How to Make a Fitness App

Fitness applications are gaining traction as more and more brands invest in mobile and web development. Creating a fitness app gives your business a powerful competitive edge.

If you are in doubts to create a fitness app or not, then think no more.

Last year health and fitness apps were in the 8th place among the most popular apps in the Apple App Store with 3.01% of the market share (Statista Survey, 2018)

Health and fitness apps were in 11th place with 2.94% of the market share in Google Play (Statista Survey, 2018)

It is expected that the global fitness app market size will reach over $14.7 billion by 2026 (Polaris Market Research, 2018)

According to health and fitness app statistics, users are loyal to their favorite apps. About 96% use only one fitness app. More than 75% of active users open their apps at least two times a week. Also, 25% of users open health or fitness apps more than 10 times a week (Flurry Analytics Survey, 2017).

Fitness applications are becoming very popular and more and more brands invest in mobile and web development.

The Most Popular Types of Fitness Apps

Core Features Used to Create a Fitness App

• User account & login

User account and login is a must-have feature on your list. If users can’t view personal achievements in retrospect and compare them, then fitness and nutrition apps are useless. A user account can store data, not only on user’s devices, but also in the cloud.

Make it possible for users to register and login through social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, and sign up via email. If you want to develop a fitness app with on-demand content or a paid subscription, then billing information and an integrated payment system should be present.

User profiles should have fields for data about age, gender, weight, and height. Don't forget to include different units of measurement for different countries, like kilograms vs. pounds, and meters vs. feet.

• Wearable connectivity

Wearables, which collect various types of data, have become an integral part of the fitness market. Use HealthKit and Google Fit APIs to access data from Apple Watch and a number of Android gadgets, when you create a fitness app.

These devices gather and store a lot of useful information you can use in your application:

• Number of steps and covered distance

• Heart rate

• Calories burned

• Type of exercises

• Duration and intensity of physical exercises

• Activity tracking

The biggest number of fitness apps are focused on activity tracking. They provide information about steps made, the number of calories burned, distance walked, run, or cycled, time spent on physical activity, and so on. Activity tracking can be done with the help of integral smartphone sensors or using a wearable device.

• Goal setting

Goal setting is an integral part of the basic feature set, because users love to set objectives and achieve them. It motivates to move forward and improve physical form.

• Geolocation

This feature allows users to create routes for walking, running, or cycling, track their current position, and record covered distance. To get a good idea of this feature just take a look at what Strava offers.

• Calorie counting

Calorie counting should be added no matter if you create a fitness app or build a diet app. It helps users track how many calories they consume and how many they burn during training sessions or during the whole day.

• Notifications & reminders

Notifications remind users about the importance of regular physical activity because regularity is a secret of the best shape.

Notifications and reminders should not be distracting, and users must be able to adjust notification frequency and time depending on their personal preferences.

• Workouts

This feature is based on the type of app you want to make. You can offer users to create their own workout, come up with a set of standard ones, or combine these two features. The combination of these two features is the best choice to create a fitness app that will be popular among users.

• Educational content

If you provide access to educational content in your application, then users will be engaged with it the most. For example, from small tips on how to stay fit and healthy or long videos of workouts.

These features are the basic ones which you need to take into account when you create a fitness app.

How Much Does it Cost to Create a Fitness App?

Before starting to build a fitness app the most crucial factor to consider is app development cost.

The final cost will highly depend on the set of features.

The application development process is divided into the Discovery and Development stages, at MLSDev.

The Discovery stage consists of the following services:

• Business analysis
• UX/UI design
• Software architecture planning
• Project management
• Team review

During the Development stage such services are included:

• Development
• Quality assurance and testing
• Project management
• Team review

All projects are not the same and the final set of features influences the budget of your project a lot.

Please remember that the final cost depends on the level of the development company you hire. You should check the expertise, experience, and approaches of your potential vendors to make a fitness app of good quality.

If you have a great and unique fitness app idea, you have two options - plan and create a fitness app yourself, or hire an app development company that will do everything for you.

The market offers a lot of vendors and you just need to choose carefully to be satisfied with the result in the end.