Health and fitness app development

Relevant work

• Fitzee: live classes, video on demand, subscriptions, and LLM features. 200,000 registered users.
• Yogis: yoga and mindfulness for kids.
• Siyan: a mindfulness and emotional wellness app.

The typical first version

• Onboarding that sets goals and level in under a minute.
• A content library of workouts or sessions, with video streaming and downloads.
• A plan or schedule with reminders and progress tracking.
• Subscriptions with a trial, sold through Apple and Google in-app purchase.
• Apple Health and Google Health Connect sync, added as an integration at $3,000.
• A web back office for coaches or staff to manage content and members.

Live classes, community features, and AI coaching are common next steps once retention data shows what members value.

Compliance notes

• HIPAA readiness. Consumer fitness apps are usually outside HIPAA. Once you work with healthcare providers, insurers, or employers' health plans, you may handle protected health information. We build HIPAA-ready from the start where needed: encryption at rest and in transit, access logs, least-privilege roles, and hosting with providers that sign a business associate agreement. HIPAA compliance itself is a program your company runs; we build the software side of it.
• FTC Health Breach Notification Rule. Apps outside HIPAA that hold health data still have breach duties in the US. We keep health data separate and minimized.
• COPPA. Apps for children under 13, like Yogis, need verifiable parental consent, minimal data collection, and no behavioral ads. We design parent-gated flows from the first screen.
• App store rules. Apple and Google require health data disclosures and restrict how health data is used for ads.

What we learned shipping at scale

Video is the cost center: encoding, storage, and delivery grow with every member, so we choose a streaming provider early and cache aggressively. Retention lives in the first week, so onboarding and the first reminder matter more than the size of the library. And subscriptions need careful handling of trials, grace periods, and restores across devices, or support tickets pile up.

How we work

Every first version starts with a signed plan listing every screen and workflow, then a clickable design you approve on your phone, then the build, then launch. You get a written weekly plan, a daily update, and a demo every Friday. You pay in four equal milestones tied to those stages, and you own the code and the cloud accounts from day one. After launch, a care plan from $1,000 a month or a dedicated engineer at $8,500 a month keeps the product moving.

What we leave for later

The fastest way to a health and fitness product that earns its keep is a first version that does fewer things well. These are the items we usually move to after launch, once real usage shows they matter:

• Live classes and community feeds
• Wearable sync beyond Apple Health and Health Connect
• Corporate wellness plans and employer billing
• Coach marketplaces
• AI coaching, until retention data shows where it helps

Each one is a fixed-price addition later. Leaving them out keeps the first version inside the range above, shortens the time to launch, and means you spend on what customers actually ask for.

Timeline and team

A lean first version ships in about 5 weeks, standard in about 8, and large in about 12. A typical team is a product designer, two or three engineers, and a delivery lead you talk to every day, with a senior engineer reviewing every change. You see the work every Friday, and you can stop after any milestone with the code and designs in your hands.

Questions founders ask