The global meditation app market is a fast-paced niche that attracts more and more users daily. For reference, revenue from the meditation app segment in the US is projected to show annual growth of 8.03% for the next four years. It means that this industry is not oversaturated yet, and can offer promising opportunities to investors.
You’ve probably already decided to invest in meditation and mindfulness app development. Now make it happen! In this article we will present you with a detailed development guide for meditation apps.
Table of content
Meditation Apps: What are They and Why Are They So Popular?Features of a Successful Meditation Application7 Steps for Successful Meditation App DevelopmentCosts to Make a Meditation App, Unnecessary Expenses to Cut, and Turnaround TimeExamples of Meditation Applications that Went ViralConsider Weelorum Your Trusted Partner in Developing Your Mobile AppFinal ThoughtsFAQMeditation Apps: What are They and Why Are They So Popular?
Psychological stress is a frequent concern for people of all ages. Let’s take a look at why meditation apps have become widely used for reducing emotional pressure:
Society is Increasingly Digitized
There’s no surprise that most people have at least one computerized device with access to the Internet. But it’s not only about the number of units that can host meditation apps. It’s about the specific mindset that makes individuals choose apps and remote education courses over real-time classes that one has to visit in person. Digitalization continuously contributes to the increasing userbase of meditation software solutions.
Society is Starting to Care For Mental Health More
In truth, society became way more overwhelmed with stress and anxiety in the first place. For one, in 2019, only 11% of adults in the US reported symptoms of depressive disorder. But in 2021, the number was already more than 41%. And this adverse tendency made thousands of individuals start taking care of their mental health.
Mentality cannot keep up with rapid societal changes and the constantly increasing volumes of information. So, nearly half of the population experiences the negative effects of a fast-paced lifestyle. Meditation apps are seen as a solution and a cure to modern problems, so their popularity skyrocketed.
Meditation Apps Have Gained in Their Functionality
Modern meditation apps are more functional than outdated ones. They are not just collections of meditations or music but offer extra features that keep users engaged in an app and incentivize subscription purchase.
Features of a Successful Meditation Application
An exact combination of functions is difficult to select even for experienced developers. However, the core features most successful meditation apps share are:
- Profile management. Users are more engaged in using your app if they have a personalized profile. This feature may also incentivize them to subscribe rather than stay a free user.
- Guided meditation and breathing exercise lessons. These are the core forms of content that any meditation app must offer. After all, users purchase subscriptions to lower their stress levels rather than scroll through well-designed pages.
- Library of meditation videos, tracks, and sleep stories. Libraries complement meditation lessons and help users get instant relaxation. They also create a perfect background for healthy sleeping.
- Progress tracking feature. Integrate a progress tracking functionality so that users can evaluate how well they perform with your app. This feature will also increase your app’s retention rate.
- Meditation sessions and video consultations. This innovative feature spreads like wildfire now. Many teachers are willing to sell their courses or conduct private lessons. All you need is to connect service providers with their buyers.
There are more features to consider including in your end product. Make sure to find an optimal balance between cost-effectiveness and functionality.
If you are wandering where to find best meditation app development
Consider partnering with an experienced Weelorum team
Contact us7 Steps for Successful Meditation App Development
To help you in your zen-searching endeavor, we have compiled a short and succinct guide to create your own meditation app comprising seven core stages:
Market Researching
Start by researching both your target audience and competitors. Your core goal here is to determine who your customers are: their demands, needs, problems, and preferences. This way, you will have a better vision of the end product your prospective clients will like.
As for competitors, they serve as the benchmark for your meditation app. You are highly advised to conduct S.W.O.T or other forms of analysis. It will help you determine how to develop a meditation app by showing the successful solutions to incorporate and their failures to avoid.
Planning
Once your market research is completed, you should proceed with planning design decisions, functionalities, ways of monetization, and other concepts. Be as precise as possible while forming your specifications to alleviate misunderstandings between you and your dev team. Remember, it’s better to spend an extra week on planning rather than an extra month on reworking.
Prototyping
You might want to build an MVP to start gathering info and gaining traction. On the other hand, you can stick with a prototype—a visualization of how the end product will look and feel. Then, this digital draft will be finalized with fully-fledged design solutions, integration of APIs, additional features, and so on.
Designing
At this stage, your hired digital artists design the final appearance of your meditation app. The user interface must be nice and intuitive enough, so your customers don’t get lost in the interactions between fields, buttons, and pages. In the end, the design solutions will be incorporated into a digital prototype and the final product.
Developing
Also called the “programming” stage, it involves combining the design decision with the planned functionalities into the final product. Depending on your technical specifications, this phase may take weeks to be successfully completed.
Testing
Quality Assurance (QA) testing ensures the end quality of your app. If executed correctly, it will help achieve seamless and high-speed performance with very few undetected code errors. You may go with manual or automated testing only, but any guide to develop a meditation app states that you should stick to the mix of both.
Releasing
In case you do not want to perform open beta testing first, your end product can already be deployed to a Google Play Market or Apple Store. Make sure that your potential customers are informed about the new software option they have to try.
These steps to create a meditation app are universal and highly recommended to follow precisely.
Costs to Make a Meditation App, Unnecessary Expenses to Cut, and Turnaround Time
Let’s jump right in with calculating how much time meditation app development requires. Writing a brief usually takes one to two weeks, while researching an app’s concept and probably creating an MVP is more like four to five weeks. Design sprints and viability validation of planned features take roughly six to twelve weeks, with development and rapid prototyping requiring roughly the same amount of time. Deploying an app is about two weeks more. So, in total, it is about 5-8 months of constant work for an average dev team.
Now, let’s review the types of activities that you can cut painlessly and cost-effective interventions:
- Provide detailed project requirements. If you’ve already familiarized yourself with the market and written a solid concept and project specifications, your hired team will spend more time working and less time aimlessly discussing already discussed ideas.
- Go without MVP. It’s a risk we don’t recommend taking, but you may want to cut MVP development if you are sure of the viability of your concept.
- Choose the development team wisely. Since hired specialists’ efforts directly define how quickly the project will be completed, you want to pick the very best.
- Find a balance between control and letting go. The need for dev team members to spend hours in endless meetings with you will interfere with the regular workflow. But be sure not to show that you don’t care for the project either.
- Partially cut QA testing. You cannot go without testing, but you may ask to minimize some forms of manual testing in favor of automated ones.
Now let’s make some estimations and learn how much it costs to create your own meditation app. The cost-driven factors here are time spent by developers on completing your project and their hourly rate.
If you do not have an in-house dev team, you have only two options: freelance specialists or outsourcing agencies. The latter is a more reliable option as project managers strictly control the devs’ workflow, and you will have no problem trying to synchronize with them.
Let’s assume there are about 10-15 workers in a dev team on your project. Given a mid-scale meditation app, they will need roughly 1,000 hours to complete and release it. The infographics below show how much it will cost to develop an app based on a team hired.
Examples of Meditation Applications that Went Viral
Let’s briefly look at some of the popular meditation apps you have likely heard of:
- Calm. It’s an award-winning app offering breathing and meditation exercises. How much does Calm cost? It’s one of the most expensive options, with a monthly subscription cost of $15.
- Headspace: This software is packed with guided meditation and mindfulness techniques. Headspace meditation app costs $13 per month.
- Insight Timer. This option has an extensive library of meditations and online yoga classes to attend. Its cost is $13 per month.
- Buddhify. This app offers more than 200 meditation exercises for beginners at only $5 per month.
- Unplug. It’s basically a collection of practical meditations and relevant courses. Unplug cost is $13 per month.
They may serve as perfect reference models for further marketing research or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis, which is vital in the very first steps to create your own meditation app.
And if your primary concern is the monetization of your app, you may try to calculate the potential profit by multiplying, for one, the cost of a headspace app subscription by the approximate number of its users. You’ll see that there is some solid potential for your future app if it is competitive enough.
Consider Weelorum Your Trusted Partner in Developing Your Mobile App
Weelorum is a reliable contractor that excels in on-demand mobile app development. We’ve been around for years, delivering top-quality products for our clients. Our portfolio comprises applications that are perfect-fit for distinct niches. You can be confident that we know how to build a meditation application that will outperform big players on the market.
We offer comprehensive services that cover the entire development cycle, from planning to QA testing, product launch, and continuous maintenance. We ensure that you do not waste your time and money on consulting with other dev teams, as we can deliver a fully-fledged product per your requirements and preferences. Do not hesitate to contact us with your project details. We will respond shortly.
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Final Thoughts
In essence, mobile meditation apps are widely recognized as simple-to-use tools for strengthening mental health, reducing depression symptoms, and lowering stress levels. They are convenient in use and offer customers both superior user experience and relief.
In this article, we have briefly described how to create a meditation app. However, there are still many nuances to consider when developing any app. If you want your software to compete with Calm, Headspace, and others, consider partnering with a trusted development service provider.
FAQ
- How do I make a meditation app myself?
You may use app-building platforms to create both Android and iOS apps, but for the project to be successful, it requires the collaborative efforts of the groups of designers, developers, and other specialists.
- What’s the best guide to create a meditation app?
If you want to achieve great success, you need to outperform your competitors heavily, so your best guide is their accomplishments and failures.
- What are the essential steps to develop a meditation app?
You absolutely cannot go without some planning, designing, developing, and basic testing before releasing your app.
