How much it cost to build an online fitness or Yoga app with Flutter (cross-platform development) in 2022?
One evergreen saying is "Prevention is better than cure" and as an individual & society, we go the extra mile to prevent ourselves from any ailments. To stay active & healthy some go trekking, some do walking, some are comfortable with running but a bigger portion of health enthusiasts was used to visiting Gym/yoga studio. As the covid forced every physical studio to close their doors, the only option left to these fitness hungry folks is to stay & train at home.
Complete physical & mental wellness is not an obvious activity like walking/running, that everyone knows or does on their own, but is more like a skill, which needs someone to teach & show how to do it right. This insight gap opened the doors of opportunity for the trainers who are knowledgable & know their trade.
That being said, let's discuss how much it cost to convert your "stay fit at home" idea to a consumer app for a new revenue stream.
The development of an online workout app is divided into two units. one is a consumer-facing mobile app (Android & iOS ), which is accessible by the users to find the fitness programs & classes. The other one is Client facing web app where the fitness trainer/studio will add videos, content, plans, etc. To have some common ground for cost estimation, we assume that the fitness/yoga app (MVP - Minimum viable product) will be going to have at least the features described below.
1. Consumer-facing mobile apps (for Android & iOS).
Following are the features considered for Android & iOS mobile apps for cost estimation.
- Login & Authentication - User will be provided with the option to signUp with Email & password, Google, Apple, Facebook. A unique Id will be created for every user, where the data related to users like achievements, classes completed, favorited videos are stored. It also includes the "Login as Guest" option, with this user being able to signup anonymously.
- Fitness Videos - With this feature, all the videos related to various fitness/wellness routines are arranged in easy to find manner with a nice layout. Here only a selected few videos are available to watch & practice for free and the remaining are locked behind a paywall.
- Live classes - You could arrange live classes on the date & time of your choice and the details of live classes will be shown in the app in the "latest date first" order. Further entry to live classes will be limited to pro members only or the studio is provided with the option to charge separately for these classes too.
- Fitness plans - Plans to achieve specific goals are grouped and are served to the user as a single bundle. For eg., if the user is interested in reducing belly fat, he could choose the "Belly fat Reduction" plan and all the suggestions & exercises to reduce belly fat are shown here and the user could take classes only related to that.
- Create own workout routine - From all the available video playlists, the user could choose specific exercises, that better suit their exercise regime & fitness goals and may practice it on their wish.
- Search Content - This feature will be useful for searching for specific classes & videos. For example, if a user is looking for "dumbbell exercises" he just types the query, the app will search for all the exercises related to user input data and displays the appropriate results. Further, autocomplete feature is also included so that if a user starts typing characters, the system will show the best-matched search queries, from which the user could choose.
- Food intake tracker - This will be a basic calorie intake tracker, where users have to enter the food they ate & its calorie count.
- Water intake monitor - Water monitor to record, how much water they drink in the particular day against the target set by them. It also includes a custom reminder to show notifications for the user when it's time to take another glass of water.
- Weight tracker - A Weight & height tracker with auto BMI(Body mass index) calculation is built into the app. The user is provided with the option to enter the weight manually on a daily/weekly basis.
- Apple Healthkit & Google Fit - App will be integrated with apple's health kit and Google Fit APIs to receive the data related to calories burned, sleep, step count.
- User profile - Once the user creates their account with login, they are provided with an option to update their profile with images, health goals, and a few basic information.
- Social sharing - Here we create a sharable image with the user name, date of joining the app, workout hours completed, calorie burned. Further user is provided with the option to share this image on major social platforms with 03 clicks.
- Alerts & notifications - With this feature, the messages sent from the backend & reminders set by the user will be displayed on the user's phone. This also includes taking appropriate permission from the respective mobile operating systems.
- Custom Reminders - These reminders are set by users to remind on the time of their convenience. The user could also give a name to every reminder like time to do exercise, time to drink water, etc.
- Comment on classes - A system to provide feedback about every class (videos) and give suggestions to fellow users about the benefits, how they did that complex workout, etc. will be added to the mobile application.
- Blogs - To share details about anything which can't be fit into classes or videos. For blogging CMS like ButterCMS, will be integrated into the app or if do not want to use CMS, your responsive web pages are rendered as blogs.
- Ads integration - For the businesses to have an additional stream of income Google Ads or any other top ad networks of company choice with proper documentation will be integrated into the application.
- In-app purchases - Play store & app store consumable and subscription purchases will be integrated into the app so that to enjoy pro features & benefits user has to pay the premium. Further authenticity of all the purchases will be verified in the cloud so that there will be no chances of fraud.
- Feedback - A system where the customer could provide feedback to the company within the app that are not related to the content.
- Policies - It includes detailed guidelines & approaches about privacy policy, terms & conditions, user data usage & sharing.
2 Studio/Client facing web app.
This web app will only be accessible to the designated staff of the company/studio. This is where the client control what should be accessible to consumer-facing mobile apps. It includes the following.
- Videos on demand - All the videos you have created & owned are stored in the backend and served over a secure HTTP connection to customers as & when requested by the app. Here staff could upload a new video with a description, category of the video, and benefit of the workout. Along with adding new videos, older videos could be updated & removed from the app.
- Fitness plans - As we told you earlier, it is a bundle of videos focusing on some specific results. This feature will provide you the tools to create a new fitness plan or update the already available fitness plan with new content or delete the plan.
- Live classes - If you are arranging a live session, where you could input the date & time of the upcoming event with appropriate messages & photos so that the next live class details will be reflected on user-facing apps.
- Client Dashboard - A dashboard to show details about daily active users, monthly revenue is provided.
The final cost you will likely incur to get your custom fitness app or MVP developed with the above-explained features is...
| Price in USD | |
|---|---|
| Consumer-facing mobile app for Android & iOS with source code and custom logo. | $ 21,200/- |
| Client-facing web app with source code | $ 3,500/- |
| Total | $ 24,700/- |
Frequently asked questions.
Which backend does your development agency use for this physical fitness mobile application?
For most of the projects, we use Firebase for authentication, document storage, notifications, and BunnyCDN for images & video serving. But the clients are provided with the option to choose the cloud provider of their choice.
How the calorie/water/weight tracker data is presented?
Calorie burn rate is presented in a simple graph showing how many calories were burnt by practice. Water intake data will be shown with the target(user-defined) water intake against the actual water the user drink. Weight tracker will be presented along with height & BMI calculation. All the data is shown in graphs, the graph style (like a bar or line graph) is as per client requirement.
Could we show motivation tips that change daily?
If asked, we add this feature to the mobile app free of cost and also write a cloud function to change the tip daily or as per the duration requested by the client.
Could your development agency provide an iOS home widget for the iOS application?
For this app, the iOS home widget will be better suited to show daily tips & fitness goals set by users and of course, we love to include this feature. But home widget feature is not a part of this cost estimation.
Could I add a feature to shop/purchase the equipment required to perform the exercises?
Here there are 02 possibilities, one is to link & open your shopping partner website to purchase the product and the other is to build a shopping feature into the mobile applications. Kindly ask for a quotation to know more.
Could we make the videos play one after another without any manual intervention?
This feature is available by default to the "create own routine" functionality mentioned above, along with the option to set the custom delay time before playing the next video. This could be extended to other videos too.
Which service is used to stream live classes?
Agora SDK will be used to create live video streaming.
How much time will it require to build an eCommerce app?
Generally, the cross-platform app with the above specification will be completed in 02 months including release to the app store & play store. However, it may take longer depending on the custom features required.
Does all the user entries about food/water/weight is stored in the cloud?
All the user entry details will be stored in the cloud in separate documents accessible only to the respective user.
Does the user have to log in & create their account before using the mobile app?
The login screen will be presented to the user before they access the application content. However, the user is also presented with the option to "Log in as Guest", so that they only have to reveal their Facebook/google/apple account, when they choose to become a pro member or to use other features of the app like commenting on videos, uploading profile image, etc.
Could we show the calorie count for each food user inputs automatically?
Few third-party services provide calorie data about almost all the food & beverages, and we could integrate these solutions to show the calorie count of the food user inputs. Further, building your database to cater to this subject is also a possibility.
Could we save the Apple Health kit or google fit data to our backend?
Data from Apple & Google APIs could be copied & saved to the client backend, but this feature is not included in this estimation.
Is it possible to show one/two reminders (set by business) about daily practice without user input?
Of course, we would like to include this feature in the app, if asked by the client at no extra cost. But note that to show reminders(notifications) user has to allow the app to show alerts/notifications. If the user denies the permission, reminders will not be shown.
Finally, if you are a fitness trainer & studio, you might already have the resources (like exercise videos, Fitness plans to suit every persona, contents, etc.,) required to serve the content to the online audience and even if you don't, you could make it in a snap. And if you are worried that once the physical gym/yoga studio opens, there will be no online audience. Please don't be concerned about that scenario, because once the users know how to stay fit from the comfort of the home, even if the streets become open in the future most will be going to stay with your online classes since it has no commute and will be always accessible & cheaper.
The one thing which is stopping you from opening up the new revenue stream is an app well built for both android & ios mobile phones. And if you are ready to provide better fitness training classes to the community, we love to build you the apps that resonate with your passion & technical expertise to keep it growing...
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