Strava: Run, Bike, Hike Reviews

by LEDbaby81

2 MAJOR problems with Strava - first when using Strava with my Apple Watch it shows my distance only to the 1/10 mile instead of to the 1/100th. Really?? How does any runner find that acceptable?? Makes Strava completely useless for any kind of interval training that does not involve a track. Second, it shows my average pace. I couldn’t care less about my average pace. Most runners I know what to see their CURRENT pace! I don’t see any way to change that. Other more minor problems - 1) when it registers my splits and I want to glance quickly at my time, Strava has to show me the stupid this app logo for a second before it shows me my time. So annoying! I’m often trail running and need to pay attention to my footing so I don’t step in a hole or trip on a root. So having to keep my eyes on my watch for that extra second could actually be a problem. 2.) the walk setting only shows mph. Why would I want to know that?? I want minutes/mile just like for running. 3.) No splits for walking?? Just because I’m walking, this app thinks I don’t care about my mile splits? Like I said, to me this is a useless training app. Back to the basic Activity app on the Apple Watch for me!

by Wonderland@@

I am newer to running and kept hearing about Strava and decided to download it. I uploaded all my workouts for the last month and then went into my dashboard excited to get started using the other features. I saw that every one of my workouts included a highlighted map of my route and where I’d been. I attempted to hide this only to find out through researching it that there is no way to do so completely. I can hide it from my dashboard by selecting “treadmill” but it still shows up in other areas of my profile. I am not the first person to be concerned with this feature. There are concerns stated in the help section with a response from this app that this issue would be addressed in 2018! Obviously this issue has not been resolved. It is a major safety concern when people you do not know on a social media app can see exactly what routes you use to workout every day. I could set my activity to private but that kind of defeats the purpose for me to connect with others. Unfortunately because of this I cannot use Strava until it is resolved. I hope they actually address this soon like they stated they would two years ago because I would love to use Strava to connect with others and log my workouts.

by Que Moi?

I am a paid subscriber, my Fitbit Ionic is verifiably paired, and I have allowed access to my heart rate. Any documentation is years old and irrelevant, customer service takes it’s sweet time. None of the subscription features have ever worked except for the route maker. Despite rigorous trackable daily exercise over months, Strava still indicates no weekly intensity. If the purpose of the this app app is to combine data from multiple sources, it’s a total failure. To use this app to ride, you can’t also manually activate the Fitbit or you’ll get 2 records-If you use only this app app, you get no Fitbit activity credit-If you use Fitbit only, you can’t use the this app route tracker. With my Smart Rower, Strava still fails to pull in the heart rate data from my Fitbit. There is nothing Strava does that the other free apps (Fitbit, SmartRower) don’t already do. I’m no longer sure what the point of Strava is besides ripping me off. Also, I have communicated with feedback and I have not heard an answer-as of this post it was 14 days ago. Bu-bye this app, you’re off to the land of deleted apps that failed to live up to their advertised expectations.

by Natval82

Given this is a COVID era, I was quarantined and encouraged my my friends to get Strava . It was good and all but I used it 4-5 times in two months. If I were a triathlete, I’d probably have gotten more use. The problem is I am an unemployed student and need every penny to make it right now.

My credit card showed up with 2 declined payments one night and as soon as I made some money from selling art I was charged $60 for “summit”. My account still is listed as free, I did NOT ask for Summit (or was unaware) and their customer service is completely dehumanized to try to answer your questions with links. There’s no number, only tickets that are listed as “solved” when no one did anything. I seriously need to get reimbursed, like this is a financially unfortunate situation where $60 is all I have, and this app all of a sudden is a name that fills me with anger because it feels like $60 was stolen from my wallet when that’s all I had. I wish they would be more prompt with customer service and more up front with cost if $60 is really what it costs. But even then - my account says “free.” this app, PLEASE get back to me and give me a refund.

by 808Seb

Extremely disappointed with the most recent update that puts subscriptions at the center of their business model. I understand the need to stay current and keep up with user demand which has exploded in recent months. My issue is about long time users such as myself (member since March 2013) who opted in to giving this app our data for free in order to develop better cycling infrastructure and freely share safe routes with new users. Routes never became freely accessible, they were instantly subscription only. That stung but I accepted it. Now with the newest update we can no longer compare our segment stats with friends on this app, besides the standard top ten, all comparisons are subscription only. This was one of my favorite features, I love seeing how I stack up against friends and it was a great selling point for me to get friends to use this app. I have a suggestion, as unfortunate as it is, for new users this is just how it will be. However, for long time users it might be fair to let us keep our free features that made us love this app. You gave us an incredible app that motivates and challenges a lot of people and it’s a wonderful service. I thank you for that, now please return some of the basics that we all know and love.

by CrumpyLady

I’ve been using Strava for a couple years now. Haven’t had one issue...until now. My last two runs it doesn’t connect to satellite perhaps? I don’t know, but it sure doesn’t take me 34 minutes to run 1 mile and I’m not running through fields. The GPS is all jacked up and its really frustrating. Good thing I have a Garmin for back up. Maybe fix the problem before I give up on Strava .

**UPDATE**
It’s been over 6 months since I wrote this review. Shortly after I wrote it I linked my Garmin to this app and solely began using Garmin to track my runs, because I couldn’t rely on this app to do it. A couple weeks ago I went out of town and forgot my Garmin. I thought I’d try this app to track my long run that week and see if the issues had been fixed. Unfortunately, it did the same thing. Somewhere it loses me, and my run that I know from past experience is almost 8 miles, clocked in under 6. So disappointing. I don’t understand why it suddenly changed at the beginning of the year. But I sure wish you guys could fix it. I know several people who have this same issue, so I know it’s not just me or my phone.

by Restless Roller

4 stars for the phone app - has tracking for many activities.
2 stars for the watch app - should mirror tracking options of the main app.

It is frustrating that the watch app does not offer the same tracking options as the phone app. The watch has options for bike rides, runs, & hikes, but pretty much every other activity is excluded from the watch app. Everything else is generically lumped into the “workout” option, which has no way to track speed or distance. This means that if you want to track anything other than heart rate and workout time for an activity that isn’t a run or bike ride using your watch, you will have to bring your phone to do so. 😕 This is disappointing since this is one of the few apps that will track roller (inline) skating.
Also, there should be some way to integrate the heart rate features from the watch into the phone app, which apparently only works with third party heart monitors.

by House_of_ALT

The social aspect of the biking got me to use this instead of MapMyRide. I love the badges and how motivational it is to beat your PRs and place in the top 10s. However, this thing is SEVERELY glitched. Granted, I’m using an iPhone and I keep it in my under saddle zip bag (could affect tracking?), but the times are heinously inaccurate. They have guys getting .03 seconds for a trail segment that’s 1/4 mile long, IN THE WOODS, on single track between trees. This isn’t even paved, and it’s physically impossible for a human to get those times, or even finish it in .10s for that matter. There are multiple people logging these ridiculous times. It’s important for me to know how I’m actually doing relative to the truth rather than fictional, glitched data. Completely deflates me when I put in maximum effort, easily clock under .30s on a trail segment and it reads 1:54!? I know I’m in the woods, but it’s absurd that in 2019 this data can’t be tracked with the utmost accuracy through some tree cover on a perfectly clear day. The features are really fun, but if the data can’t be trusted, Strava is no better than a calorie counter.

by SNSH86

Very disappointed to see the focus of this app move from a community based fitness app to a profit driven cash grab. Maybe I’m being a bit dramatic here but the reality is I don’t have money kicking around for a this app subscription. I accept that there are going to be aspects of Strava that I won’t have access to, however I would maintain that to this point the [free] app was of 5 star quality and a must have workout tracker. After the update is an entirely different story, however. The free app has been stripped to the bare bones, no more access to segment leaderboards...I can’t even view my own previous times on segments. Honestly I leave a 3 star rating because I have loved using this app for the past few years, in reality I should really leave a 1 star review. If you are able to afford the cost of a subscription to this app, then by all means, it is a great app that is a fun and useful tool for tracking your workouts...BUT, I would not personally recommend Strava as it currently stands unless you don’t have any other option available.

by Hair_david

Okay so this is a bit of a rage review. I've been using this app pretty dilligently for about 2 years. It's been mostly great, showing timed splits and elevation gain to give a good granular sense of what happened during a workout. It's really all I wanted, since I don't intend on getting heart rate monitor.

However, lately this app has been goofing up on time elapsed, distance gone, maybe my actual location? Not sure. But it'll take a good half-mile for Strava to figure out that I've started moving, even after manually starting a workout and confirming that my location is correct. It will also just stop registering that I'm still moving in the middle of a workout, paradoxically showing my location way off of the blue line while the timer is still running. This throws off all the calculations for timing and honestly is pretty disheartening that I don't have an accurate record of my efforts.

I know this app gets is revenue from user data, but why am I using this broken app if it isn't even giving me the data it has advertised? How reliable is the background data being collected? At this point, I might as well go back to using the timer and maps apps built in to iOS, since I'm already using them to figure out what this app did wrong in the first place.

by Aaron Macom

I tried this app a few years ago and didn’t love it. I’ve used several running apps over the years. The one I have used consistently over the last 4 years has been Runkeeper.
I have a few friends on this app and I thought I’d try it again because I like the social aspect of sharing with friends.
this app has a lot of nice data and it seems that their paid service revolves more around training plans rather than focused on just giving you more data. This makes sense to me. I really want to like Strava!
I use an Apple Watch but also carry my phone. The watch app starts up pretty fast so that’s a plus.
My main issues with this app is that I have to go to the website in order to add my shoes so I can track the mileage. This seems silly. I can’t find a reason for it. I don’t want extra steps to get Strava set up I also have a big issue with Strava not showing me two decimal places for mileage. This is beyond silly. It’s just dumb. Runner like stats. We don’t want to have to log on to the website to get info that should be available on Strava . Isn’t the entire point of an application to be self contained? Strava is good but be aware that setup will take you 10 extra minutes and that viewing stats will be something that you will have to set aside time to do AFTER your run.

by CSharpster

A lot of my riding buddies use it and have asked me to install it. I just want something for free and can track my rides with elevation profiles and speed. this app seems to do that and a lot more, especially ads that keeps hounding you to upgrade to the premium version. Cool thing is that it can record your movements with GPS and can be set up with privacy in mind. Here are a bunch of thing that bug me about Strava:
1) the Feed is kind of confusing sometimes. It takes sometime to get use to on what is what, especially the stupid ads are mixed in.
2) the header part of Strava where you have links or buttons. They're hard to press and a lot of the times, the don't work. A good example is the bell on the Feed. You have to press it numerous times or just let your thumb sit there for a few seconds to get you to a notification screen.
3) settings and other setups require so many steps to set up Strava or to start a recording process.
I wish there's a non-paid app without any advertisements that can give you GPS tracking on a map with speed and elevation without all the bloated crap that comes with this app. To bad there's none out there at the moment.

by Ornellagreg

Wanted to find an alternative app for tracking my running miles (and the occasional bike ride) and decided to give this app a try. When I first downloaded Strava , I still had access to leaderboards and all that jazz, but since then this app has thrown the subscription model at its users like so many others. ($60 a year is pretty wild if you ask me). Although I was bummed, I still enjoyed the challenges and still preferred the overall interface over Nike’s. However, over the past few months I feel like I’ve been seeing an uptick in the amount of runs that don’t get tracked properly. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to finish a long run, only to get back and look at this app saying I’ve only run 2.8 miles. Like what?? Sometimes Strava won’t even track my movement at all during a run and I’ll find myself on the sidewalk messing with my phone trying to close out of Strava to reset it, and at times that doesn’t even fix the issue. I would rather not go back to using Nike’s app (for reasons I won’t go into), but at least their gps tracking system is solid. this app if you see this, please address this issue. (Currently on iPhone X)

by Shmarmychaff

Seriously, this app you have just about every conceivable feature and aspect of a great running/biking app. Great social interaction, widespread usage, which makes the segment portion great almost everywhere I run/bike, and the BEST analytics. I have been waiting in vain for years for you to add ANY sort of interval training with distance, time, and heart rate. I would accept just a simple timer in Strava , but audio cues for speed/HR/timers/distance and customizable training plans would be preferred. People might think with the paid version they would get it, but they would be wrong. Since this MAJOR OVERSIGHT has been noted by people on your forums, you know about it, but are willfully ignoring us, your users. I have almost reached my breaking point and am about to give up hope and switch to Runkeeper or Nike. It feels like the Benedict thing to do, but I CANNOT WAIT FOR YOU FOREVER! The saddest part will be leaving all my this app friends behind for literally any other app that has this, simply because you refuse to add such a staple of training: INTERVALS. This is my last ditch effort to get ANY SORT of interval training in this app, but if you don’t add it soon I am done with you 😢. Seriously this app, DON’T MAKE ME LEAVE YOU!!! I LOVE THE REST OF Strava TOO MUCH!

by SG 🌻

I’ve used this app for many years, I’ve been running for about 9 years now and I always use it to train for my races. I love the social aspect and I’ve never had an issue with the GPS when using my phone.

I recently got an Apple Watch series 3, the main purpose being for exercise. I wanted to ditch the heavy phone and run with something lighter. I also was excited about moving to Bluetooth headphones to avoid the phone/cord situation and the hands free aspect was really appealing. Not to mention the Apple Watch also tracks heart rate and other things that my iPhone didn’t do. However, I’ve been really disappointed in the connection between my Apple Watch and this app. My runs are totally off, it often gets the distances wrong, misses huge chunks of my runs, and records my runs as if I had gone way faster. I thought that this was a flaw in the watch but I have friends who have tried other apps with success. I also thought this was a matter of having the data plan, but I switched over to the one with data and I’m still having issues.

I would love to see them make improvement in this realm. I’m so excited about the convenience of my watch and I want to keep using this app, so I’m hoping to see some upgrades soon!

by Hannnah18000089797

I love this app & will continue to use Strava but am disappointed with recent updates. I really enjoyed the leaderboard & monthly comparisons, which can now only be accessed through subscription. I would consider becoming a subscriber because I am a huge fan, but the cost has been a deterrent. I can understand their decision to try & make Strava more profitable. However, I think they should have given longtime users the option of buying those features at a lower cost. I am simply someone who loves running. But I am not training for anything & given the surgeries I’ve had it is unlikely I ever will. Some of the other subscribed features may not suitable for me because of that. I want to support Strava but I just don’t think the price is that accessible to everyone. I understand $60/year isn’t much, but when you’re a newly unemployed college student it’s difficult justifying that extra expense. I still really enjoy Strava , I just hope these changes don’t alter how much I use it. I think if i never experienced those features I might feel differently. I am sad to see them go. Wish there was more of a middle ground for less competitive individuals.

by Katie173

I love Strava because as a beginner runner it’s helped me figure out my stats and all that important stuff so I can see areas I need to fix on. But there is one minor issue, I have been using Strava for over a year and it’s been perfect for me but just recently over the summer I have noticed some issues with how Strava tracks. It will record everywhere I’ve ran in one run but it won’t actually start timing it or start the distance tracker until i’m more than half a mile in. Which is a very big inconvenience because when it doesn’t track my distance for a little while it effects my time which then effects my pace messing the whole run up and making it look like I did bad. Therefore I don’t actually know how far I ran or what my pace was or what amount of time I did it in. So then i’m not sure how well I did on the run or where I need to improve on. So I just wish they could fix that problem before I decided to go and buy an apple watch and be done with Strava.

by Ir1shboy

As a I’ve been using Zwift and training indoors for the past year. Have made healthy eating decisions as well but overall has helped me lose 25 lbs and pushed me through the terrible part of the cold season where I can’t ride. Strava is amazing. stand-alone Strava is fine. If all you want to do is record your ride it does that. I own an Apple Watch 4th gen and as stupid as this is you can’t record on your watch in order to get heartbeat and have your iPhone mounted on your bike to use simultaneously giving you access to your mph, trail position, length or ride etc. The only thing they offer are workarounds. Until there is full integration between apple watch and the iPhone Strava is only really half complete because they don’t compliment one another. Really is unfortunate because if they worked as one unit for a single recording it would be a fantastic app. Now it’s just cumbersome and annoying.

by Arcm99134

Best app for tracking your walk, run, ride, kayak, backcountry skin tour. The amount of sports that it has and the data generated is bar none the best. I also use trail forks as this doesn’t really have a map option of known trails like Trailforks or all trails but the free version gives you insights those other aforementioned apps do not and the paid version(subscription based) has a few more features(always coming out with more) that I found quite interesting and slightly more insightful. Also for those solo shredders, walker, hikers, and anyone using Strava , the community based competition is also very inviting and allows you to ouch yourself against other people and against the clock. This allows you to use this also as a training aid and or just to see how your personal fitness stacks up from year to year, week to week, day to day. I love Strava and find myself using it everyday. Stay stoked and I highly recommend it!!🤘🤙

by Cool Breeze 12345

Previous version worked well for running if auto-pause was disabled because the watch would pause if you looked at the screen while running. I thought that was fixed with latest update because the timer keeps going.

I tried to run four miles two different days and I begin looking at my screen a lot at 3.8. The timer kept going but the distance was stuck on 3.8. I finally stopped looking at the screen at hit 4.0 eventually. This has happened last two runs and kills my average speed and try distance.

I’m pretty sure Strava stops counting miles when the screen is active. I don’t know if this is related to auto-pause or not. I’ve turned auto pause off and don’t look at the screen anymore. Strava is definitely buggy. this app creates a great social network that is the standard for cycling, but stick with Your Garmin and then upload. Not sure why it’s taking this long to build a stable watch app. I never had problems with the phone app.

by MrNYCO

I’ve been using this app for years when I (road) cycle. Then a few years ago after a total knee replacement, I started swimming. I bought a Garmin watch to track my swimming progress and was happy to see that the Garmin watch, used to share this info with the this app app on my iPhone and automatically shared this info. It had my swim with all stats right on my iPhone.
I recently was given an Apple iwatch as a gift and it has a default this app app on it. It does not offer a swim tracking option. Furthermore, the Apple default activity app which I’ve been using for swimming does not automatically share this info with the this app app and there is no option to do this.
So, I’m kind of disappointed since I am “friends” with a few people and would them to see that I am still training. And I would like them to give me the 👍 after a swim. Now I have to explain that I’m using a new watch that doesn’t offer swimming in the this app app.
I suggest the developers figure out how to incorporate swimming in their iwatch app or at least “share” this info with the Stava app the way Garmin does.

by Sns92

I downloaded Strava a few months ago because I thought I would like it, I don’t, but that’s beside the point.
I signed up through Facebook and when I decided I wanted to cancel I had to go through the most ridiculous, absurd process to get them to stop charging me. Because I signed up via Facebook I didn’t have an email address/password to cancel my account. Okay. Fine. I’ll just call them, right? Wrong. I had to submit a request to speak to someone via email who took FORVER to respond to me and eventually got them to send me a link to cancel my account. But that’s not the worst of it.
I’ve been hanging out for months thinking I had fully canceled my account (which I did) to find out that they have somehow started charging my boyfriend’s credit card?! I NEVER gave them that information, my boyfriend never created an account, and neither of us have any clue how this happened. I tried to log back in thinking that maybe I screwed up the cancelation process. Nope. When I put in my login info the system rejects it saying that the email is not on file. EVEN WORSE they don’t have a number I can call, and you have to be able to login to submit a request to speak to someone via email!
This is an INCREDIBLY untrustworthy, skeezy company. I have no idea how to fix this other than having my poor boyfriend cancel his credit card.
Wish me luck, and please stay away from this app.

by RFS Workflow

While I love this app, am a paid subscriber and love the desktop version, the mobile this app app is junk. I have had it for years and it absolutely won’t work properly with the iPhone. It allows me to view activities of my friends, but as soon as I go to like an activity or click on a friend’s profile or pictures, Strava freezes up and the icon telling me it’s working on the request just spins and spins. Sometimes after many minutes, Strava will return and allow me to like another activity. Soon, though, the original problem surfaces again. Other times, Strava never recovers from its frozen state.

When I close Strava to start over, Strava won’t load again and just repeatedly returns me to the home screen on my phone. The only way to get back in to this app mobile is to power down my phone and restart it. This has been happening EVERY DAY, for years now. It is highly frustrating and time-consuming. As a result, I use the desktop version mostly, although the mobile app would be far more convenient (if it worked). You would think the engineering of this software would be of much higher quality. Disappointing...

by Reatomizer

I really enjoy Strava...when it works. I’ve had frequent issues with incorrect readings of distance, time duration and heart rate over the last year on my Apple Watch series 1. It has led me to return to using the native fitness app which works 100% of the time and offers many of the same features that the this app app offers.

Also, why can’t you change the bike of choice? Currently - if you have two or more bikes loaded into settings - the bike with the most mileage is automatically chosen as the bike you’ve ridden. Manually having to change which bike was ridden is frustrating, especially when many of us year-round cyclists change bikes based on season. Switching your primary bike regardless of overall mileage would make Strava much more user friendly.

Lastly, it would be great to be able to utilize the phone app for recording and have the Apple Watch be a secondary heart monitor function. I don’t know if this is possible, but the phone app seems to be much more accurate with distance and duration but obviously lacks heart rate monitoring.

by Melting Clocks

If autopause is on, it immediately pauses if I’m walking. That means I have to disable autopause if I’m tracking a hike or run/walk/run type training, so I’m always having to go back into the settings and switch it back and forth. I’ve lost tracking on parts of my routes because of this.
I don’t understand why autopause isn’t sensitive enough to track walking/stopping. Other apps seem to handle this just fine.
Units and splits: why does the display only show tenths of miles and not hundredths? Maybe since this started as a biking app, 1/10 of a mile made sense, but as a runner I think more in terms of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 mile distances for pace training. I am unable to do this on this app because it doesn’t display the data (that it is already gathering), and because there is no way to select a different option for audio feedback frequency (like every 1/4 mile).
So, there are many things to like about Strava , but the bottom line is that it has limited usefulness and versatility for training.

by Running Back To Garmin

Converted over from Nike Run app to this app a few months ago and I’m loving it! I use my Apple Watch 3 and pay for the pro version. I find that Strava and watch work very well together. Overall very pleased.

I do however wish there were more options for (a) goal setting and (b) workouts:
(A) I do wish I could set more than just a weekly and yearly mileage goals, being able to reach a pace goal or a run distance goal would be great for motivation.
(B) one of the features I miss about my Garmin was being able to set a goal distance or time or split pace for the run i.e. 6.5 mi or 60min or 9min/mi instead of having to constantly look at my watch to see when I have reached that point. I also wish there was a feature to set up workouts for the week I.e tempo run on Tue at various paces. This feature especially has me turning back to my Garmin when I train for big races.

by Levi2u

When at the age of about 55 I started a more serious fitness regimen I looked at the available apps and chose map my walk. I used it for about 3 years, and over the course of time it just became too needy, and required to much of my time to maintain it. I had sort of become aware of this app, but I thought it was more for bicycling and really serious athletes. Anyway I decided to give it a go and have never looked back. It gives me all the data I need, and has been 100% reliable. I like the way it finds and keeps track of routes I regularly complete, and finds ways to give me badges for accomplishments on days I don’t expect it. It’s helped me log over 100 miles a month for the last 4 months. I have considered upgrading to the paid version but I really don’t like subscriptions. I would consider paying a onetime upgrade for a few more features.

by Alchemy2u

Strava works well for tacking your workouts, but I accidentally signed up for the premium service. I had put the phone in my pocket while loading a ride. When I looked at it was asking for my fingerprint. Thought it was locked and I would just go ahead and open it. But instead I guess I pocket requested the premium service and my fingerprint was accepting the charge. The bill rang on my phone immediately and then I realized my error. I notified this app within 5 minutes and twice more the next two days. I finally got a response saying they have consolidated my 3 tickets into one. All they have said is they are working hard to get to my request as soon as possible. It has now been over a week and nothing new. It is getting to late to cancel the CC payment. Can Apple help?