My 7-Year Zwiftversary

(Pictured above: my first Zwift ride, then a ride at Zwift’s 2019 Eurobike booth almost 4 years later.)

Seven years ago today I went for my first ride on Zwift.

The winter of 2015 would be my first “indoor season” as a serious cyclist. I was already dreading the roller sessions. At the time, none of my local riding buddies were using Zwift – I’m not sure any had even heard of it. But I saw it somewhere on Facebook, downloaded the game, ran it in “just watch” mode, and immediately knew I had to give it a try.

After a little research, I found a website in Germany selling Tacx Vortex Smart trainers for ~$290 to my door, and I pulled the trigger.

The night my Vortex arrived I put it together, hooked my bike in, and went for my first Zwift ride from the middle of my living room. The trainer wasn’t calibrated, and I wasn’t dressed for a real ride… so that effort didn’t last long.

But two days later I went for my first “real” Zwift ride – two laps of Watopia’s Hilly Route (which was the only route on Watopia at the time). Uploading it to Strava certainly confused local friends. “Are you in the Solomon Islands right now?”

And that’s how it all began for me. I jumped in with both feet! Less than a month later I launched ZwiftBlog.com, which became Zwift Insider two years later.

I wish I had been on Zwift from the beginning, but when Zwift beta launched in 2014 I was just returning to riding after an 18-year hiatus. So I never got to ride Jarvis. But what I have been a part of is special. So each year, I look back and deliver my perspective as a Zwifter and the editor of the web’s most popular Zwift fansite.

Post-Covid Normalization

Our all-time Peak Zwift of 49,114 came in January 2021 when Covid lockdowns were still very real and Zwift numbers were off the chart. When indoor season rolled around several months later, Zwifters (and certainly ZwiftHQ) were wondering: how big will this season be without harsh Covid restrictions in place? Will the new Zwifters gained during Covid stay around, or will they be riding outdoors like they did pre-Covid?

The answer was mixed. The 2021/22 indoor season (roughly November 2021 through March 2022) saw significantly less traffic on Zwift than the previous year. But the numbers were still much higher than the 2019/2020 indoor season two years prior – so growth had happened, indicating that some portion of those Covid Zwifters decided to hang around.

We’re just partway into November 2022 as I write this, and for the first time in Zwift’s history numbers this year seem to be trending right alongside numbers from last year.

(Disclaimer: Zwift doesn’t provide detailed user stats, so any number claims in this post are based on educated guesses, Companion app “Zwifting Now” accounts, and any other sources we can pull from.)

Zwift Leads the Cycling World

Zwift is a leader in terms of the size and engagement of its userbase compared to competing platforms. But they’re also becoming leaders in the cycling world overall. You see their name everywhere in cycling, and Zwift now has real influence in the cycling hardware market as well as big-name bike events. Consider this:

• Zwift has signed on to multi-year deals as the title sponsor of the women’s Roubaix and Tour de France
• Zwift continues to host the UCI Esports World Championships
• Each year, Zwift’s Road Academy continues to place riders into pro teams – the first virtual cycling platform to do so

It’s Not All Roses

Being a leader doesn’t mean everything is easy, though. It means you have to make tough decisions, and that certainly happened this May when Zwift announced a major restructuring, reducing staff by approximately 20%.

This shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone who was paying attention to the indoor industry or the world at large. Similar layoffs had just happened at Peloton and Wahoo. Plus, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tanking tech stocks, ballooning inflation, and rising interest rates were all creating an environment of economic uncertainty (to put it lightly).

Still, the restructuring came as a surprise to many within Zwift, including some senior staff members. This restructuring was big, and it came with a promised refocus as well. Hardware plans were paused, and Zwift pledged a stronger focus on developing the core Zwift game experience, including faster releases of new game features.

Restructuring Results

Layers of ineffective management were removed at ZwiftHQ, and departments were reorganized. Zwift creator Jon Mayfield was moved out of his skunkworks and partnered with Mark Cote to head up the product team. And as far as I can see, that partnership is working well. Jon is the technical wizard behind the game, while Mark is the content guy who knows engagement numbers and constantly looks at how more people can be more active more often. Together, they seem to be prioritizing the features which will deliver the greatest impact for Zwifters.

Is Zwift releasing features as quickly as we’d like? Well, no. But have the last 6 months seen more development than the 12 months prior? Yes!

For the first time in a long time, it feels to me like Zwift is rightly prioritizing its projects, building out features that deliver the most bang for the buck. I just wish it would happen faster.

This particularly applies to the speed of new road construction. Zwift just released Urukazi this week, and it’s a beautiful and amazing map! But it’s only 22.7km of road, and these are the first new roads we’ve seen since Neokyo was released a year ago. Cyclists love new roads, and if they can’t find them on Zwift they may look elsewhere.

RGT: A Real Competitor?

There were always other virtual cycling platforms, but it wasn’t until Wahoo acquired RGT in April that the competition seemed at all serious. With RGT Wahoo now own the second-most popular indoor cycling platform, and they seem to have the marketing, development, and hardware muscle to be a real player in this space.

Yes, RGT’s numbers are still much smaller than Zwift’s. But it is a well-respected platform backed by the #1 trainer company in the world… and they’re not pulling any punches. They’re releasing features that clearly speak to Zwifters’ pain points (annual subscriptions and voice chat, anyone?) and recently took the fight straight to Zwift with a lawsuit over the Zwift Hub.

Trainers: Zwift Hub, Lawsuits, and Selloffs

In a surprise announcement, Zwift released details of their Zwift Hub trainer in September 2022, then began selling it in October at a price point that put all the other trainer companies on their heels. $499 for a decent direct drive trainer, when comparable products are $700-$900? That’s a big move.

But Wahoo had a move of their own: a lawsuit alleging Zwift’s Hub infringed on multiple Wahoo patents. Spicy.

September was a wild month in trainer-land. First Zwift announced the Hub. Then Saris announced their new H4, and Wahoo released their updated KICKR v6 KICKR Bike. And all this came after a year that saw trainers heavily discounted because manufacturers had spooled up inventory only to see demand drop and the used trainer market flood with barely-used post-Covid smart trainers.

Smart Bikes and Rocker Plates

The indoor revolution driven by Zwift has created demand for products that barely existed seven years ago. Two great examples: smart bikes and rocker plates.

The proportion of smart bikers on Zwift continues to grow as time goes by. My guess is, people are looking to upgrade their Zwift bike and/or trainer after one or more seasons of wear and tear, and they decide it makes sense to just purchase a dedicated setup. Others don’t even ride outside, so when they look to get on Zwift, it just makes sense to go with a smart bike.

It’s not a bad option for many. Smart bikes are easily adjustable for multiple riders, and having one in place means you don’t have to pop your bike on and off the trainer if you’re a single-bike owner. Once you’ve got an always-available Zwift setup, it’s really hard to go back.

Rocker plates are growing more mainstream as well, which puts a smile on my face. Today you can find affordable rocker plates on Amazon, and full-motion models are becoming the standard as designs are tested and dialed in. The UK has Omnirocker, while here in the US we have lots of options including the SBR Rockr, Velocity Rocker, InsideRide’s E-Flex, Axxion Rocker Plate, KOM Cycling plate, and more.

Rock on, I say. A properly set up rocker plate makes Zwifting much more comfortable, and allows for more realistic out of the saddle movement as well. Here’s a quick demo video I made for Velocity Rocker review:

Racing (Almost) Arrives

The Zwift Racing League managed by WTRL has continued to grow. Two years ago 6,000 riders were participating, and that increased to over 10,000 riders in the 2021/22 season. Now this year we’re up over 20,000 riders. Amazing!

There’s a sense that racing is getting more attention from ZwiftHQ than it has in years past. One big example: in my 6-Year Zwiftversary post I wrote, “… any rider can sign up for any category and blow apart any race, with zero consequence. It’s really not a hard problem to fix, and I think Zwift owes it to community organizers to get it done.”

Lo and behold… Zwift did it! They invested in category enforcement this year, finally blocking riders from racing in lower categories than they should. It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than it was.

Hardware enforcement is now available as well, making it easy for race organizers to block ZPower Rangers from joining races.

There’s just one big thing needed, in my opinion, if Zwift wants to enable truly dynamic and fair racing: results-based rider rankings, with race organizers able to create custom categories.

We need to get rid of power-based categories, which are inherently flawed, and move to a worldwide ranking system for all racers. Once that is in place, let race organizers decide how to break up race categories! This will discourage sandbagging while creating dynamic, competitive race fields where racers in particular performance bands can’t dominate lower categories.

The good news is, development of racer rankings is actually underway at Zwift. I can’t wait to see it happen!

So Many Rides, So Little Time

There was no in-game event calendar seven years ago, and today there are literally several hundred events per day on Zwift’s calendar. Amazing!

Zwift’s new homescreen design, rolled out to almost everyone by now, brings events to the forefront. This is a smart move since Zwift’s social side is its strength.

What could be done to make events even better?

I’d love to see Zwift invest in better backend tools for event organizers. Working on my Tiny Race series and interacting with Zwift’s events team, it’s clear that their event management tools could use some work. Improving these systems would reduce event configuration errors and streamline the creation and editing of events, logically leading to higher-quality event experiences for end users.

Clubs: What Now?

Clubs were released to all Zwifters in January 2022. There was a lot of excitement about their release, but that was tempered when Zwifters realized there were ridiculous Club membership caps and not much functionality beyond the ability to create Club events.

Since the January launch those membership caps have gone away, which is great news. But Club functionality is still rather limited.

I’ve got a confession to make: Zwift Insider has the largest Club on Zwift (16.5k members and counting!) and I still struggle to put it to good use. The Club chat tool is very limited (no tagging members, no clickable URLs, no ability to fine-tune notifications on your phone) which means most members just turn off notifications and never check the chat. And apart from chat, the club really just becomes a container for Club events.

Which is fine, I suppose. But having built and interacted with online communities for 20+ years, I can’t help but believe Zwift Clubs could be so much more. I’d love to see:

• Club kit designs
• Voice chat in game with Club members
• Team racing where Club members are automatically linked together
• More powerful Club chat/discussion tools
• Club leaderboards, to promote competition between Clubs
• and more!

The Future Is Bright

It’s not hyperbole to say my involvement with the Zwift community has been life-changing. It’s changed my fitness, it’s changed my work life – it’s even changed my vacation plans! And I’ve loved every minute of it.

I consider myself truly blessed to be serving the community through my work here at Zwift Insider. And I look forward to doing it for many years to come.

Ride on!