Subscription model and/or separate services

I’m sure it’s already been considered, but I’d really suggest some form of a subscription possibility for intervals.icu. The quicker you have an option for people to pay (with transaction costs for site and user that are not obscene), and clear value differentiation between free and paid, the better for your growth over time.

While you could simply make some features only available to paid users, you could also add specific services that would be paid-only (and later can bundle or modify). For example, a major pain point for many people, including me, seems to be a central place to deposit all our workouts/rides, keep them safe, and then ideally upload to other networks we want to use. I’d pay for that in a heartbeat.

Obviously, such a service would need to import from Wahoo, Garmin, Strava, and multiple sources. But then, it’d be fantastic if it would automatically make a backup copy of each ride’s FIT file for me on Dropbox or Google Drive, and then upload to Strava or Training Peaks or wherever the user says. The hassle of getting all my workouts from their source (Wahoo, Garmin, StagesBike, Zwift) into Training Peaks, and uploaded to Strava to share with friends, and trying to keep a backup copy of each workout/ride, is really a pain.

If you can import all my rides, make a backup copy, and upload to Strava or whatever, that’s worth $50 a year to me. And that’s a service you can sell to ANYONE, whether they’re an intervals.icu user or not.

A much bigger challenge (I’d guess) is duplicating the calendar, custom-workout creation, and library tools from something like TP. But those alone are worth the price of the TP Premium plan I pay for.

Just a couple of ideas. But whatever you do, please… PLEASE… keep it pretty brand-agnostic. There’s plenty of Wahoo-only users, Garmin-only users, etc. But a lot of us use multiple tools and ecosystems.

1 Like

Tx. I am already going down the “central storage place” direction as part of the separation from Strava work. I need to store all the data anyway for analytics. Making backups to Google drive or Dropbox should be easy.

There are issues with Strava: The Strava API does not give out the original files + if they revoke Intervals.icu API access then I have to delete everything I have from them i.e. all of your rides. So you definitely don’t want to be using Strava as your store currently!

If anyone is worried about this and has a lot of data on Strava you can request it from them: https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216918437-Exporting-your-Data-and-Bulk-Export#Bulk

I could probably upload files to Strava. Training Peaks is likely to be an issue because Intervals.icu is a competitor. On that topic Intervals.icu does have a workout builder, workout library, training plans etc…

I have started with Garmin Connect because they have an open API and give out the original .fit files. I have also implemented manual upload. So far I haven’t managed to get API access to Wahoo or Zwift. But yes the plan is to support as many integrations as possible (also on the workout upload side e.g. to RGT).

As for the commercial side of this I will have to see about that. I am working on integrating Stripe so I don’t have to use Patreon (they take more than 20%!) or Paypal (they raid random fees all over the place). But currently I don’t have plans to move away from donations (subscription and once off). Need to break the Strava link to remove that risk first anyway.

4 Likes

Understood. All of these are just suggestions based on what I hear others needing, or that I need and would pay for. Hopefully some of them are useful, either now or later.

So for now, what’s the most efficient and practical method of supporting the site?

Probably Patreon. Tx!

1 Like

OK. I’m already there, but I’d never noticed text or anything suggesting donations until one day some popup (I think) suggested it. Happy to support… maybe if you put a visible “Support Us!” link somewhere, like right above “About” on the left sidebar, people like me who aren’t paying close attention would see it sooner.

(Not sure where else you’re suggesting donations/Patreon, but don’t be shy… people don’t help if they’re not asked, and if you ask nicely you’ll never offend anyone.)

The popup and note on the settings page (probably the popup) has drastically increase Patreon and PayPal donations. The popup repeats every 5 days or so on each device if you aren’t a supporter. So someone who is actively using Intervals.icu is going to see it fairly often.

5 Likes

Is Stripe cheaper? I agree, PayPal takes like close to 30-50% cut IIRC and its worst when its a small amount.

EU cards: 1.4% + 20p
Non-EU cards: 2.9% + 20p

So thats approx 10% on $4 for a non-EU payment. So will likely aim at quarterly or annual to reduce the flat cost.

I was thinking of a sub.

I got the popup it was very easy.

Great site. I am happy to contribute and hope you successful. Good luck @david

3 Likes

Hi @David I just found out about PayPal Micropayments (how can-i-update-my-payment-preferences-for-micropayments) and sees like this will greatly reduce the amount that PayPal takes away.

Personal Acc - USD1, PayPal takes ~40%
Business Acc w/ Micropayments - USD1, PayPal take ~10% (5% + 0.05USD per transaction)

did you explore that?

No I didn’t know about that. It took 3-4 days to integrate Stripe and they have a reputation as being easy to develop with. So I will probably stick with them for now, rather spend time on functionality.

2 Likes