I have been a Strava premium user for several years now. I signed up for the free service back in 2016 when I started training for my 2017 marathon attempt. Back then, combined with my Garmin Fenix watch, it was great to have the Beacon service so my wife could follow me when I was out running solo on my long runs. The Beacon feature was/is a great way to let someone know where you are at, especially if you should be home and you are not since it allows them to see where your last known location was. When Strava moved that feature behind its paywall, I chose to subscribe. I believe that was in 2017 or 2018. It was the only feature I felt like paying $5 per month was worth. And, to me, it was worth every penny.
This morning, I woke up to an email from Strava notifying me that my annual subscription rate was going to increase from $59 to $79 per year; a 33.9% increase. It essentially increased my monthly fee from $5 to $6.58. I was happy paying the roughly $5 per month to Strava in order to help support their service and development. They currently have around 400 employees and have millions of users. Of those users, I have no idea how many are paying customers (monthly or yearly), so I really cannot make a judgement on how much they need to make in order to make ends meet. However, they generated over $100 million in the past which is roughly $263,000 per employee. And, yes, I know infrastructure costs money, but the $20 per year price hike seems a bit of an overstretch to me. I also run my own business and rent server and data storage, so I know a little about the costs. Given that, I still think this is overkill for the price.
That said, I have cancelled my Strava subscription. I just do not get enough benefit out of the app to justify paying an additional $20 per year. It was good for peace of mind when I could pay $5 per month to give some assurance to my wife that I was still moving and not laying on the side of the road somewhere. However, as my runs have decreased recently, I will not pay more for the service. It was a good run (pun intended) while it lasted. I wish Strava the best moving forward. Hopefully they have not priced themself out of a good amount users.