How to Develop an App like MyFitnesspal?

It took a complicated spreadsheet or pen and paper 15 years ago to calculate how many calories you ate each day. Today, you can seamlessly get the count of calories with fitness tracker mobile applications.

Mike Lee, the founder of MyFitnessPal (a top-notch fitness tracker app), is to be credited for all this. However, his personal need led to the creation of MyFitnessPal, like many other inventions.

Mike didn’t know at the time that he would lead a revolution in fitness, creating dozens of other apps and millions of healthier users.

Although MyFitnessPal launched in 2005, it wasn’t until 2009 that the iOS version of MyFitnessPal was released. The app’s user base exploded, which was a pivotal moment for the developers.

Every month, millions of users use the system. More than 100 countries downloaded the fitness application. The database includes thousands of new food items, dishes, and restaurants. MyFitnessPal was quickly transformed from a startup into a fully-fledged company. 

MyFitnessPal: A Glance

There are many apps in the fitness industry. However, it is essential to understand that not all apps have the same features as MyFitnessPal. The history records the launch of the first fitness tracker app in 2005, but not before that. Such kinds of fitness apps are experiencing explosive growth and have millions of users. 

In no time, Myfitnesspal moves its reach and services to more than 100 countries, which is not surprising. It is also mostly focused on the diet aspect and currently has over 14 million foods in its database. This number is constantly growing. All thanks to its dynamic user engagement. While MyFitnessPal is a fitness tracking app, Grubhub is an online food delivery app; that means everything comes online and becomes a giant. 

The app was still operating, but the value-focused more on the workouts. Francisco Partners, a private equity company, purchased the platform again in October 2020 for $345 million.

This platform is the result of Healthcare App Development done well. It was evident in the platform’s revenue generation, which reached $150 million last year. This diet-tracking platform now has over 200 million users.

Many unique features are available, including tracking your food intake and customizing it according to your fitness goals. As a result, it has become a leading application for health and fitness.

Why should you create an app like MyFitnessPal?

Due to the COVID-19-induced lockdown and increased awareness about the relationship between good health and healthy eating habits with longevity, calorie counters and fitness apps and wearables are the most popular apps today for billions. The market is ready for a new calorie counter or fitness app like MyFitnessPal. The best fitness tracking app, like MyFitnessPal will allow you to take advantage of the industry’s rapid growth. Your app can be a world-class alternative for MyFitnessPal, which will help it rise to the top of the charts.

How does the MyFitnessPal app work?

MyFitnessPal, one of the best apps for fitness tracking, is designed to assist those who can’t afford to go to the gym or don’t have the time. They also provide a personal trainer for them to follow their progress. MyFitnessPal is unlike any other app, offering a complete program.

This best fitness tracker android app tracks calories for every food you eat, helps users maintain a healthy diet, and will choose the right workout program based on their body type and future goals.

MyFitnessPal suggests setting a daily net calories goal to help users reach their weight loss or gain goals. The app calculates how many calories the user burns during exercise and shows them how many calories are left for the day.

The premium fitness tracking app version offers more features, such as a large collection of exercises and an extensive food database. You can also use the barcode scanner to log food. In addition, Newsfeed updates are available so you can join the community.

MyFitnessPal App: Essential Features

Before proceeding with the development procedure, we must prepare a list of features for a mobile app like MyFitnessPal. Check out our suggestions:

User App

Register and login users: Allow regular sign-up by submitting an email ID or a phone number with a combination of passwords. You can also allow registrations via social profiles like Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, Gmail, or Facebook.

User profile: The individual can create a user profile using an app like MyFtinessPal by entering their name and preferences.

Tracking activity and diet: Activity and diet tracking are essential features in an app like MyFitnessPal. This should include running, swimming, biking, walking, and other activities such as steps taken, calories burned, miles walked, and so on.

View diet plan: It is not enough to track activities and diet. Access to a diet plan must be available for users. These will be calculated according to user preferences and other details. An app like Headspace is also widely used to let people maintain their mental health. 

View and manage your health records: This feature allows you to see your health information from when the user first started using the fitness app development.

View the daily progress report: This shares a snapshot of the user’s health.

Track and view your steps: The steps feature enables users to track their actions on the fitness tracker app.

Payment gateways: If you sell a premium version or other related products, integrate a payment gateway into your fitness tracker app.

Connect external wearable: The application should integrate with wearable devices and enable users to access basic tracking features for their daily activities on the best fitness tracker app.

Admin

Login: Create a user-friendly admin panel to help administrators manage the dashboard.

Manage dashboard: This dashboard feature allows the administrator to manage all activities, add, delete, modify content, and organize user profiles.

Administrators can manage users: This feature allows administrators to add or remove users.

Payment: This feature allows you to manage payments, such as commissions.

Manage your plans: This feature is available for premium plans that are offered by fitness applications.

Notifications: They are essential for any application. This functionality allows the administrator to send push notifications such as app updates, new features, content, and offers.

Manage rewards: This feature is helpful for administrators who offer rewards programs. 

Manage media: Manage all your images and videos using the Manage Media feature.

Manage subscriptions: The admin can manage subscriptions on the fitness tracking app.

MyFitnessPal has advanced features that make it a great fitness app.

Paid subscription: These subscriptions are available for the premium model. You can use the advanced features that your fitness tracking app provides.

Integration with social media: These integrations are great for users to share their goals and achievements on popular networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Twitter.

Chat module: This feature allows users to chat with trainers.

Shop: This feature enables users to shop for products in-app.

You can deploy these recommended features in phases. Use analytics reports to know what is good for your end-users. Then, build from that.

Different types of fitness and nutrition apps

First, choose the type of fitness tracker app you want to create. Fitness apps provide a range of features to users. These include result tracking, socializing, encouragement, and education about the subject. It’s like having your coach in a small package.

Moreover, fitness apps can be divided into four categories based on their performance characteristics.

Let’s take a closer look at them.

Apps to track physical activity

This app category can track a user’s daily activity like steps, calories burned, distance travelled, speed, sleep hours, and time slept.

The app displays the user’s data on the screen. It is usually capable of creating charts, saving routes on the map, and showing the user’s progress.

Apps for Nutrition and Diet

Nutrition apps and Diet help users track their eating habits, count calories burned/absorbed, control fluid balance, weight/mass, and so forth. In addition, they can set personal goals, make shopping lists, and even find recipes using various diet apps.

You might also find gamification or user-engaging elements in them, such as scoreboards and slimming contests. Activity-tracking apps are also possible because they can track your nutritional habits. However, they have more specialized functionality.

Apps for personal training

These apps can give you the feeling of being at the gym. The user is assigned a personal trainer. This could be an assistant based on artificial intelligence or a human who helps the user in their fitness journey.

Like a regular trainer, the fitness tracker app’s instructor tells users which exercises to do and what foods to eat.

After a health assessment, recommendations for food and exercise are made. After the user has provided the required information, the assessment is completed.

Hybrid Applications

It combines all the best apps for fitness tracking listed above, as the name suggests. These apps allow a personal trainer to help you choose the right foods and exercises to reach your health goals.

These apps allow you to monitor your health by calculating calories based on what foods you eat and how many calories you have burned through exercise. This app’s fitness app development includes all the functions and features of other apps.

How do you create an app like MyFitnessPal?

Building a popular fitness tracker app requires careful planning and a clearly defined process. This is what you should do to create an innovative calorie counter app such as MyFitnessPal.

1. KYC: Know your customers and competitors. You must know why people use MyFitnessPal the most if you want to create a solution like this. Do a market study and find out the latest market tech trends in online fitness. Also, don’t forget to understand how your competitors deal with the issues that users mostly face and provide the best solution.

2. Your app must have a solution: Now that you have developed market research on your competitors and the products you deal in, it’s time to get insight into which problem you will be solving with your own app. Try to provide efficient solutions that streamline your growth like never before. 

3. User experience: Many misconducts the user experience with the features inside the app. However, when you add a lot of them, the app would not function properly. So, try to be more focused when deciding your app features and stimulate the user experience. If you don’t do it, users will likely uninstall the app. So, keep your users’ phones connected!

4. Right Development Team: Find the right partner for your development. Look for a company with the experience, talent, and vision to build a unique app.

5. Plan: With your development partner, plan well in advance for developing your fitness tracker app and consider modernizing strategies to achieve that plan.

6. Product Release: Don’t release your product until you are satisfied with it. We test it until it is perfect. It is unlikely that anyone else will love it as much as you do.

Selecting the right technology for building the app

Your app’s tech stack will significantly impact the user experience and budget. Therefore, it is important to stick to a budget and choose the right technology for the job. Here are our recommendations:

• User experience design: Sketch, InVision
• App Development: XCode, Java, Kotlin, MEAN
• AWS Database
• API Integration with Google API
• Payment processing: Stripe
• Push notifications: Firebase

Optimization Model For A Fitness App Like MyFitnessPal

1. Value proposition: MyFitnessPal is a simple-to-use, comprehensive platform that allows users to track their progress and improve their health. It offers over 11 million food items, a barcode scanner, and the ability to monitor over 350 activities. MyFitnessPal also offers support through peer groups, challenges, and rewards.

2. Key resources:  MyFitnessPal’s resources are the website and app, developers, customer service staff, and other employees. It also has a database of exercise and food information. Marketing is another investment the company makes to make the fitness-tracking app more accessible to new users.

3. Partnered with Other Brands: MyFitnessPal partners with apps and food companies to track and analyze fitness and also with studios and gyms. These partnerships increase the app’s reach and make it more user-friendly. 

• Data partners: MyFitnessPal partners with many data providers to provide its users with a complete exercise and food database.

• Hardware partners: MyFitnessPal integrates with many fitness apps and wearable devices app , such as Jawbone, Jawbone, and MapMyFitness. With the partnered companies, you can bring into action all the plans you have made till now and not only onboard new customers but also make your current users visit your app again. 

4. Key Activities: MyFitnessPal is responsible for maintaining the company’s exercise and food information databases, creating new features for the app, and partnering with companies in the fitness sector. MyFitnessPal’s main activities include maintaining and developing the app, partnering with other companies, and marketing the app.

5. Revenue streams: MyFitnessPal operates on a freemium model. This means that it offers the basic version of its app free of charge and charges for premium features. The company’s pricing strategy allows it to reach a broader market and generate revenue from customers who are willing to pay for extra features. The app generates revenue through subscriptions, in-app purchases, and advertising. The company earned $140 million in revenue in 2019, an estimate.

• Users can unlock premium features through in-app purchases, including detailed nutrition information and custom meal plans.

• MyFitnessPal can generate revenue from companies that want to promote their products or services to their users. You can display advertisements in many ways, including interstitial and video ads. Sponsored posts are also possible. MyFitnessPal can work with companies to develop customized ads that meet the needs of both advertiser and the app’s users.

• Paid Subscriptions allow users to upgrade to premium membership, which includes no annoying ads and a full range of features, including custom meal plans, detailed nutrition insights, food nutrition, personalized measurements for meals, expert coaching, and more. MyFitnessPal offers several subscription options, including annual and monthly plans. Premium memberships start from $9.99 per month and $49.99 per annum.

6. Cost Structure: MyFitnessPal costs include developing and maintaining the app and hosting the database. There are also costs associated with advertising and marketing.

7. Customers Segments: MyFitnessPal was created for anyone interested in improving their fitness and health. People who are interested in tracking their calorie intakes and levels of physical activity. People trying to lose weight, gain muscle or eat better will love the app. MyFitnessPal is popular among athletes and anyone who wants to track their progress or set goals.

8. Membership: MyFitnessPal offers both primary and premium membership for free. Premium membership allows users to access features such as detailed nutrition data, set goals, and track progress over time. A dedicated customer service team can answer any questions or help with problems. MyFitnessPal updates the app with new features and improvements based on user feedback.

9. Channels: MyFitnessPal utilizes direct/online channels to reach customers. The company has over 2 million Instagram followers and a solid social media presence. MyFitnessPal also has a website; however, users can download it from both App Stores.

What is the cost of creating a MyFitnessPal-like fitness app?

A fitness app such as MyFitnessPal costs can vary depending on the app’s functionality and features and the scope and size of your project. You can expect to pay less if you create a simple fitness-tracking app with basic features. However, if you want to build a complex app with many features and functionality, you will likely have to budget for the upper end. A top-notch app development company lets you know an estimated cost for your project, and offers a customized solution. 

You’re a health-focused entrepreneur with an innovative approach to apps like MyFitnessPal. Techugo is an experienced developer who can help you build a great app. Our expert team has years of experience building apps that improve the lives of millions. To kickstart your entrepreneurial journey, book a meeting for a complimentary consultation!

Join Hands with Industry Experts and Create a Powerful Fitness App

People who were affected by the pandemic were unable to focus on their passions and other activities. Millions of people worldwide have set their sights on fitness, and many health and fitness apps to help them take the first steps toward a healthy lifestyle. A profitable business idea is to build a fitness app such as MyFitnessPal.

Techugo is your partner in success. 

We are one the top-notch team of developers who love transforming challenges into opportunities and innovative ideas into a tech reality. Get in touch with the best fitness app development company today that offers excellent services worldwide and lets businesses achieve the topmost level of success.  

We enjoy working closely with you from the planning stage to design, development, and rollout to create your success story. So, if you are ready to be with us on this adventurous ride, join us and build empowering apps for your fitness.