Last Updated | November 28, 2022
Executive Summary – How Much Does It Cost To Build A Fitness App?
Are you a venture capitalist or tech startup seeking to invest in app development and want to know how much does it cost to build a fitness app? This article delves deep into how the fitness app market is a lucrative territory. Learn about the cost of building a fitness app and other associated expenses to create a budget and get ready to introduce the next big thing in the fitness app market.
Overview – How Much Does It Cost To Build A Fitness App?
2.3 million U.S. dollars. That’s the revenue the top-grossing health and fitness app, Paired, generated on Google Play Store in 2022. Health and fitness apps are revolutionizing how people monitor their health and stay active. Using fitness apps has become a part of the lifestyle of many.
Because these apps promote healthier lifestyles by tracking food and water intake, workout patterns, and training regimes, every smartphone owner out of 68.7 million uses at least one fitness app in the United States.
As a result, the downloads and number of users of fitness apps have skyrocketed.
With this rise of fitness apps, the global fitness app market will climb to USD 30.63 Billion by the end of 2030. The market value alone makes it certain that there’s big money in this space.
Fitness apps make up a lucrative territory for venture capitalists and tech startups to invest in.
So, if you are an investor or a startup looking to fund a compelling product like Paired and other similar apps, now is the time to explore the space. Let’s find out what it takes to create a fitness app- from costs to features to maintenance and support and everything in between.
Here we go!
How Much Does It Cost to Build a Fitness App?
Unfortunately, there is no universal answer. The cost of creating a fitness app depends on a number of factors, including design complexity, the development team’s location, UX/UI design, quality assurance, and more.
Fitness apps are of different types. Depending on the type you choose, developers integrate relevant features, which also determine the cost of development. More features mean more cost.
However, the common practice is to build an MVP version of the app and get feedback from users before putting more money into the idea.
An MVP refers to a minimal viable product which is an app with basic features that meet user needs. After launching an MVP, you can gradually add more advanced features and attract more users.
So, how do you calculate the development cost for a fitness app?
First, add the time each development component, like back-end, UX/UI design, iOS or Android development, and project management takes. Then, multiply the time by the development team’s hourly rate.
Here’s the approximate time and cost of developing a fitness application. For a more accurate calculation of price, we need to know all the project requirements.
For the purpose of calculation, consider $50 per hour as the cost of development. Based on this rate and the time mentioned above, creating a fitness app requires you to budget as low as $94,900 for one platform (Android or iOS) and $155,750 for two platforms.
4 Types of Costs Associated with Creating a Fitness App
1. Development
The cost of developing a fitness app depends on the features you add. For different types of apps, there are different sets of features.
What Kind of Features will Your Fitness App have?
To give you a hint, here are some basic features any fitness app needs to have:
Registration and Login
Adding different login options makes it easy and quick for users to sign in. You can integrate simple options like signing up via Google or Facebook to get more users to register.
User Profiles
Users can set up their profiles by adding details like height, weight, and fitness goals. Profiles can also let users upload a picture or change their password.
Workout
Your app should have a list of workouts that users can choose from. The workouts can be yoga, warm-up, cross-training, and more. Other workout-related content you can add is a list of exercises, video playback to watch techniques, duration of programs, and amount of calories burned.
Nutrition
Fitness apps should have some ready-made ideas for meals. So, users can manage a healthy diet. Users also need options to add their own meals and put down details like carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
How Complex are they, and How many codings will be Required?
The features listed above are just a few. To make an app perfect for fitness-conscious users, it needs to have more interesting features like guides and audio and video instructions to provide consumers with more exercise plans, so they can complete them well and track their sports routine.
These features are not very complex, but some of the essential functions that most fitness applications have. Coding for these features to make them work properly on different devices and platforms (iOS, Android, etc.) depends on the type of application and coding language.
But, one thing is certain- the more features you add, the more time the coding will take, especially when you’re starting from scratch.
Will You Need Help from a Specialist Development Team?
If you want to develop the app in-house with your existing staff, contractors, or volunteers, your team needs to be experienced and expert at handling the project.
But, if you want to outsource your project, you will need help from a specialist development team that has completed a number of projects and can minimize development risks. Search for a reliable and experienced team in the market.
Do you know how to create your own fitness app?
2. Marketing
How Will People Find out About Your Fitness App?
After all the hours and efforts of development, your app gets ready to hit the market.
There are some handy and simple ways to market your app to get it discovered.
Ideally, you should start creating a promotional strategy at the development stage. But, even if your application is already on the market, many marketing tactics will still work.
The tactics include:
- Social media – the best way to spread word of mouth about your application
- Influencer marketing – to target niche markets and a bigger user base.
- Content marketing – curate useful content to explain your app’s functions and how it can address pain points. Write it and publish it on different platforms.
- Blog – another way to promote your app with fitness-focused content. You can create your own blog and get users through search engines. But, this takes a heck of a lot of time to get visitors to your blog.
- Ads- for making it simple to find users by advertising. This requires setting a budget.
- Online videos – create videos about what your app does and put them online, preferably on YouTube.
- Getting listed – probably getting your app listed on App Store or Play Store is half a win.
- Collaborate with a fitness blog- find out authentic blogs in your niche and collaborate with them to spread the news about your app. People surely listen to authentic sources.
What Kind of Budget Do do You Need for Marketing Expenses?
For promoting the app, there are plenty of other ways, such as online ads, PR, trade shows, etc.
Promotional services can get your app seen by people and may push it through press releases or newsletters. Social media and other unpaid ways can somewhat help you in promoting the app. But in most cases, you need to budget for marketing your app.
Some monetary promotion techniques include running ads on Facebook, Google, and YouTube.
Another way is to take your app and visit some trade shows. When promoting your app at trade shows, consider the big picture. Visit some big trade shows and develop a marketing strategy to nail it down.
But, before you fork out all your money on any of these methods, allocate a minimum budget of $100-150 for each channel. This way, you can test and see which method comes in useful.
3. Maintenance & Support
Once your fitness app is released into the wild, your development team will be responsible for fixing any bugs that crop up.
The team can even provide you with a mechanism to answer customer queries or support requests via email, phone, social media, or in person.
4. Miscellaneous Costs
Medical app development costs are multifaceted. App owners can incur costs in many ways.
From accounting and legal fees to software licenses to hosting costs to payment processing fees – there are a lot of other small costs associated with building and launching a fitness app.
These costs can quickly add up if you do not prepare for them.
If you try to give a numeric value, you would just be guessing because before starting development, it is unlikely to calculate exactly how much you will need to spend.
But, if you set a budget beforehand and account for some key considerations when estimating costs, you can prepare for them. Look up the cost of LIMS software and see if you need it in your healthcare operations.
Here are some miscellaneous costs that are worth accounting for:
- Design complexity: price range
- Fee for outsourcing development to a tech partner
- Cost of third-party tools
- Hosting and servers
- Backup functionality
- Security infrastructure and tools
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FAQs:
How can you keep your development costs down when creating a fitness app?
To create an app at minimal costs, you can develop an MVP before the final product. MVP refers to a minimal viable product that includes fewer features and costs less money than a full-featured app.
By developing an MVP with limited features, you can get your product in front of an audience at fewer costs. With user feedback, you can update your app and increase features as per user demand over time. This helps you lower both app development time and cost.
What are the ongoing costs of maintaining a fitness app?
An initial ballpark average that app owners need to spend to keep the app functioning properly is around $250-500 a month. You can budget 20% of your initial development spend as the cost of maintaining your app.
How to make a medical app?
Before making a medical app, you should do the groundwork to figure out the pain points in the industry. Because there is already an overflowing number of apps on the market, your app will get lost if you do not identify the right problem to solve.
Once you understand the problem to solve, here are a few steps to move on in the process:
- Define your target group and their needs
- Choose the app type that matches the pain point you are targeting
- Design your app with a consistent and intuitive interface
- Make it HIPAA compliant (check out this guide on how to make an app HIPAA compliant)
- Build MVP
How to develop a telemedicine app?
The fundamentals of developing a telemedicine app are similar to how any other app is developed. It starts with requesting developers for a quote, discussing project details, and creating a plan. Once you and the development team are on the same page, you enter the development process, design and test the application to fix bugs, approve the demo, and roll it out. After launch, you also need to update and maintain the app to keep it functioning.
How to develop a healthcare app?
Healthcare app development involves several steps- from market analysis to rolling out the product in the market.
To give you an overview, here’s the step-by-step process:
- Get started with market analysis
- Plan application architecture
- Decide what platform you want to build your app for (iOS, Android, or web)
- Choose whether to build SaaS or a custom app
- Create the app with good healthcare UX design and UI
- Test your app
- Deploy and maintain the app
How much does it cost to make a fitness app?
The average cost to develop a fitness app is around $15,000. However, the total cost can be somewhere between $5,000 and $25,000.
For example, developing a fitness app with less number of features (known as MVP) will cost you less than an app that includes all the intended functionality.
Closing Thoughts
Understanding how much it costs to build a fitness app is not a big thing in 2022, but creating a compelling product that does not exist before makes a difference. The compelling product does not have to be out of the world, but an app that users are open to making a part of their routine.
By adding some interesting and fun features and interactive elements to your fitness app, you can roll out a great product in the market. But, that all require you to define your budget first. You can start with an MVP and get user buy-in.
Once you find your app doing well in the market, update it and make it more user-friendly and fun to use to attract more users.
If you want to go for custom app development, we can help you there. To find out more about our custom medical app development services, book a consultation at no charge.
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