How Much Does it Cost to Build a Fitness app like Planet Fitness?

There’s no arguing that the COVID-19 pandemic was a nightmare for the entire world. But, it had one upside to it.

After the pandemic hit the world and shut it down, people finally understood how important it is to maintain good health.

This is why, in the post-pandemic world, more people have decided to follow a dedicated fitness regime and stay in good shape.

Easier said than done, right?

Unfortunately, staying consistent with these fitness routines can get nerve-wracking for many individuals.

With 9-5 office schedules, people often lack the energy or time to go to the gym every day. That’s where fitness app development comes into play.

Fitness mobile apps allow users to virtually stay in touch with a fitness trainer, gain access to different exercise routines, and even get nutrition tips, allowing them to follow a healthier lifestyle.

Thanks to their many benefits, fitness apps have become a trend in this digital world. These apps allow them to track their activities, get expert insights, and stay consistent with their workout routines.

According to a Report by Grandviewresearch.com fitness app market is expected to become a $120.37 billion market by the end of 2030.

Fitness Planet is one such fitness solution with a large customer base and an extensive list of features.

Many business owners want to follow in the same footsteps and launch their own fitness mobile apps.

So, to make your job easier, we have compiled this guide to help entrepreneurs get familiar with fitness mobile app development costs.

What are Fitness Apps and Why Are They Relevant?

If you don’t know this already, a fitness app is a dedicated mobility solution designed to help people follow workout routines and track their progress.

In this fast-paced world, going to the gym is a luxury not everyone can afford. That’s when fitness apps like Planet Fitness come into the picture.

Such apps provide complete fitness assistance to users in a virtual setup. They can follow the desired fitness routines without going to any fitness center.

You can also pair these apps with your activity trackers and wearable devices to consistently monitor their vital health stats and get personalized healthcare guides accordingly.

Some fitness apps also provide dietary and nutrition updates so that users can pair their workout regimes with healthy diet plans.

Quick Introduction to Planet Fitness

Planet Fitness is one of the most popular fitness solutions that provides complete in-home workout guides in video and text format.

Users can access these workouts whenever they want, be it in a gym or their backyard.

Planet Fitness is specifically designed for users who have busy schedules and need easy-to-follow workout guides that don’t put unnecessary strain on their bodies while helping them achieve their fitness goals at the same time.

Digital workout videos are the biggest USP of Planet Fitness. Based on their fitness goals, users can scroll through the available videos and choose workout guides accordingly.

Since it’s a cross-platform fitness app, users can track their workouts and access classes on both iOS and Android devices.

The in-app nutrition tracker also lets users monitor their calorie intake, making it easier to maintain a healthy calorie count every day.

Here are some of the key features of Planet Fitness that make it a unique fitness solution for fitness enthusiasts.

Users can choose from an extensive database of exercises and pick workout routines that align with their fitness goals. The app provides in-depth assistance for both weight loss and muscle gain goals along with nutrition tracking.

Users can also track their vital signs by pairing the app with different fitness trackers and wearable devices a built-in activity calendar is designed to help users stay on the right track.

Also, Read | Complete Guide to Develop Fitness Apps like Centr

How to Build a Fitness App Like Planet Fitness?

Now that you have a basic understanding of the fitness app market and Planet Fitness’ business model, we can move towards the fitness mobile app development cycle.

Keep in mind that developing any mobile solution (including fitness apps) is a time-consuming and technically inclined task.

That’s why it’s always advised to hire a dedicated fitness app development company.

By hiring a reliable partner, you’ll be able to focus on key business metrics and let professionals manage the entire fitness app development cycle.

Here’s our in-depth step-by-step guide on how much does it cost  to create a fitness app

1. Start With The Foundation Phase

Developing any mobile app requires in-depth market research. In this case, we’re planning to build an app like Planet Fitness.

So, we already have a starting point.

Sit with your team and analyze Planet Fitness thoroughly.

Your goal should be to monitor app performance, user acquisition stats, user behavior patterns, key features, and revenue models.

Once you have enough data about Planet Fitness, you can take your research one step further by evaluating similar metrics for other fitness apps.

The more you research, the easier it’ll be to plan a roadmap for the app development phase.

Having an advanced plan will also make it easier to predict different roadblocks and find strategies to overcome them.

2. Technical Documentation

Irrespective of which development model you choose – iterative, Agile, or DevOps – it’ll be necessary to prepare the necessary technical documentation in advance.

Technical documentation is an in-depth document that contains different aspects necessary to execute the development cycle.

The written material includes job responsibilities assigned to each team member, project objectives, architectures, potential loopholes, etc.

The documentation can also include software architecture, framework, and testing methodologies to lay out the development plan in advance.

Usually, the technical team you’ve hired prepares the technical documentation for your project.

But, as an entrepreneur, you must go through the entire document to ensure all the details are being covered.

Being a part of the fitness app development cycle will help you optimize the development plan so that it aligns with your app objectives.

3. Design

Once you have technical documentation in hand, the next step would be to move toward the designing phase.

This is where things get slightly critical.

Why?

Because you’ll have to craft a unique UI experience so that users can easily find workout routines, navigate between different app modules, interact with video guides, and enjoy great live sessions with their training partners.

Yes, incorporating all these elements into a single platform can be a bit challenging.

That’s why the fitness app development team you hire must have enough industry experience.

Also, Read | Guide on how to hire a fitness app development company

Having a rough design or a blueprint is always a great starting point to design an engaging UI.

Let your UX/UI engineers come up with multiple designs and choose the one that best aligns with customer preferences.

4. Start Out With the Development Phase

After you have a solid design foundation, your development team will start writing the code to incorporate different app modules, adding the necessary functionality to the app.

To create a fitness app, developers use different technologies, which mainly depend on the characteristics of the app.

For instance, if you want to create an iOS fitness app, the iOS developers will likely choose a native iOS app development framework such as Swift.

Similarly, for cross-platform app development, the developers are most likely to use a dedicated hybrid framework like React Native or Flutter.

During the development phase, the developers will construct a strong backend to process and manage the data flow.

Having a strong backend will ensure your fitness app doesn’t experience any downtime and delivers a remarkable user experience.

To host your mobile app, the development team will choose a dedicated cloud server.

The most common example is Amazon AWS that’s widely used in the development community to host an array of mobile applications.

5. Testing and Quality Control

Quality Control is one of the most crucial stages of the entire software development life cycle.

This is the phase where QA experts run the app through different test scenarios, evaluate potential bugs, and implement necessary changes.

Ideally, mobile app development companies rely on both manual testing and automated testing to test a mobile app.

In both cases, multiple testing scenarios are curated to imitate real-life events. Using these testing scenarios, the team evaluates the app’s functionality to ensure it’s ready to deliver a user-friendly user experience.

Developers might use both functional and non-functional testing while validating the app’s performance.

Functional testing is the process of testing a mobile app to ensure it matches its functional requirements listed by the client.

Non-functional testing, on the other hand, involves testing an app to validate its user experience under different situations.

What are the Essential Key Features of a Fitness App Like Planet Fitness

It’s no secret that the features of any fitness app decide its success rate in the real world.

Planet Fitness has managed to become a hit because it offers all the necessary features people need to follow workouts on the go.

If you have integrated interactive features into your fitness app, it’ll become much easier to captivate the end users.

However, that doesn’t mean you can stack your fitness app with any unnecessary features.

Your job is to cherry-pick the features that cater to the target market and make their job to follow workout routines less hectic.

Here is a list of the most essential and key features you can integrate into your fitness app to make it performance-driven and user-centric.

1. Easy Registration and Onboarding

Easy and quick registration is necessary for instant user onboarding. People don’t have the time and patience to deal with an unnecessarily long registration process.

They don’t want to add irrelevant information and if the registration process is too complicated, first-time users may get bored and look for other available options.

To avoid this, it’s better to keep user onboarding as simple as possible. You can ease the entire process with features such as social media integration.

It’ll let users set up their profiles using their social media handles within seconds.

2. Different User Profiles

A fitness app has different stakeholders such as the trainers, the end users, and the administrator.

Since all these user bases expect different sets of functionalities, you must design different modules according to the user type.

This way all the users will find it easy to navigate the app and use features that are specifically tailored for them.

3. Specialized Service Offerings

Personalization is the key to winning long-term customers.

If you can manage to provide personalized workout assistance and custom nutrition plans, you’ll be able to get ahead of the competition easily.

User features like push notifications, custom rewards, and workout reminders to integrate a personalized shopping experience into your fitness app.

4. Goal Setting Trackers

As we mentioned earlier, all users want to achieve different health goals using a fitness app.

For some users, losing weight is the priority while others want to prepare for a marathon. Based on what users want to achieve, your app must let them custom goals and provide curated workout assistance accordingly.

This will uplift the overall personalization of the app, making it easier to retain one-time app users.

Letting customers set personalized goals will also ensure that they stay on the right track to achieve their desired fitness goals.

5. Third-Party Device Integrations

Third-party integration with wearables and activity trackers can go one step ahead in making your app the preferred fitness companion for the end users.

Let users pair the app with wearable devices such as the Apple Watch.

This will make their health tracking more convenient.

Wrapping Up

So, that’s everything you need to create a fitness app like Planet Fitness.

How to create a fitness app like Planet Fitness is a challenging task, you’d want to hire a reliable development partner.

We provide end-to-end fitness app development services to help clients launch feature-packed fitness apps.

Share your app’s project requirements with our developers and we’ll develop a personalized roadmap to help you get started.