Changes to Strava Group Challenges

Hi there, will the change apply to users who join a group challenge or just to those who want to create a group challenge? We would like to create a challenge for volunteers at our charity to all participate in and were wondering if just one of us needs a paid account, to order to create the challenge, and then everyone else involved can join it with free accounts?  Thanks!

Hi @TLP 

Thanks for your post. In order for an athlete to join a group challenge, they must be a subscriber, have a free subscription trial, or have free challenges left. As mentioned, the free challenges will no longer be available starting next month.

More information about group challenges

I have a similar question / concern. I want to set up a group challenge as part of a charity fundraising event - a 900km sponsored cycle. I myself am a fully paid up Strava subscriber, but there's no way all of the other participants are going to want to sign up to premium, or faff about with a free trial, just for a 2 week charity cycle. There's no point running the challenge if only a very small subset of participants can join it though, so I am guessing Strava group challenges are no longer really an option for promoting charity fundraising. 

Does anyone know if there is a similar feature, either within Strava or elsewhere, that charities might find more accessible? I've had a look at clubs but, as a group of teachers at a school, we would need tighter privacy controls (a way of allowing pupils to easily see our progress without giving them free reign to join the club and muck about, or see the personal activities we did before starting the sponsored cycle) for that to work.

@danw Clubs would probably be your best option on Strava. You should note that club admins have some tools available that could mitigate some of the concerns you surfaced:

• Set your club to be private (invite-only). Your admins would then need to approve each pending request moving forward.
• Hide the club activity feed. This will limit performance visibility to the leaderboard, though, activity and profile controls will also limit activity visibility to the owner's followers.
  • Also, club leaderboards only show one week on mobile and two weeks on the website.
• Limit posting permission to club admins if want to control how members engage with one another.

Club admins can find all of these settings in the Strava mobile app by navigating to their club and pressing the gear icon on the top right corner. I hope this helps!

Could Strava please change the policy to allow non subscribers to join challenges?

I worry that users won't purchase a subscription, they just won't do challenges. 

These challenges could be great to increase engagement amongst casuals.

As someone who is trying to get remote employees engaged with eachother thru fitness, this feature no longer being available to non-subscribers is a real disappointment. Not only did I become a subscriber so that I could set up multiple challenges for friends and coworkers who are not subscribed, but I set up challenges for 3 month long durations to keep us motivated until the end of the year; the Club is not a good replacement for this scenario since there were goals for my challenges. There would be so much more engagment if non-subscribers could join challenges.

Agree with the comments above, I think this is a mistake from Strava, I understand the move to make a group challenge organiser a subscriber, but I am looking (again) at organising a group challenge for around 20 people and there is no way everyone is going to subscribe (even a free trial) to join, it is too much to even ask them to do that. So that leaves me to looking at other App solutions. Shame.

This seems like an opportunity for other apps. Strava has dumb rules.

The beginning of the end for Strava?

My friends and I do annual challenges, so we all just found out about this change last week. I’ve been a paid Strava subscriber for about 10 years, but all of my friends use the free version of Strava. 

I can understand making it so that only paid subscribers are able to set-up challenges, but to make it so that you can’t join a challenge unless you’re a subscriber was a mistake. If Strava is hurting for revenue that much, then build in ads or cut cost. Forcing more people to buy the subscription is only going to benefit your competitors, and I think Mark and Mike got a little to greedy with this latest change.    

I’ll be canceling my Strava subscription today, and we’re all moving over to Nike Run Club. That app appears to have many of the same features as Strava, but it’s all free.      

Hello.

I used to create yearly challenge to my group for BIKE and RUN. And we competed who collects the most kilometers. Due to your policy change I am not able to do so. Sorry it is not fair, and makes any challenges useless, when only those who pay can join.

I remember the good old ENDOMONDO, where anybody could create PUBLIC challenges open for the whole world. 

If you will not change this rule, I will cancel my subscription. And look for different app even for tracking.

Regards

Peter 

PS: After several years crying for ENDOMONDO I started to like and respect STRAVA. And pay for subscription. The more I am now disappointed.

Hey ​@Peter Hulak, I got the same issue. That’s a pity… Did you find a solution for your group challenge? Especially concerning the cycle? Thx

No I didnt. I gave up, deleted the challenge because was useless. And didnt prolong subscription for nex̌t year.