How To Build A Fitness App: Complete Guide

Ready to kick-start your own fitness application? Let us learn why it is necessary in 2022 healthcare saas, and how the process goes, and the cost to develop a fitness application. 

How to build a Fitness App. Introduction

Do you know that fitness apps witnessed a 67% rise in downloads during 2020? The global pandemic hit the owners of the fitness industry greatly. Gyms, spas, health clubs had no choice but to shut down, and it caused a lot of panic among business owners and entrepreneurs at first. To keep their businesses running in those times was a big challenge. Thanks to personal trainer app development and emerging on-demand fitness platforms that not just helped them to survive the tough times but thrive successfully.

Market Review. Why do people need these apps at all

With lockdown enforced worldwide, staying fit and healthy turned out to be more than essential for everyone looking out for alternate ways. Online fitness and wellness apps like MyFitnessPal, Glo, HealthifyMe, Sworkit, GE Fit, and more served every single need of the users ideally. And this resulted in a huge spike in the number of active users over the period. Moreover the global online virtual fitness market size was valued at 6046 million USD in 2019, and is projected to reach 59 231 million USD in 5 years, by 2027. Which is more than 33% growth. Today, there’s a huge need for fitness apps which can help users get a convenient one-to-one class, session or a dialog with their coach or fitness experts. 

Undoubtedly, online fitness app development is a new normal and is going to stay here for long and forever. Launching your branded fitness app and website ensures: 

• A one-stop solution to connect customers and fitness experts virtually. 
• A complete tech suit to offer multiple services under one marketplace. 
• A promising growth rate and increase in both customers and profits. 
• A future-ready platform to help your fitness business navigate its next. 

So how can you launch, run and grow your own on-demand fitness app? The key to perfect launching is a complete tech suite. Reliable and smooth run depends on the advanced set of features. Growth is only possible with the right partner. 

Fitness App Development Cost

Building your own app can be tiring and cost a lot. Yet, there are options to make everything more cost-effective. 

1 – Do It Yourself. If you like to have a total control over everything and you don’t mind a lot of moving parts like hosting, payment processing, plug-ins and more as well as the additional cost tied to all those parts then you might consider this approach. There is a reason people do this for a living. The skills you would need to learn in order to build your own app would send you on a wild goose chase. You will need to invest first in your education. 

2 – Hiring A Developer is a better solution when you have a healthy budget and no rush for launching the app. Today, the fitness project cost is somewhere between 10 – 20 thousand USD, and it takes 3 – 6 months to complete if you are lucky. Plus monthly charge thereafter for maintenance. 

3 – Development Options: Lower-end Freelancers will offer inexpensive service but lower quality. Standard Freelancers are less expensive than agencies but slower. Agencies are faster, better quality but more expensive. In any case, be sure to ask for their portfolio before starting to work.   

Essential Functions When Creating Fitness Apps 

In order to be successful, your branded fitness app has to ensure 100% user satisfaction being highly interactive and loaded with cool features. 

Look for a team of developers who have great skills and expertise in this field, who know exactly how to build a fitness tracking app that is going to be loved and useful. These experts are your main advisors on the app functionality, and they will surely include these ones: 

• Easy sigh-up and login
• Training modes selection
• Real-time audio and video consultation
• Fitness activities tracking
• Advanced trainer search and filter
• Easy subscriptions 
• Multiple payment options
• Live fitness tracker 
• Reminders and goals setting
• In-app chat
• Push notifications

And what about coaches and trainers? The cool fitness app development product you are going to create should be user-friendly for experts to attend clients comfortably worldwide. It includes the following options:

• Easy registration
• Create workout schedules
• Availability management
• Trainees and activities management
• Seamless payments
• Wallet management

Powerful admin dashboard is also important. Getting the whole vision of the marketplace to make your business stand out.

This presumes:

• Fitness experts management
• Users management
• Ratings and reviews 
• Accounts and reports management
• Manage notifications 
• Discounts and offers upload
• Multiple payment gateways integration
• Subscription management
• AI-driven analytics. 

Types Of Fitness Apps And Examples 

While most fitness experts enjoy Apple Watches, fitness app development companies nowadays offer their services for various healthcare fields. Yoga trainers enjoy Alo Moves and Glo a lot, dietitians’ tops are MyPlate Calorie Counter, PlateJoy or MyFitnessPal, and more, spas owners love MindBody, GoWabi, etc. The popular apps for health clubs are Gold’s Gym, Flat Tummy App For Women, etc. Meditation experts have their beloved Breathe, Headspace and Calm and rehab centers’ most popular are WEconnect, SoberTool, Nomo, and more. 

Here is just one of various top 10 lists and how much each of the options cost. 

Ways For Monetization

• Profit is wonderful but there is no way your app becomes successful without free features. Be giving and high-minded, let your users try it and get attached to it by offering a pretty interface that is modern and minimal. Find out what is missing in your competitors’ apps and give these features to your audience to be unique. Then it is time for Subscriptions and other app monetization strategies like prime versions, limited offers, ads banners, and more. Trust your development team and their advanced ideas.