Zwift users unhappy over price increase from £7.99 to £12.99 a month

It was very cheap before.

It's still great value.

It has transformed indoor training for me, personally.

It's well worth it and I love it!

£13...a life changing sum!

I've got echo the voices here expressing dismay at the scale of the rise. The new price is equivalent to the charges MMORPG's such as World of Warcraft and EVE Online ask from their subscribers. I think that in and of itself indicates where Zwift see themselves going. Or perhaps the venture capital they've attracted sees things. So, for me, the question becomes does Zwift offer the same value proposition as one of those MMORPGs? As an end user I find the answer at this point is a distinct no. There's stuff I'd expect at this price point that is entirely missing, such as the lack of an internal mail system for contacting other Zwifters offline, the ability to contact staff in game and the ability to form persistent groups of players. Other features such as racing and events seem to be coming along, though still somewhat underdeveloped.

Others have already pointed out the now lower cost of other training tools. I'm also going to add that the Chinese Onelap does much of what Zwift currently does, with reduced turbo support, for free. Don't think Zwift have made the best descision here.

I'm more bothered by the fact that it's gone from $10 to $15 - so should be about £11 - not £13. Sufferfest seem to manage to bill me fine for about £7.40 which is about $10 so why can't zwift do it instead of ramping it up for UK users and stinging us for an extra couple of quid each - not much but the principle involved?

I wonder how many have done the reverse and signed back up to lock in the £8/month fee?

I had an account but wasn’t currently subscribing as I’ve been using TrainerRoad but got sent the email that said I had till Dec 15th to lock in the old rate. Guess what, I’ve signed back up and Zwift has got £8 out of me!

If you think the product is worth the new price, pay the new price.  If you don't think it is worth the new price, don't pay it.  That is, roughly speaking, how the market works.

Possibly true they undervalued. This said I spend nothing on sportives, fancy energy drinks and supplements for fuelling and still think it's a bit much going from 8 to 13. Maybe they should sell in blocks so if you want only a few months they get £13 a month but only £8 if you do the whole year. Works well for Xbox live.

I'm a cold weather user so 4 months is my max usage.

Its still better than the mess that is bkool. I put that back on for a trial again and it's still a nightmare interface. It also tells me my gpx routes and others I've downloaded have unrealistic gradients and wont load them half the time.

I don't use Zwift, nor any indoor training social network, but I do wonder how many folk complaining here are the same folk how consume several pounds-worth of energy drinks and often unnecessary bars on every club ride, more on the coffee and cake at the end of it, and what does it cost to enter a sportive? £35?

It seems £13 a month for all that Zwift offers is well worth the money. The problem is, they under-valued it at £8 a month.

I've had Zwift and Sufferfest subscriptions since both sorted me out some decent free trials last year and I just kept them on. I have hardly used the Zwift one, and I haven't even thought about joining a group ride or a race because not enough of my friends use it. Sufferfest does the job for me and they just upped their game with 4DP. I haven't got a smart turbo so don't need to worry about the app controlling my trainer, I guess if you've got that sort of money you aren't worried about a few quid a month.

I was paying the monthly fee for a year or so without hardly using it so now I'm grateful as it's given me the push I needed to cancel it!!

I guess zwift will become a more serious place. A bit like the clubs who won't let you ride with them if you don't have a drop bar road bike/ helmet/ club kit and won't wait if you can't keep up with their pace. I'm sure their group rides look great in photos and on strava, but I'm not sure it's much fun, and definitely not inclusive. Give me a nice sociable group that goes at a reasonable speed and waits for the slower/ older/ newer riders at tops of hills.

Who needs a class system when you have cycling to weed out the rich from the poor?

Folk have been asking me to try Zwift but I definitely won't be now

62% rise is plain stupid. Having recently set up an indoor smart trainer zwift was on the list to try, not now. To be fair I probably wouldn't have stuck with it anyway, prefer a real road feel than a shitty 3 or 4 virtual world courses.

As for the rise, Sky tried to put my bill up 1.5% that encouraged me to check the bill. I was paying for 3D without owning a 3D TV so that went, then I realised I barely have time for Sky Sports, that went as did the movies for my wife. The 1.5% lost them around £50 and then I moved the broadband et al elsewhere within 6 months...

"BKOOL: £8 a month. Used with Bkool's own £349 Smart Go Trainer, this is the cheapest smart training solution currently available. Includes simulation for immersive training, specialised workouts and video classes. "

Didn't you correct this in a previous article?

My darling wife spends £130 a month on a Barrecore subscription for all you can eat exercise classes. £12.99 is probably still pretty good value given I get ~8  hours a week on my trainer than the 3 hours exercise classes my other half enjoys. I'm aware its an apples and pears thing but still its not rocket money is it in a month for what value you can get out of it? Ironically I pay it but ~1hr a week on Zwift, ~7hrs Sufferfest as it's just exactly a does what it says on the tin thing, brutal fantastic focused immersive training.  Zwift, I'm trying to learn to love as much as others obviously do, reckon I'll get there but at that price summer may see me take a break, previously I'd let it run. 

Let's face it no price increase will be popular but if it went from £8 to £10 I wouldn't have batted an eyelid.

Even if it went beyond that but was reduced if say you paid a year upfront then I would've been fine with that also. The sheer scale of the increase all in 1 go is taking the mickey frankly.

I guess I'm fortunate in that I won't see it raised until this time next year. Zwift then have a year to convince me (and others) that whatever developments they have in the pipeline will justify the costs.

I must say I wasn’t surprised to see the price increase. I’m a new Zwift user (one month) and love it. For base training indoor rides it’s completely replaced TR (which I’m also subscribed to).  I have to admit to wondering how they funded their business with such a small subscription fee.  They have 140 employees at the moment (according to the ceo on Zwift podcast), and simple maths tells you that’s a s**t load of subscriptions required to cover all those salaries.  I seriously doubt that even with this price increase they’ll cover their costs.  

As others have mentioned 62% is proportionately a lot, but £5 in absolute terms is not.  For something you may use for hours and hours a month it still represents excellent value to the committed indoor cyclist.   Still, I’m sure many will feel agrieved, will complain about features not being introduced and then drop £250 this Christmas on some aero handlebars that will do nothing to make them faster.  You pays your money you make your choices.

Bad move. 

I’ve been on Zwift since the start and paid £8 per month every month (£96 per year) despite getting 90% of my use from it between October and March. 

I still think its the best indoor training software but will let the next year run at £8 then when the £13 kicks in swap to just paying for the six months I mainly use it. 

Zwifts annual income from me will fall to £78.

Really they should offer a discounted annual subscription at the same time this would keep their income and give them some budgetting certainty. 

It's a business and they should have worked out how many people will cancel versus how many will stay at a range of given price rises.

The sweet spot appears to be 62%, registrations will fall, profits rise and in a couple of weeks the furure will have died downand registrations will start to build again, thusly icreasing profits even more.

Or, they've fucked up big time.

'Do you ask the same questions when your council tax or water rates or electric go up every year? I doubt it.'
I'm guessing yes if the % was on this scale.

I've used Zwift since the beta and will continue to use it through the winter months but as others have said, the size of the price rise in terms of % is just plain wrong. 

Currently, if you subscribe to Veloviewer Pro you can get Sufferfest free for 60 days.

I really like their training vids, they are far superior to any training programe on Zwift but Zwift's racing is awesome, even if I am crap at it. However, the Sufferfest app is poor at controlling your trainer in comparison to Zwift.

I'm now going to check out FulGaz after reading about it on here.

I’m  disappointed with this move.  I have enjoyed the journey and find it highly immersive but I feel that doubling the fee is too much.   I will see what he next 12 months bring and will make a call.  Its a shame but they have just made a gap in the market.  Thanks Zwift.

So with the sufferfest stuff - I'm a subscriber there as well, and for me, I think their issues are way bigger than what zwift have. when the trainer doesn't respond as well as zwift or trainer road then there's a serious issue with a subscription service... yet still, I wait for a fix.

62% increase is porportional - this is something that was the cost of 3 coffees a month, now going to the cost of 5 (maybe)... if you like fancy coffee.  Wow.  1k+ trainer, but we're going to bitch about the costs of an extra coffee a month....

Your statement around 'the user base is increasing at a rate that easily pays for it' is naive and so not accurate. You don't have that data and you are speculating on what it takes to run an 24/7 service that is highly available.

Seriously - drop the stuff around 'A roadmap of promised improvements...' do you you know how much it costs to run this type of stuff?  I'm in the same industry and this stuff doesn't come cheap to build or run or respond to issues.   Keeping the lights on and maintaining a service is hard enough!

Do you ask the same questions when your council tax or water rates or electric go up every year?  I doubt it. 

As I said - if its too much for you, then leave the platform. Otherwise take a moment to think about how much it costs to run this type of thing.

I guess what this discussion just clarifies for me is how little the average user/customer understands about the costs involved in actually producing a service of the standard of Zwift.

i have been in the market for such a system, but at this price will not use Zwift, Trainerroad or sufferfest instead

TrainerRoad is cheaper and better

Well it was a toss up between Zwift and TR. Was going to sign up to Zwift next Monday. Looks like I'll now be checking some of the links on here. If they don't appeal it'll be TR. I don't suppose Zwift will reconsider due to the loss of my cash.

It's £12.99 a month, which is absolutely nothing these days. You could easily spend that on a couple of drinks on one night. Get a grip. It's by far the best indoor cycling platform out there. Social, racing, training, casual rides. It has everything for those who like to train indoors