Published: December 7, 2023
27 min read
In this article, you'll learn:
1
🌐 Understanding the Fitness App Landscape
2
🏆 Fitness Apps Types With Top Successful Examples
3
💳 Fitness and Workout App Monetization Types
4
🔍 Features That You Should Pay Attention to When Creating a Fitness App
5
🛠️ Main Steps of Fitness App Development
6
💵 How Much Does it Cost to Create a Fitness App?
7
🤝 How to Choose the Right Fitness App Development Partner
8
⚙️ Tech Stack to develop fitness app
9
📚Our Expertise
10
👂Takeaways
The fitness industry has been on the rise during the last few years — so many companies have been investing in mobile app development. And the situation doesn’t seem to change! Jogging, gym, and yoga have become a lifestyle for millions of people instead of just part-time entertainment. In the realm of fitness software development, we've seen a similar evolution: from niche technical solutions to indispensable tools in everyday health and fitness routines.
In this article, we’ve gathered our knowledge & expertise on sports tech app development to help you figure out the best strategy for your project and find a reliable Tech Partner.
The fitness app landscape is a rapidly evolving sector within the health and technology industries. Here we collected highlights drawing on a Statista report on the world fitness apps market.
In this part of our guide, we’ll provide you with some concepts of what your fitness app can look like.
Essentially, all fitness apps, including those focused on yoga mobile app development, can be categorized by the type of content they offer and their target industry sectors such as fitness, mindfulness, nutrition, and others. Thus, your app idea will likely fall under one of the following types:
Gym schedule app helps users book and manage gym sessions. They often include features like class schedules, booking options, and membership management.
A prime example is Mindbody, which allows users to discover and book fitness classes in their vicinity.
A gym classes app empowers users to stay committed to their fitness goals by offering flexibility and accessibility in scheduling.
(image by Excellent Webworld)
Fitness monitoring app, which tracks activities, measures and computes a user's daily steps, exercise, caloric expenditure, sleep patterns, and other parameters, are essential in the fitness app market. These applications can record user behavior by utilizing:
Fitbit and Apple Health are notable examples, offering comprehensive activity tracking and health monitoring features.
Read also:
How to Enable Google Fit, Apple’s HealthKit, and Other Services to Share Data with Your App
This app, often referred to as a fitness member mobile app solution, caters to specific fitness centers or gyms, providing individuals with customized experiences that include gym resources, class schedules, and activity tracking.
PerfectGym is a popular choice, offering diet tracking alongside gym activity monitoring.
Workout apps serve as virtual personal trainers, offering a range of exercises and routines. In this type of application, a person can find ready-made workouts like Full Body, Upper Body, Core Strength, Lower Back, or even customize a specific workout, learn more about the technique of performing an exercise, or watch a video tutorial.
Nike Training Club and Planet Fitness are successful examples, providing users with a variety of workouts for different fitness levels.
These apps connect users with personal trainers for customized workout plans and coaching. Trainerize is a leading example, offering personalized training programs and client management tools for trainers.
Selecting the appropriate personal trainer app enables you to deliver an optimal training experience to your clients, assisting them in reaching their fitness objectives through the guidance of their virtual trainer. (image by Purrweb UX)
Every gym coach can tell you for sure that nutrition is an essential requirement when it comes to your overall well-being, health, and strength. That’s why some people prefer to download apps that allow tracking:
Additionally, such apps often have extra features besides tracking. For example, diet & fitness mobile application development may include creating grocery lists, barcode scanners food logging, etc.
Top fitness applications in this field include MyFitnessPal and Lose It! providing comprehensive diet tracking and meal planning features.
Read also:
How to Build a Diet or Nutrition App?
With the use of guided meditations, concentrated deep breathing, and other methods, wellness app solutions developed through meditation app development services assist users in achieving mental calm. Through mood monitors, meditation clocks, and sleep tales, meditation or mindfulness apps may help users overcome anxiety and sleep difficulties and are a perfect complement to mindfulness activities.
Headspace and Calm are top examples, offering guided meditations and mindfulness exercises.
Read also:
How to Make a Meditation App Like Headspace or Calm?
Catering to yoga enthusiasts, apps developed through specialized yoga app development services offer a range of yoga sessions and related content, enhancing the user experience. A basic yoga app will have planned training schedules, position reference manuals, and audio-guided yoga sessions.
Daily Yoga and Yoga Studio are popular choices, offering a variety of yoga routines for all levels.
Each of these app types caters to different aspects of fitness and wellness, offering unique features to help users achieve their health goals. From gym scheduling to meditation, the diversity in fitness apps reflects the growing demand for personalized health and fitness app solutions.
Physical fitness software offers personalized experiences, including tailored workout plans and nutrition tracking, to keep users engaged and committed to their health goals. Features like progress tracking and goal setting help retain clients by motivating them to continue using the app to achieve their fitness goals.
Read also:
How Mobile Apps Help to Increase Reach, Retention & Engagement in the Fitness Industry
For enterprises, a mobile app enhances brand visibility, as it's a direct channel to consumers. The process of making a fitness app allows for customization to reflect your brand identity, thereby increasing brand recognition and loyalty.
From an investor's perspective, fitness apps can generate revenue through various models like subscriptions, in-app purchases, and advertisements. Offering premium features or content can create additional income streams beyond the basic app functionality.
Understanding how to build a fitness app can significantly benefit your business by tapping into the growing fitness market.
(image by Merixstudio)
Apps streamline client management by automating tasks like scheduling, reminders, and tracking user progress, which is a key advantage when you build your own fitness app. They provide valuable data on client preferences and behaviors, enabling more personalized services.
Training apps and virtual gym apps offer direct marketing channels to their users through notifications and updates, enhancing user engagement. They allow for targeted marketing campaigns based on user data and preferences.
An app can reach a global audience, breaking geographical barriers. It provides 24/7 accessibility, allowing users to engage with your services at their convenience.
Features like social sharing and challenges help build a community around your brand. This fosters user engagement and loyalty, as users feel part of a supportive and like-minded group.
Mobile apps reduce the need for physical infrastructure and personnel, leading to cost savings. They save time for both the business and the clients by offering efficient, on-the-go solutions.
Every business needs to generate revenue. When building a fitness application, it's essential to plan how you will monetize it. There are various monetization models for such applications, including:
The fitness app market is rapidly expanding, offering a variety of solutions to cater to health and fitness needs. Understanding the fitness app requirements is crucial when developing a fitness app, as it's important to integrate features that attract users and provide a comprehensive and engaging experience. Here are some key features to consider:
This is the basic part of almost any application. Onboarding is usually the first screen the user sees when entering the app. Its main aim is to provide users with some basic info about the key features. In other words, you should briefly describe how your app can be useful to users.
Here are a few basic tips on how to develop a fitness application with a great onboarding screen:
Incorporating robust User Registration and Profile features is essential when you design a fitness app.
(image by Nika 🦄)
To build long-lasting relationships with your customers and incorporate effective workout app ideas, you’ll need Personal Profiles. In an application for online workout classes, they can be helpful in many ways:
This feature, crucial when you create your own fitness application, can be implemented in 4 important steps. Let's take a closer look!
The categories screen is one of the easiest and most “organic” ways for your users to explore the content of workout plans. The main idea here is that Categories should be easily visible and reachable.
We’d also recommend complementing each category with an image to make it even more appealing to your users.
After opening the category, users will see the screen with relevant classes. And that’s when the next feature comes in handy.
Users won’t spend much time trying to find what they need. They will just leave. And it’s something we don’t want them to do, right?
We have collected possible filter options for you 👇
Filtering (what to show) | Sorting (what to show first) |
⏱ By length (5; 10; 20; 30; 45; 60 mins) | 🔥 Trending |
🏋️♀️ By class type (special options for each category; e.g. bodyweight, chest & back, arms & shoulders for strength workouts) | 👍 Popular |
🦸♀️ By instructor | ⭐️ Top rated |
🧗♂️ By difficulty level | 😎 Easiest |
🎸 And even by music genre | 🥵 Hardest |
Your on-demand cycling steaming classes app may have different filtering & sorting options but the list above seems reasonable enough to be considered.
When a suitable workout is found, users would like to know a bit more about it. Thus, during custom fitness app development pay attention that each on-demand course can be opened for more information.
What should users see on that separate screen?
Finally, the user will turn your workout on and enjoy 🙂
The ability to filter and sort enhances user satisfaction by providing a targeted and organized approach to selecting workouts.
(image by Cathy huang)
Featured is a completely another screen that works as the feed in social media apps. What can you post here?
The main aim of this screen is to attract users’ attention and make them interested in discovering and using your app even if they haven’t thought about it at the moment.
A key element in how to create your own workout app is ensuring that users can track their progress over time. Here are 3 main groups of parameters that you can track:
Integrating a nutrition component in digital fitness software, often a key feature in healthcare app development services, where users can log meals and track calories, macros, and micronutrients, supports a holistic approach to fitness.
If you want to make a fitness app with a nutrition block, a separate weight tracker screen is a necessary feature. There users should be able to manually log their numbers, monitor the weekly/monthly/overall progress and see how close they are to their goal.
💡For a better UX, you can implement the dynamics of weight change as a nice-looking graphic.
Most people know that it’s not enough to just eat healthy - it’s also important to drink enough. Still, people forget to do it regularly, so that’s a problem that your app can solve.
Developing such a feature isn’t challenging in terms of technology so it won’t cost you that much. All you need is a screen where people can enter their water intakes, get reminders, and check if they’re properly hydrated.
💡Fitness app design idea: an animated glass or a bottle that is filled with water as the user logs more intakes is a nice way to make a fitness app more interactive and catchy.
With so many different types of food in our supermarkets, it's just impossible to always know what's healthy and what isn't. Moreover, it’s even more difficult to keep up the right balance of carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber in the diet.
So your users don’t have to read all the tags and calculate the “usefulness” of food on their own, you can implement a barcode scanner in your app.
For this purpose, it’s enough to allow the camera feature in your application and integrate a database of goods that will provide users with information about calories and nutrients. Finding a somewhat complete barcode database of products and the information about them is often the main difficulty, which we will give you a bit later.
Except for hydration measurement, a cool sports app should also let its users monitor their food intake. Thus, they will be able to count how many calories they consume every day and how their nutrition can be improved overall.
Meal shortcuts, a quick calorie estimator, and a barcode scanner can help you achieve the best UX on this screen.
By integrating these features, the app not only supports users in achieving their fitness objectives but also promotes a holistic approach to health and wellness.
(image by Musemind Mobile)
In learning how to make a workout app, it's important to consider integration with wearable devices like smartwatches, sports bracelets, and clip-ons. Still, they’ve found their own audience.
Usually, wearable technologies just track physiological parameters (like the pulse or estimated calories burnt) or other data (like distance walked or hours slept); some even don’t have screens to check it.
Learning how to make your workout app involves integrating with wearables and IoT devices, enabling not only the retrieval of interactive information but also the making of data-driven decisions. For example, find out how much more you need to walk to lose the necessary amount of calories or how to improve the effectiveness of your training.
Read also:
How to Integrate BLE-Based Fitness Devices into your App
In the process of how to make a fitness app, incorporating Social Features is essential, given the power of social media in the fitness trend. People are spending hours scrolling feeds, sharing photos, retweeting, and chatting with friends. So use it to your advantage!
First and foremost, implement the social login feature that we’ve already mentioned when we talked about user profiles. Additionally, consider social networks as a good marketing platform: allow users to share their achievements and workout plans, invite friends to join and train together, and so on. This will work as word-of-mouth marketing and bring you more customers.
People love to show off their achievements, and it can become a cool marketing channel for your app.
Push notifications are great for increasing retention and engagement rates. They are a simple and proven way to interact with customers even when they aren’t using your app.
Here are a few ideas on how you can use push notifications in your fitness app for gym:
When you make your own fitness app, offering premium content or features through in-app purchases or subscriptions can become a significant revenue stream.
However, you’re not only interested in gaining new users. Keeping the old ones engaged with your app should be a priority for you, too. And that’s where the following tools can help you:
Creating a community within the app, through forums, challenges, or a dedicated fitness blog, can foster a sense of belonging and support among users.
A crucial step in learning how to create a workout app, especially for sports club apps linked to trainers or fitness centers, is including an appointment booking feature. It enables your customers to easily book classes, group and personal training.
Online booking is much more convenient for your customers than phone calls or in-person booking at the front desk in your studio or gym:
Appointment booking features in a fitness app allow users to seamlessly schedule and manage their workout sessions.
(image by Jennya Rotman)
This feature typically includes various tools and functionalities designed to analyze and present data, helping users track their progress, set goals, and make informed decisions about their fitness journey. Here are some key elements that may be part of the Analytics and Reporting feature in a fitness app:
An offline mode ensures that users can access key features of the app without an internet connection. This could be the ability to download the workout you want in advance or download a map to track your run.
If you want to create a workout app with live training, this piece of functionality is quite important.
From the user's perspective, they work almost the same way as the usual on-demand workouts. The main differences here are:
Your fitness app may protect clients in a few different ways. Encryption, which protects your data by transforming it into an unreadable format, is among the most crucial. Applications storing sensitive data, such as credit card numbers or login passwords, should prioritize encryption as it prevents hackers from obtaining such data in the event of a system breach.
A strong privacy policy will specify how your business intends to safeguard user data and what actions are taken if an individual's account is stolen by hackers or other bad actors. Two-factor authentication (2FA), which replaces the need for users to enter their passwords into websites or applications via text message sent to their phone number, is a useful security feature.
This enables users to design unique walking, jogging, and cycling plans. With the app's given map, it also makes it easier for them to see and keep track of the distance as they cycle or run. This data is helpful not just for tracking but also for motivating purposes.
By using chatbots, you may automate answers to common inquiries, cutting down on response times and improving customer satisfaction all around. Also, you can add a FAQ section.
Chatbots and FAQs are made to answer standard and recurring questions, freeing up human support staff to concentrate on more complicated problems that call for individualized care.
Additionally, chatbots may be configured to collect pertinent data from users, which aids in the classification and prioritization of their inquiries. Through pre-screening, the system may direct questions to the right department or support agent, resulting in a quicker and more focused answer.
Optimizing the app for listing on the App Store and Google Play Store can enhance visibility and accessibility.
The app should be designed with scalability in mind, allowing for future expansions and updates.
In conclusion, to successfully start a fitness app, it should offer a blend of these features, tailored to the needs of its target audience. It's about creating an engaging, comprehensive, and user-friendly experience that supports users in their fitness journeys.
Next, we'll walk you through each step that you must do to create a fitness app.
Before you start to create your own fitness app, you should study this market, its growth trends, and user preferences.
Read also:
Project Discovery: What is it and Why Do You Need it?
Determine the type of fitness app you need to develop, such as a diet and nutrition app, an activity tracking app, or a workout app. Research your target audience, it’s important to understand their needs and preferences.
Next comes the addition of core features including user profiles, registration/login, connecting third-party devices, activity tracking, geolocation, notifications, and reminders. Additional features may include goal setting, educational content, gamification, and social media integration.
Before diving into the development of a fitness application, it’s crucial to meticulously identify both primary and supplementary features.
(image by Shakuro)
How will your application generate revenue? It’s important to determine the monetization model: paid applications, in-app purchases, advertising, or the freemium model.
Plan the technical documentation, UI/UX design, and choose the right technology stack. Develop the app for different platforms (iOS, Android) and ensure compatibility with various devices, especially wearables.
To make sure your app works as intended, you need to conduct thorough testing for bugs, usability, and performance on multiple devices.
Read also:
How We Handle Quality Assurance (QA) in Stormotion
Develop an advertising strategy for the effective launch of your application. Depending on the type of application, there may be different options. You can set up targeted advertising on social networks, and leverage external advertising opportunities. Your main goal is to reach the target audience.
Provide regular updates, fix bugs, and add new features based on user feedback.
Continuously gather user feedback and iterate on the app to improve and meet evolving user needs.
Read also:
How We at Stormotion Maintain Products After Release
Consider partnerships with health and fitness brands or integrating with existing health apps and devices for expanded functionality.
Understanding the cost to develop a fitness application depends on many factors. The key ones are:
Here you can find approximate cost and development time for a fitness app:
📱 Type of fitness app | ⏳ A rough estimate of hours | 💳 A rough estimate of costs |
---|---|---|
Gym Scheduling App | 510-1185 | $25,500-$59,250 |
Fitness Tracking App | 605-1505 | $30,250-$75,250 |
Fitness Center App | 503-1015 | $25,150-$50,750 |
Workout Apps | 987-1269 | $49,350-$63,450 |
Fitness Trainer App | 650-1227 | $32,500-$61,350 |
Diet and Nutrition App | 705-1070 | $35,250-$53,500 |
App for Meditation | 735-1032 | $36,750-$51,600 |
Yoga Application | 663-1246 | $33,150-$62,300 |
Choosing the right partner for the development of fitness applications involves a comprehensive assessment of various factors, including technical expertise. Let's delve into it further:
The right fitness app development partner shouldn't only possess the necessary technical skills but also align with your business goals and values, ensuring a successful and sustainable app project.
Read also:
The Stormotion Team: What Makes Us Special?
If you are currently in search of a technical partner for workout app development, we would be delighted to work with you. Reach out to us, and we can discuss all the details!
Contact Us
We share with you a few tech tips that will help you to reduce costs and create a fitness application of nearly perfect quality. Here they are:
At Stormotion, we specialize in Fitness App development services.
Collaborating closely with our clients, we've crafted a diverse range of apps, spanning from Guided On-Demand Workout Apps to Streaming, Wearables Tracking, and Diet & Nutrition applications. Additionally, we possess extensive expertise in working with BLE & Serial-based fitness IoT hardware, along with Wearables.
From ideation to comprehensive development, covering both hardware and software aspects, we guide our clients through every step of the product development process. Throughout our collaboration, our aim is to equip clients with the tools and strategies necessary to create a competitive fitness application, providing ongoing support and updates after the application's release.
Within our portfolio, you'll discover successful cases of developing workout and coaching apps for fitness devices, some of which have quickly risen to become market leaders in their respective segments. A notable example is the Stepr application.
Stepr is a compact, effective, and connected stair-climbing exercise machine designed for a wide range of users. In cooperation with Stepr, we enhance their Android-based Tablet software. The challenge was establishing Serial port connectivity for device control and introducing innovative features, including Picture in Picture mode, Netflix, and YouTube integration for an immersive workout experience.
(image by Stormotion)
Platoon Fit: This application elevates online workouts to a new level, focusing on health monitoring gadgets. We developed a React Native cross-platform app, with features like music streaming and health device data to enhance user engagement and personalize the experience.
(image by Stormotion)
FitTracks: This app, aimed at both beginners and seasoned athletes, offers voice-guided workouts and is recognized as a prevention course by the German government. We used React Native to ensure consistency across iOS and Android platforms, maintaining the design code of the existing website and integrating features for both online and offline course access.
SportPlus: The application that connects seamlessly with workout equipment for personalized exercise routines. Stormotion faced the challenge of integrating multiple BLE protocols for different devices, creating a generic protocol handler for effective communication. The app features clear and accessible workout management tools, even during intense exercise, and a CMS system for custom workout updates.
(image by Stormotion)
Force USA: Designed for a leading manufacturer of training gear, this app helps users maintain fitness progress with personalized training plans and goal tracking. Due to a tight development timeline, Stormotion adopted a unique approach, releasing basic functions first and adding others later marked as "Coming Soon." We also developed an importer for easy content management, enhancing the app's functionality and user engagement.
If you want to know more about what challenges we faced in developing various fitness applications, you can read in our portfolio.
As you may have already understood, the development of a fitness application is a rather complex process (similar to the development of any application). We hope that our advice and experience have been helpful to you. Let's summarize:
Now you’re all set and ready to make a fitness app of your own. If you’re looking to hire fitness app developers — we’re here to help! Drop us a line so we can see how we can contribute our health and fitness app development expertise to your idea!
Was it helpful?
Take a look at how we solve challenges to meet project requirements
For a startup, choosing a development company with experience in fitness app development is crucial because they understand the unique challenges and requirements of fitness apps, such as integrating wearables, handling health data, and creating engaging, user-friendly interfaces.
Consider platforms like iOS, Android, and web platforms for a fitness website, for broader reach. Technologies to consider include wearable integration (like Apple HealthKit, and Google Fit), cloud services for data storage, and possibly AR/VR for immersive experiences.
Yes, whether you're developing a unique fitness solution or a fitness clone app, it can be highly customized to meet the specific needs of your fitness business, including branding, functionality, and integration with existing systems.
Focus on intuitive navigation, clear visuals, and responsive design. Conduct user testing to gather feedback and make iterative improvements for a seamless user experience.
To maintain a high fitness app retention rate, implement robust encryption, secure data storage, and comply with privacy laws (like GDPR or HIPAA). Regular security audits and adherence to best practices in data handling are essential.
Choose a flexible and modular architecture that allows for easy updates and scalability, akin to how a gym website might be designed for future enhancements. Plan for regular updates and potential expansion features from the start.
Yes, you can integrate your fitness app with other platforms or devices using APIs. This can include wearable devices, health-tracking platforms, and social media for enhanced functionality.
Essential processes include functional testing, performance testing, security testing, and user acceptance testing. Continuous testing throughout the development cycle ensures a high-quality, reliable app.
The cost of developing a fitness app can lead to a wide range of budgets, depending on the app's complexity, but expect a significant investment. Timelines, which should include planning, development, testing, and deployment phases, can vary from a few months to over a year.
Ask the development company for case studies, client testimonials, or contact information of past clients. This can provide insights into their reliability, quality of work, and client satisfaction.
Ensure there's a clear communication plan outlining regular updates, meetings, and points of contact. Tools like Slack, email, and project management software can facilitate smooth communication.
Typically, the client owns the app's rights and source code upon completion. However, clarify this in your contract to avoid any misunderstandings.
Read also
Case Study: How We Solve Technical Challenges for Our IoT, Mobility, and Fitness Clients
What Stormotion's Project Management Flow Looks Like
How to Integrate BLE-Based Fitness Devices into your App
Our clients say
They were a delight to work with. And they delivered the product we wanted. Stormotion fostered an enjoyable work atmosphere and focused on delivering a bug-free solution.
David Lesser, CEO
Numina