Learning the importance of developing a fitness app reveals the significance of users to get guidance and stay motivated to exercise. It is quite a fertile time to create your own workout plan app. Android fitness applications were popular enough even before the COVID-19 pandemic. But now they’ve exceeded all the boundaries of fame as everyone prefers to do all workout activities from home. So, if you’re planning to invest in a fitness app development project, then you are on the right track towards success. However, including advanced technologies like AI, VR, and AR, can develop a fitness app with smart features and enjoy a competitive edge. Developing a fitness app like MyFitnessPal, one of the most popular fitness apps, lets you count calories by recording it into an online log and get health guidance. Fitness apps like MyFitnessPal are created for people willing to lose weight and easily maintain their healthy diet plan.
How to Develop a Fitness App like MyFitnessPal or JEFIT?
Before initiating your fitness app marketing plan, you need to learn what keeps users engaged with your fitness app. Another major thing you need to learn is how the fitness app market is expected to grow. There is a huge demand for fitness apps, and it’s booming in the market. If you plan to launch a fitness app, then this piece of information will help you grasp all the necessary aspects to dive into the field of Fitness and training.
- Why should you develop a fitness app like MyFitnessPal or JEFIT?
- How many types of fitness apps do you need to develop for a complete system?
- How to start a fitness app development project?
- Best Fitness Tracker Application Features
- Best Fitness Application Tech Stack
- How much does it cost to make a fitness application?
Why should you develop a fitness app? MyFitness App Market Analysis
To understand the importance of making a fitness app, you need to study the market analysis about online public health. It would help you analyze how many users you can get on your app and how much fitness app revenue is expected?
- According to the online public health resources, it is stated there are more than 97,000 health and fitness tracker apps available for smartphones and tablets.
- Nearly 52% of smartphone users utilize technology for their health-associated information.
- Out of 52% of users, 15% are in the age range of 18-29 years old who have installed the latest tracking and fitness apps.
- According to market research, the fitness app market can gross $1.68 billion in 2020-2024.
- A study by Polaris Market Research states that the online fitness market is anticipated to reach $14.7 billion by 2026.
- About 64% of physicians said that IoT could help reduce the burden on nurses and doctors.
- Key participants of the Fitness app industry are MyFitnessPal, Calm, Fitbit, Komoot, Strava, and JEFIT.
How many types of fitness apps do you need to develop for a complete system?
The types of health tracking apps vary from one another on the basis of specialization and specification. Different top fitness apps feature different functionalities that give an insight into the particular health aspect. However, today a single application shares lots of information and features. Generally, there are five types of fitness apps you can download from Google Playstore or App Store.
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Workout Apps
This type of application mainly shares information and training sessions for workouts with its users. To create such a fitness app, you need to streamline exercises for various body parts or the overall fitness instructor. The workout exercises are shared with users with the help of infographics or videos to ensure better understanding. The exercise application may have different sections related to specific training programs like abs workouts or slimming fat arms. Moreover, some of the latest advanced workouts applications may also specify the time frame for exercise.
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Nutritional Apps
Some applications guide what you should eat and what kind of food you should avoid. It is basically a diet app that guides users to a healthy diet plan to enjoy a healthy body and lifestyle. To get a diet plan suitable to your body type and health, you need to provide information like age, body mass, etc. These fitness apps are highly recommended as they help maintain a good balance with food quality and quantity. It is perfect for those who want to change their eating habits or focus on curing a specific problem area by good food intake.
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Personal Training Apps
This type of fitness application will exactly make you feel that you are at the gym. The user of this fitness application gets a personal trainer assigned. It can either be an actual human or AI-based assistant trainer to guide users about their fitness journey. Just like a regular trainer, it tracks your health details like what you eat, what workout exercises you do, and other related activities that need to include in a healthy lifestyle.
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Calories Counter Apps
It is almost similar to your nutritional apps, just with a bit of difference that it is a self-guided take on healthy eating. Like other fitness apps’ working models, this app also asks you to fill in personal information to guide you accordingly. It teaches users what optimum calorie intake they should take to reach their particular health goal. The calories you take in your food and the physical activities you perform should be monitored with the application guide. To calculate the calories of the food, you can either manually enter the food name or upload a picture to find it out. However, all the methods to evaluate calories in the food depend upon fitness app development’s advancement level.
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Hybrid Apps
As the name suggests, these fitness applications are a mixture of all apps mentioned above. In this application, you get the personal trainer assigned who guides what food you should eat, workout exercises should be done, and other activities to achieve desired health goals.
How to start a fitness app development project?
Once after deciding what type of fitness app development project will benefit the business plan, it’s time to start with the fitness app development guide.
Step 1: Choose the Best Method of Monetizing App
It won’t be beneficial despite having a captivating app design until and unless it generates any money for your business. If your fitness app fails to gross some million dollars, then all your investment in fitness app development costs will go to waste. In order to do this, it is essential to decide on a monetization source after choosing the type of fitness app.
Step 2: Primary Features and Functionalities to be included in Fitness App
Integrating unique and advanced features while creating your fitness app will help you market your app more. Yet there are some features that standard in all basic fitness applications, some of them are:
- User Profile
- Push Notifications
- Workout Record
- Goal Setting
- Geolocation
- Gamification
- Social Media Integration
- In-App Music Feature
Step 3: Hire the Best Mobile and Web App Developer in the Town
All your dreams could go unfulfilled if you failed to approach the right app development company around you. Most successful businesses prefer going for an app development company rather than an in-house team. Hiring an app development company cuts down a significant percentage of fitness app development costs. Once after reaching out to the right developers for your creating your fitness app, you can move forward with other aspects of the plan.
Step 4: Fitness App Development and Testing
You got your team of experts who started building a fitness app like MyFitnessPal or JEFIT. The client needs to keep collaborating with the development team on time to make sure the app development process goes smoothly. Before launching Android and iOS apps for users, app testing and analysis should be carried out to ensure the proper functionalities.
Best Fitness Tracker Application Features
To make your fitness app, you need to specify the features it should have. While building a fitness application like MyFitnessPal or JEFIT from scratch requires building an MVP first. It helps you understand the functionalities of the final product and how you can improve it. Some of the features that are extremely important for making a fitness app work effective are:
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Registration
Registration is the first step for the users to get started with the fitness application. However, registration won’t be an essential step to use your fitness app if it is a simple step tracker. While, if your application provides unique training and meal plans according to the user’s body health, then users need to register first. Registration is basically for gathering user data and make their experience with the fitness app more personalized.
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User Profile
How to keep user data personalized and categorized in the track record? Users can enter and manage their personal physical information themselves. They need to provide information like height, weight, age, and other information related to their health and body. Based on this data, either the real trainers or the AI-based trainer create personalized workouts and diet plans to achieve faster results.
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Workout Menu
The main aim of fitness app development is to provide users with a detailed guide to physical activities. Best Fitness applications cut down the need for a physical trainer around you to guide workout activities. Based on the healthy body goals, different workout options are categorized for different users. The workout moves and activities can be either explained with the help of infographics or videos. A good fitness tracker app also displays the workout time and real-time statistics of calories burned along with teaching workout moves.
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Statistics
Statistics is a source of motivation for the users, who can understand their progress with their new healthy diet plan. The users can view their progress in the selected period of time. They can observe an apparent change in their weight, muscle mass, and training intensity. Moreover, the users are in the free hand of observing training session stats for a short period. Furthermore, local stats displays running pace, cadence, travel distance, heart rate, steps count, and lots more. This type of statistics of the Fitness tracker app is mainly preferred by sportspeople who want to monitor their performance during each workout session. However, build a fitness tracker app that displays stats in charts and graphs rather than tables. As visualization makes post-training analytics more captivating and engaging.
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Integrating Third-Party Apps
A single application can’t be a jack of all trades in regards to Fitness and workout plans. To enhance the functionalities of your fitness tracker app, you can sync other workout and health applications with yours. For instance, if your app is a fitness tracker that counts users’ daily calories or steps, then you can integrate a third-party fitness application that guides diet and workout. However, synchronizing authentic platforms like Apple Health for iOS fitness app and Google Fit for Android fitness app can help you track health based on the user’s heart rate.
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Integration of Mobile Accessories
To make your fitness app for Android and iOS devices work efficiently and give splendid results, it should be compatible with fitness trackers, smartwatches, heart rate monitors, smart scales, and other statistical devices. Moreover, with the success of your fitness app development business plan, later on, you can extend it further by creating a fitness app for wearable platforms. Developing a fitness app for wearable devices helps users keep their cell phones aside and focus entirely on the workout.
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Fitness Data
Regardless of the type of fitness app, one factor it should ensure is an extensive fitness-related database. When you are building a fitness app like MyFitnessPal, it should be capable of housing an extensive database of workout and diet plans. Meanwhile, the application should be able to store the complete health track of the users as well.
Advanced Features to make Best Fitness Application
To create your own fitness app that stands out with unique features and is highly demanding in the market, upgrade it with more sophisticated features. Some of the advanced features you can include are:
- Live Streaming or Video Conferencing with Experts
- Coach on-Demand Availability
- Barcode Scanner to count Calories and other Nutritions
- Integrating Social Media to share Fitness records directly
Best Fitness Application Tech Stack
How to make Money with Fitness Apps like MyFitnessPal or JEFIT?
As mentioned earlier, it’s useless to create your own workout plan app if it fails to earn some dollars. So, before developing a fitness plan app like MyFitnessPal, find out how to make a fitness app that generates revenue. Here are some common approaches followed by top fitness tracker apps.
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Paid Subscription Plan
The majority of fitness applications widely adopt this model of generating money with a fitness app. The users installing the application are required to pay a certain amount to enjoy ultimate fitness app features. However, this amount set for the users to get started with the application can not actually cover your fitness app development cost. Therefore, initially, you can use this way to attract users, but you will have to change the source of generating money later on.
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In-App Purchases Feature
It is pretty similar to a subscription, but you create a fitness app and distribute it for free. The free fitness app version provides users with basic features well enough to have a seamless experience. Whereas the advanced features of the application can be used by paying some additional fee. Although users are not obligated to buy additional features, they will be urged automatically if they enjoy an excellent experience with the basic features. Almost all the best fitness applications like MyFitnessPal and LifeSum have an optional subscription for additional features.
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Advertisement
During the development of the fitness application, you can design the layout so that it can display ads in different menu sections and others. Even though ads are helpful for the users as they can directly purchase relevant products, they can be crucial at times.
How much does it cost to Develop a Fitness App like MyFitnessPal?
The fitness app development cost ultimately depends on features of the app, time duration, tech stack required, and some other technical factors. However, you can get an approximate fitness app development cost estimation by adding key components. To create a fitness app that provides the ultimate fitness experience, you need an expert mobile app development company. A group of professionals who will develop strategies, designs, developments, and test the application. To create a market competitive fitness tracker application, your potential team looking after development plan should include:
- Project Manager
- Android and iOS App Developers
- UI/UX Designers
- Test Engineers
- Maintenance and QA Engineers
| Fitness App Development Plan Phases | Estimated Time Duration Required | Average Per Hour Rate |
| Technical Documentation | 80+ hours | $25/hour |
| Designing | 160+ hours | $25/hour |
| Development | 960+ hours | $35/hours |
| Project Management | 240+ Hours | $25/hours |
| Quality Assurance | 288+ hours | $25/hours |
| Estimated Time Duration Required | Minimum 1822 hours | |
| Estimated Fitness App Development Cost | Starts at $63,770 | |
How can Clustox Help you with your Fitness App Development Plan?
At Clustox, we have been delivering different app development solutions for years. Health and Fitness are one of our expertise niches where we have in-depth knowledge. Our engineers are experienced in developing several top-performing applications. If you want to help people maintain better health during the pandemic situation with the guidance of professionals, Clustox- Custom App Development experts can help you. Despite the dominance of well-known apps like MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, and Nike Training Club, we can develop a fitness app to rise among these names.
