"Мens sana in corpore sano," or simply "a healthy mind in a healthy body." We have found the formula for staying healthy and young: regular workouts and active life. Modern fitness apps have become our best friends, and we are reliant on them to track our activity. As a user, fitness apps have all the features you need to train at home or anywhere else without visiting a gym. From a business perspective, creating a fitness app can be a groundbreaking solution for entering the vast market of mobile apps and making a profit. So, if you are on the other side of fitness apps, you should know how to create a fitness app.
Fitness App Market Perspectives
Before the pandemic, the fitness app market was already promising. The global lockdown turned the industry into a necessity for millions.
- This year, the global fitness apps segment was valued at $15.49 billion.
- The revenue is projected to reach $33.04 billion by 2027, showing a CAGR of 16.36%.
- User penetration will grow to 12.21% from 8.67%.
The fitness market is divided into app types, each getting its own revenue share.
Types of fitness apps
To start with fitness apps, you should first determine which type better matches your business or conduct a market analysis to reveal the best-performing fitness app type. Determining the app type will completely change the course of project development, the tech stack of the application, and the need for a dev team with relevant expertise.
Workout apps
The major function of the workout app is to provide animations or videos that can be replayed during a workout. Similar apps also show burned calories for each workout session, the user’s progress, and their history. A workout app aims to become the user's trainer and mimic a gym without making the user spend hundreds of dollars on a gym subscription.
A single application can include different exercises: cardio, dance, yoga, meditation, stretching, fat-burning heavy workouts, etc.
Activity tracking apps
People are addicted to tracking their activity and celebrating small achievements like completing their daily steps, burning calories, and losing weight. Similar apps have accurate measurements, automatic tracking, and wearable integration for higher accuracy.
Most tracking apps allow users to connect to native health-tracking apps to synchronize data and track changes
Nutritional apps
The target audience interested in fitness apps does care about nutrition, that’s why a food tracking app is another way to gain revenue. The application's key feature is to provide nutritional facts about foods, count calories, offer recommendations, and help track weight loss.
To keep users engaged and not lose interest in tracking food, the application can give useful tips or introduce new features with updates.
Lifestyle fitness solutions
This type is more focused on providing lifestyle changes like sleep monitoring, habit building, focusing, etc. Similar apps may or may not have tracking features, but you may consider some cool features to include for the value proposition.
All-in-one apps
Go for an all-in-one solution to target more people and guarantee project success. The fitness app may have activity and nutrition tracking features, workout suggestions, help build habits, monitor indicators like heart rate and stress level, etc.
To create a similar app, you will need twice as much time and resources.
Apps for different devices
When creating a product for modern consumers who are all into gadgets and smart devices, you can’t simply ignore them, so when developing a fitness mobile app, think ahead and develop solutions for different devices like smartwatches and kiosks.
Define fitness app key features
Again, each type of fitness app will have its own tech stack and features, but they do have enough general features to develop an MVP (minimum viable product).
Sign in/Sign up: a basic and required feature that allows a user to create an account via social media or email.
User profile: the most critical feature, allowing users to fill in basic information (age, gender, weight, height, habits, goal, etc.).
Dashboard: various types of dashboards will include different components, but the idea is to provide up-to-date data: calories consumed or burned, workout duration, statistics, etc.
Payment integration: a critical feature for monetizing the app. The more payment systems the app has, the higher the chances are that a user will make a purchase.
Integration with native and third-party apps: users need to control data and have a well-rounded tracking experience that can be provided through sync with native apps and API integrations.
Integration with wearables: the feature can be included in future iterations, but it is a must for modern fitness apps.
Push notifications: notifying the user about water intake, workout time, progress, etc.
How to Create Your Own Fitness App
Everything may sound simple, but every detail of a fitness app requires the dedication and expertise of a whole team, from business analysts to developers and marketers. In order to understand how app development works, here are a few details about the process.
Step 1: Set up an app-building canvas
Use Lean Canvas to visualize your idea and sum up the essence of the app.
Step 2: Carry out market analysis
This step will help you understand your audience's needs, reveal competitors, and define must-have and nice-to-have features.
Step 3: Prototype and user-test
Prepare a prototype and carry out user testing to validate your idea without having an actual product, thus saving on development costs.
Step 4: Find a reliable dev team
A professional app development agency with relevant expertise will offer a tech stack, platform, and features based on business analysis, freeing you from technical pain in the "neck."
Step 5: Release, wait, and update
The hardest part begins after releasing fitness apps to the market. User feedback and the work of quality assurance professionals are critical at this stage.
Those five steps may take months of planning and development, which is quite acceptable for a high-end application.
How to monetize your fitness app
Fitness app monetization works like monetization models for any other application.
Paid app
This is an instant revenue-generating model without much of it from a long-term perspective. In fact, this is the least recommended model for a new product because users have become picky and are unwilling to pay for something they haven't even tried yet.
In-app purchases/subscription
With this model, the app is downloaded for free but has premium features requiring a purchase. It's a very effective way to show users your app and persuade them to pay for more.
Ads
The least risky monetization model for users is to display partner ads inside the app. This model can be combined with in-app purchases, giving users the option to turn off the ads.
How much does it cost to build your own fitness app
We left the most critical component of the app to the end because maybe this is the hardest question for both the project owner and the contractor. The cost of a fitness app may vary from $60.000 to $160.000 depending on the tech stack, features, platforms, and much more. The development of a fitness app MVP could cost between $25,000 and $30,000.
| Development phase | Estimated hours |
|---|---|
| Discovery | 200+ hours |
| UI/UX Design | 150+ hours |
| Development | 900+ hours |
| Testing | 450+ hours |
*The costs don’t include on-going maintenance and marketing. The final cost will be determined by the hourly rate of the vendor with whom you choose to work.
Conclusion
*The costs don’t include ongoing maintenance and marketing. The final cost will be determined by the hourly rate of the vendor with whom you choose to work.
Conclusion
Business rules can, of course, change and can be more complicated than described above. Act now to get your piece of the fitness app market. This was just a summary of fitness apps and all the challenges you might encounter when implementing your business idea. The success of an idea starts with a good business analysis supported by a professional team responsible for successful application development.
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