily justifiable. Perhaps if they went to £14.99 in 2022 this increase might not have been necessary. Hindsight is 20/20, of course.
indeed if it had been 2017 £13, 2019 £14, 2021, £15, 2023 £17, 2024 £18, no one would have even cared. But it's still £18 a month for something I haven't used since August when I took my old bike off the trainer for PBP. (lighter/quicker than my titanium bike, and more comfortable for long distances than my aero bike )
It was 7.99 in 2017, they increased it to 12.99 in November that year. So they've already had one of those 30+% price hikes baked in.
They would also have had years of that extra income and perhaps spent that money on delivering more value to their customers or sorting out their supposedly junk codebase to allow for a better future outlook.
True. It's not the cost I mind but the fact UK users get charged way more than other countries.
Valid point. Just looked up the current exchange rates. But our currency is a smaller market so it's not uncommon amongst global brands in any industry.
There's also tax to consider. Is zwift run on the amazon* model in the UK and paying almost no tax because their operations are overseas and their uk based operation has to pay large licensing fees to their offshore headquarters thereby reducing their 'profit' to almost nil from the UK.
*other megacorps doing this exist.
Surely they would have been better off moving to a tiered subscription model, with a premium option for those who want the latest features/new worlds etc.
How many people left? Given that the Zwift website went down under the demand yesterday, I'd guess "a lot". Odd time to do it, really - far better business sense to have done it in October knowing you've got a captive audience as the weather turns. All it's actually served to do is remind me that my subscription was still active and so I've cancelled it for the summer.
My email must have got lost in the post...or ether...or whatever.
I always cancel when the weather gets better anyway, so this article was a good reminder to do so again - and have time to think about next winter. I do wonder if the subscribers they will lose will be compensated by the price increase?
I imagine it will come out as roughly equal. Then come the winter it will pick up a bit. Would be amazed if their 40% price increase resulted in much more than a 10-15% increase in income for them though. They would have been better served with more regular and lower increases.
Difficult to judge, do they ever post details about active users? averages per hour kind of metrics?
the cancel subs part of their website was struggling under the load yesterday , much like their group rides do thesedays.
I'll definitely pause till Autumn and see how they react to the situation as it develops.
In theory if the price has gone up roughly by 1/3rd, they can lose 1/3rd of their subs base. Though that isn't enough to sustain them based on their reasons for the increase.
I've just paused mine, the longest pause I could select is 8 weeks. I haven't used it in a while, so this was the nudge to get me to stop paying.
The official pause is max 8 weeks, but you can full-on cancel. If you come back within [x] months, it's all still there (including XP) I think.
This increase is good news for the cycling industry it will drive people off zwift back onto rl riding and hopefully resume buying clothing and equipment again as riding on zwift only needs replacement shorts once the initial trainer has been brought
Well that's some pretty spectacular nonsense you've got going there. Everyone I know who uses Zwift is also a keen road rider with multiple bikes and a big wardrobe of kit. Have you got any proof that anything but a tiny minority just ride Zwift and don't do any "rl riding"?
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