Zwift Announces Free Trial Changes: No More Free Monthly 25km

Today, Zwift announced an upcoming change to their free trial setup:

We’re writing to let you know about a forthcoming change to simplify our free trial offerings.

Effective from August 1st, the current 25km free trial offered to paused, or lapsed, Zwift members will be discontinued. We want to thank all our members who took advantage of this offering in the past.

Please note that we will continue to offer a 14-day free trial for new members to discover the benefits of our platform.

For years, Zwift has effectively had two different “free trial” offerings running in parallel:

• New accounts aren’t charged until the end of their 14-day free trial, which begins the day they start pedaling on Zwift
• Paying subscribers who pause or cancel their membership could ride up to 25km each month for free. This offer renewed on the 1st of each month, and also applied to people who signed up, took part in the 14-day free trial, but never became paying subscribers.

It’s the second offering that is being done away with on August 1st.

Note: These changes don’t affect Zwift running, which is still free to use unless you have a Wahoo KICKR RUN and want to pay for automatic incline control.

Ready the Pitchforks

Zwift will surely receive some blowback on their decision from “seasonal Zwifters” who enjoy riding outside in good weather while still popping into Zwift once or twice each month. (And after last year’s price increase, there are certainly more of those Zwifters on the platform than ever before.)

While some riders abused the free monthly 25km, I can’t help but think it also kept seasonal Zwifters engaged with the platform. Will the cost savings of removing those “freeloaders” from the ecosystem outweigh the value of keeping past subscribers engaged during sunny weather? And how many of those riders will now restart their subscription earlier than planned, so they can maintain access to Zwift?

Those are significant questions, with actual dollar figures attached. But only Zwift will know the answers…

Questions or Comments?

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