Build a Meditation App: From Start to Finish with Our Guide
To build a meditation app that will see the light of day and can compete with established brands on the market, you need solid preparation and a complete understanding of how to operate in the industry. It won’t be surprising that it is hard work to stand out in the tightly-packed niche.
On the bright side, with comprehensive meditation app development, you can build a product that will answer all of your customers’ needs and make sizable revenue. Following proven best practices can amplify your efforts and take your app to the next level.
Leveraging our extensive knowledge as an app provider, we will explain how to create a meditation app from the initial idea to the final launch. Expanding your knowledge further, we will touch on all the essential details that make an application truly successful. Let’s dive into this guide together.
What is a meditation app?
A meditation application allows users to participate in guided meditation sessions using pre-recorded courses and custom programs. The sessions can vary in longevity and purpose and be adapted to beginners and experienced meditation fans.
Example of UX/UI design.
Besides guided sessions, such meditation app development offers other tools to help users learn different meditation, relaxation, and mindfulness practices. We will touch more on the essential features later on.
The widespread acclaim of meditation apps like Headspace and Calm proved this niche has a lot of potential. In 2023, the revenue of this market is projected to reach $4.43 billion. Moreover, the future of the meditation application niche is highly promising, as research suggests that by 2028, the market will reach $7.08, showing an annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2028) of 9.83%.
Revenue in the Meditation Apps market.
Some speculate that this surge of interest in meditation and mindfulness comes from the world recovering from a post-pandemic reality. Seeking relaxing experiences and building mindful habits can aid consumers in reducing stress and improving overall mood.
One of the attractions of similar applications is that they offer a customized approach. By leveraging data-collecting algorithms, apps can come up with personalized meditation programs and tailored tips to improve the practices based on the person’s goals, preferences, and experience.
In addition, to build a meditation app that will be in demand, you need to account for accessibility with wearable devices, as they have also increased in popularity. With their help, apps can gather valuable information about heart rates and other biometrics, resulting in a more comprehensive picture of the user’s patterns.
Finding reliable app development services becomes vital if you want to develop meditation software. Since this niche has a few strong competitors, you need to choose software providers who have experience creating similar applications and can bring valuable insights to the table. For now, let’s dive deeper into the most prominent features of the meditation app.
Popular features of a meditation app development
To be able to compete with market giants, your application has to provide functionality that will be of interest to the target audience. When building a meditation app, you should learn what features attract and retain users and consider adding as many engaging and in-demand elements as possible.
Most popular features of a meditation app.
Of course, creating a copycat application is not a good strategy. Therefore, your unique value proposition has to be different and novice, putting a spin on existing functionality. Here are some of the popular components of a successful app for meditation:
- Personalized guide meditations. You can hire professional teachers who can record their guided sessions to feature on your app. Consider recording many different practices with varying styles and purposes to appeal to a larger pool of users.
- Breathing exercises. These programs are aimed at enhancing the function of the lungs regardless of whether the person is experiencing any issues with their health. Breathing exercises include various techniques to improve ventilation, strengthen respiratory muscles, and help with reducing stress and anxiety.
- Sleep improvement meditations. Targeting insomniac users, sleep meditations include practices that are meant to improve the quality of sleep. This is mainly done by reducing tension before going to bed to achieve a whole night of restful sleep.
- Calming and concentrating music. Background music is vital to meditation apps as it helps set the user in the right mood and enables them to concentrate. Typically, the music is an ambient or a natural sound. However, some users prefer complete silence when participating in their favorite meditation practices, so be sure to make music a customizable option.
- Progress and goals tracking. Allowing users to set goals and walk toward them is a good retention strategy. You can create a tiered system where consumers can unlock new levels or ranks by completing certain streaks or marathons. Having a system that shows the user’s progress, such as time spent meditating, overall habits improvement, and more, helps them monitor their advancement.
Overall, during fitness app development, you can consult with your team on ways to enhance such features and deliver a more innovative approach to meditation that your competitors lack. By utilizing AI in your technology, you can find new ways to tackle a user’s well-being and self-improvement, catering to their needs more effectively.
How long does it take to build a meditation app?
The timeline for delivering a finished result for a meditation app project depends on various factors. Therefore, evaluating it requires knowing all the details. The most time-consuming aspect will become the development phase, as your team will need to build the functionality for the app from scratch and implement every feature into the final software.
The type of application you choose, cross-platform or native, will also affect the delivery time. As we mentioned before, writing two separate codes for each operating system will take significantly longer compared to creating a hybrid application. A custom design and its associated number of iterations can also prolong the timeline.
In that case, working with more experienced and skilled providers can help boost the development speed. Establishing a comprehensive project plan to create your own meditation app will also aid in avoiding pitfalls and miscommunications that can extend the time to fix the issues.
In general, development companies can create comparable applications in a span of 4 to 6 months. Keep in mind that these estimates are based on average apps of similar type and medium complexity. Your personal app idea may take shorter or longer periods to deliver, so be sure to speak with software providers to receive a more precise time assessment of your project.
How much does it cost to create a meditation app?
Similar to timeline estimation, calculating the cost of designing and developing a meditation app requires a complete understanding of the project requirements. You want to account for the scope of work, such as the complexity of features, the type of OS, the level of customization during the app design process, branding efforts, and more.
Factors that influence the cost of a meditation app development.
There are also various pricing models that development providers charge for the project. Some offer a standard per-hour pricing, where you pay for each specialist’s hour it took to complete the stage. Keep in mind that more seasoned experts tend to charge more for their app design services as opposed to their less experienced counterparts.
Others operate on a fixed-price model to make a meditation app. This is where you step into an agreement with the vendor to pay a specific price for assignment completion based on their evaluation of the project difficulty and required delivery times. Other types of pricing models can apply as well, but these two are the most common ones.
Setting realistic budget and deadline expectations is essential, as the cost of development can range anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 and more. The price will depend on what you want to achieve and who you collaborate with.
We strongly advise you to reach out to app development specialists for a consultation about your idea and get a custom quote on your project. Gathering several independent opinions can also help you paint a more complete picture of the pricing scope offered on the market.
Best practices for building a meditation app
We can gather valuable insights into their development best practices by analyzing the success of a few of the most popular meditation apps. Below, we explore what general guidelines you should follow on how to make a meditation app that will be compelling to users.
Best practices of meditation app development.
- A personalized experience. Today, customers are looking for products that cater to them individually. Letting users establish their own goals and objectives within the meditation app allows them to feel more connected and engaged. You can start by onboarding them with a reasonable questionnaire that asks them to choose what they want to achieve from exercises and customize their journey according to their wishes.
- Notifications and reminders. No two users are the same therefore sending out the same generalized notifications will not work effectively. Based on the customer’s timezone and meditation preferences, you must create personalized notifications that will trigger at the right moments within your meditation app development. On top of that, you can add a feature that lets users set reminders for their desired practices and improve your user experience.
- Wearable device compatibility. Wearable devices have risen in popularity over the years. In 2022, around 1.1 billion connected wearable devices have been recorded. That means ensuring your app can be used on smartwatches and other technologies can significantly expand your outreach to a target audience.
- E-commerce elements. In the wellness industry, selling merch and related goods can positively impact the business. Consider adding branded pillows, yoga mats, and even clothes during design to sell on your application. This approach can help build a sense of community around like-minded users who share an appreciation for your meditation experience.
- Help desk and chatbots. Leveraging modern AI technologies in building a meditation app, you can create a chatbot that promptly replies to any inquiries or questions users may have when using your app. It enables customers to receive needed help and feel you care about providing a top-notch service.
It is up to you to implement any of the suggested best practices while collaborating with healthcare app development companies. Depending on your app idea, these may not be applicable, while others can substantially boost your performance on the market.
How to create a meditation app that is monetizable?
Developing your meditation app is between a rock and a hard place since you have to represent robust functionality for an uphill battle in attracting customers to your app. First of all, you have to decide on functionality — provide private sessions, an opportunity to set a timer, a progress tracker within days, reminder notifications and more.
Secondly, you have to consider a research of your competitors to be aware of rivals, what they offer, what is currently trending on the market, what audience do they target, what are their leading benefits and at the crux of the matter why people choose them.
Thirdly, you have to hire a dedicated team of developers and designers, like Limeup, to ensure that your solution will be developed and delivered on the market by professionals. The team will develop core functionality, create visually appealing design, and offer the cream of the crop user experience.
Fourthly, you have to be able to receive ongoing support and maintenance after app is released so that you are ensured it operates well and in case of any unpredictable events you will reach out to a team that developed this solution.
We have outlined only the in-the-trenches stages, additionally you are able to receive integration services, consider marketing campaigns, market research, and many others chiefly stages.
During meditation app development, you must remember how you plan to monetize your product. After all, there is no point in building an app if you can’t expect it to make money. Luckily, when it comes to applications for meditation there are a few methods of monetizing your offer to choose from.
Monetization strategies for a meditation app.
You can select the strategy that best fits your business objectives from the following list:
Subscription model.
The most widely used monetization approach with meditation apps is a subscription-based model. Users will pay a set amount of subscription fee to use your product. You can offer a free trial period of a few weeks or a month to encourage users to try out the experience and purchase after the trial ends.
In addition, you can work on creating several subscription options with different tiers, like basic and premium, offering more abilities and features to users with a higher-rank subscription. This approach lets you have a predictable stream of revenue and active users.
In-app purchases.
The second most common type of meditation mobile app development monetization is in-app purchases. You can create an app-specific token or currency, enticing users to pay to unlock certain premium features, like custom meditation sessions or a personal live stream with a teacher.
The upside of this approach is that you can use it in combination with a subscription model allowing users to choose which paid content they would like to receive.
Pay per download.
This is a less widespread method, as customers prefer to try out a product for free before agreeing to make any payments. The pay-per-download strategy involves customers paying to download your app from the app store, and it primarily works for brands with established names that users already know are worth their money.
Still you can opt for this method if you would like. The downside to keep in mind is that you would need to add other monetization strategies to charge for any new or unique content you release.
Advertisements.
Ads may be a tricky monetization approach as they tend to put off users. As an option, you can feature a variety of advertisements from third-party businesses to run on your app and give customers an option to turn them off with a paid subscription. Typically, ads as a strategy work for apps with a high amount of active users.
Overall to get the maximum out of app monetization, consider combining a few methods and see what works best for your audience. Don’t be afraid to try and test unique approaches until you figure out the right course of action.
Need help to create your own meditation app?
Gathering all of our tips and guidelines for crafting an outstanding meditation app that can confidently operate next to renowned businesses you can now see a fuller picture of where you should be headed. Regardless of the unique app type you want to develop our guide covers everything you need to know to start bringing your ideas to life.
We explained how to create a meditation app step by step, the nuances of project development, and the best practices to follow for an appealing product. Be sure to save our exploration so you can return to it later to refresh your memory on certain crucial aspects.
If you are looking for a dependable development partner to trust in building your solution contact us to schedule a free consultation with our expert team. We will promptly reach out to you and answer any burning questions you may have regarding your app idea.