Would it be possible to offer a model where you pay for Trainerroad costs by the number of training hours?
Pricing could be something like this:
50 hour training cost for example $ 40
100 hour training cost for example $ 75
200 hour training cost for example $ 140
I think it could be a WIN WIN situation, depends on the price (fair for both sides) , for a user view it is easier to handle holidays or Injuries, where you can’t ride?
What do you think?
Sorry to say but it’s probably a lose here for trainer road. You’re talking less than $1 per workout.
Think of a low volume plan with roughly 12 workouts a month which works to like $12. Why would you pay for the subscription?
I think you’d have to charge something like $6-8 per hr or per workout. This would make folks if they are dedicated users to pay for the sub after like 3 workouts.
Wow that’s going to get expensive for anyone doing a triathlon plan. Also remember that a lot of us are grandfathered in at lower prices so a model like you suggest is very unattractive.
An injury button - stop paying for a certain period - would be appreciated
Seems that would be rife for abuse - the injury button
if people are “seasonal” users of TR, switch to the pay monthly schedule. You can pause and restart whenever you want.
How much for 600 hours pa? $360?
Would it be all hours on the calendar or just indoor trainer rides? What if you do a TR sessions outside?
Fully agree - so should consider how to implement.
I could certainly imagine being a low-volume user where a pay as you go type model makes more sense. For example, I’d like to do a couple zwift rides per month, but there’s no way I’m going to pay $20 for that. Most months I don’t even use the free 25km. I would pay $20 to have 10 hours or so of riding banked up so if I wanted to use it I could. But back to TR, I’m not sure ‘casual user’ is really the target audience.
Okay - well you’re probably going to have to offer TR something more than just throwing this over the fence at them. 
From their perspective - this feature would be all downside.
This is all downside for TR.
if you’re not grandfathered - then sure you just cancel your account and re-enable. if you are grandfathered, well - if you’re truly coming back to the platform and let’s say you’re out 1 year you’ll make up the $100 in the year after that.
maybe some loss in customer sat/loyalty here - but I’d argue if a customer got injured and they were 100% upset that they couldn’t pause and left the platform because of this, that this proverbial customer probably wasn’t exactly they type of customer you may have wanted to retain in the first place - or at least it’s a potentially difficult segment of the customer base to hold and retain.
Not a fan of the idea, I think you’re paying for a service and it’s not like the amount of hours training you do has any impact on the costs of running TR. This would only benefit low volume users but as I said you’re paying for the upkeep of a service.
They could offer a teaser plan to get people hooked … like 3 months for $29.99. And make it once per email address/account so people don’t just do that every winter.
It’s too bad so many online services are getting so expensive. Strava wants $60/year for their weak extra features. I’d be happier with Strava is everybody just paid $1/month.
Yeah, sorry, not a good idea. It’s not like TR incurs fewer expenses on lower volume users. They have the same costs to develop and if you start to segment the users it inherently becomes unfair. An analogy is in the case of health insurance, where you pay the same rate as someone else, even if you don’t use the same level of services (not to turn this into a debate of health insurance but risk pooling is a good thing).
Anyhow, lower volume people have the same experience as higher volume as far as features and ultimately were supporting the training platform and future development
Unlike health insurance, it costs hardly anything extra to provide service to 500 hour per year user versus a 50 hour per year user.
TR though isn’t a public utility. They want to make as much money as they can and will explore whatever pricing models maximize profit and long term sustainability.
If you are on a monthly sub plan, you can do just that. You can stop at the end of any month, and start again when you want.
I like the idea of this post. My recommendation however is to have a lower tier for those who do not require high volume or specialty plans.
It makes no sense for someone who only uses SSBLV to pay $189 a year.
I can’t believe there are people complaining about their $100 grandfathered plans when I’m paying so much.
I’m on a non-grandfathered monthly plan - so around 20-21 CAD per month depending on the exchange rate. 240-255 CAD per year. And I don’t think it’s a bad deal at all. It compares well to the alternatives.
And doing LV plans, by the way.
Well I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. The current pricing model doesn’t make sense for MTBers who want to do structured training, but still prioritize their outside riding over that training. Clearly I’m not the only one who thinks there is a better way, hence this post.
I think this is a really bad idea, because it sets the wrong incentives. People wouldn’t want to exceed their threshold so that they don’t get into the next pricing tier. If Plan Builder suggests a training plan with 102 hours on it rather than 99, some people would be up in arms because TrainerRoad wants to rip them off (in their view). Plus, the costs don’t scale with the hours that you spend on the bike, so also from TR’s perspective that’d be quite bad.
Just no.
IMHO what TrainerRoad could eventually do is release extra, optional features to differentiate between different tiers. But have a look at Strava’s Summit debacle for paying members. I paid for Strava, but never got around to activating any of my premium features, because I didn’t know how exactly and which one would work best for me.
I know this won’t be popular, but IMHO TrainerRoad is already way too nice with its pricing — because once you are grandfathered in, you stay at that pricing until you cancel your subscription.
I would have to defend TR on this one. I paid the ~230 CAD for there annual subscription. Although you may look at it as just logging on and seeing a clean piece of software there are so many hours going into the hour of structured training.
Being a application developer it seems to be more people are expecting to get as much as they can for free. Being on a hourly basis would not cover all the work TR does to research the best methods to make you faster. There is an awesome support team like @Bryce always looking to help people. Then you have marketing. Then production staff for a free podcast. I look at TR with Plan Builder as my personalized coaching so that I don’t need to think much about what I am going to do to get stronger.