Meditation is an important daily activity for many people. With such a huge demand, there is enough room for developing a meditation app.

Make no mistake about it as these apps are quite popular and the competition is high. Google’s survey found that searches for these apps on the Google Play Store grew by as much as 65% in recent times. Much like any other smartphone app that seeks to help the user with daily activity, there are costs involved and features to be developed.

So that’s why we bring to you an article explaining the costs and features of meditation app development. With all that said, let’s start.

General Features of Meditation Apps For User and Admin

First thing’s first, we have to look at the general features for both users and admins. An app should include a wide range of both basic and advanced features. Thus, we will look at exactly what features the user and admin panels should include. Let’s start with the users.

Features for Users

  • Sign up

A feature that allows the user to register and create a profile.

  • Setting up your Profile

A feature that allows the user to customize their profile.

  • Exercises section

A feature that displays all the exercises on the app.

  • Audio and video guide

A feature that explains how each exercise is done using both video and audio.

  • Sets of meditations

A feature that allows the user to set favorite meditation sessions.

  • Beginner, intermediate, or advanced levels

A feature that gives the user an option to choose a difficulty level.

  • Tracking of the process

A feature that allows the user to track their own progress and provide in-depth analytics for each session.

These features are important when it comes to having options. A feature that allows the user to create a profile and subsequently personalize it can go a long way. This feature can oftentimes be the difference between having a good and a brilliant app.

Every feature you see on this list is important. The ability to track progress is yet another one we’d like to emphasize. When it comes to exercising or doing daily activities, progress is enough to keep users motivated and interested.

Features for Admin

  • Secure Sign in

A feature that allows the admin to sign-in securely to the admin panel.

  • Profile for management (rating, reviews, subscriptions, discounts, and offers)

A feature that allows the admin to view what ratings and reviews people provide, as well as the programs in addition to creating discounts, offers, and managing user subscriptions.

  • Uploading materials for users such as video/images/articles

A feature that allows the admin to post content.

  • Users and meditation sessions management

A feature that allows the admin to set session timers and manage users for sessions.

  • Analytics

A feature that gathers analytics on users.

An app should allow the admin access to all kinds of analytics. Having an admin panel where the admin can upload exercises and manage sessions goes a long way. This will only make the admin’s job easier. It will give them more information to work with and allow them to easily manage the app.

These are still considered general features, and now we’ll talk about advanced features that one such app should have.

Advanced Features to Add in Meditation App

What separates a good from a brilliant app is the choice of advanced features. Integrating better features is costlier, but it does make the app much better. Let’s see what exactly some of these advanced features are.

Push notifications

The role of this feature is to notify the user of an action. Depending on what sort of actions the app will perform, push notifications will remind the user of upcoming sessions and classes, a recent blog post, guide, etc. However, developers shouldn’t make it impossible to modify this feature. Not every user wants to be notified about certain actions. Thus, the developers have to allow the user to disable notifications or customize them.

Favorite programs

Meditation is a practice that incorporates a lot of teachings. We can safely assume that there is more than one type. In addition, there are all kinds of different programs. Popular programs include mindfulness meditation, spiritual meditation, focused meditation, mantra meditation, yoga, Zen, and more.

One example should be to allow the user to pick and choose which programs to work on. By allowing the user to select and mark favorite programs, they will have instant access to them without needing to look for them.

Recommendation functionality

The best apps use the latest technologies. There’s plenty of hype around Artificial Intelligence at the moment. Through machine learning (ML), the application can recommend programs similar to the ones the user is currently using.

Real-Time Analytics

There is no better admin feature to incorporate than real-time analytics. This feature will allow the admin to monitor what the users are doing on the app in real-time. More so, incorporating certain features that focus on observing user behavior will allow the admin to determine what areas the software can improve on. Developing this feature is no small task. If you struggle to do that, you might need to look for a professional meditation app development team to help get it over the line.

Payment

Not every user will use the same payment method. Some might prefer debit/credit cards, while others might prefer PayPal, Skrill, etc. Add more options so that users have more ways to pay.

What Factors Influence on Development Cost of Meditation App?

Having the best features is great, but how much does this actually cost? What factors influence the overall development costs? By examining the market, we can safely determine that.

Hourly Rates

Hiring developers to work on an app won’t come cheap. Thus, the hourly rates in some regions are different from others. As it currently is, Australia and North America are the two most expensive regions. If a company looks to hire developers from these two regions, expect developers to ask $150 and $110/hour respectively.

These hourly rates are much different compared to other regions such as Asia or Eastern Europe. Singapore is a Southeast Asian hub of innovation. For startups looking to hire developers from this country, the hourly rate is $60.

Developers from other Southeast Asian countries ask much less. On average, startups can expect to pay up to $11 when hiring developers from Indonesia and neighboring Malaysia.

On the old continent, hourly rates for hiring developers from Western Europe differ from its Eastern counterpart. Hourly rates are at $70 and $35 for both.

Number of Platforms Used

This is also an important factor that plays a role in determining the development costs. The two most popular platforms for smartphone apps are Android and iOS. Naturally, companies that plan to launch their meditation software for both platforms will need to hire developers to work on both. This will rack up development costs even more.

Features to Integrate

The last factor that influences development cost has to do with the basic and advanced features we talked about in this article. This is probably the most important factor that many overlook. Everyone wants to develop an application with the best features, but is it feasible?

A general rule of thumb is that developing advanced features will rack up development costs by as much as two times. If basic features put development cost at around $25,000 – $35,000, then advanced features will require double or $50,000 – $60,000.

Simply said, the more features the meditation app has, the more expensive the features to integrate will be.