How to develop a Calm-like meditation app?

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For a long time, smartphone users have followed this approach to focus or simply live a stress-free life. They often curse mobile applications for the distraction and anxiety they face in their daily lives.

But, this perspective changed drastically the moment mindfulness apps came into existence. Mobile applications like Calm meditation app users meditate and live a peaceful life. They are a bright example of how your smartphone apps can help you stay concentrated, rested, and productive throughout the day. 

The increasing demand for mindfulness meditation apps, especially after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, has led to unprecedented growth in the market size of such apps. As per the latest statistics, the meditation app market is expected to grow to USD 4,377.95M by 2027 from USD 188.64M in 2018, with a CAGR of 41.3%.

Meditation apps like Calm have not only made users enjoy a peaceful life without leaving the digital world, but also proved that it’s a good decision to step into this market with the assistance of top app development companies.

But, before you or anyone thinks in this direction and invests in Calm-like meditation app development, it is advised to be familiar with the reason behind this popularity. Or better say, having the knowledge of key driving factors of Calm-like mediation app market size. A glimpse of which we will cover in the next section of the article.

Factors Behind Far-Fetched Growth of Mindfulness App Development Market

The demand for mindfulness meditations apps has been escalating with the leaning of users towards a wholesome way of life. Work-life stress and a spate of personal and social engagements that impact everyday energy levels and disturbs sleep are resulting in the explosion of interest in meditation apps. Below are two important factors that have led to an increase in the mindfulness app development market:

1. Stress and Mental Healthcare Awareness

In the present day, around 75% to 90% of people in the United States visit doctors for stress-related issues and around 13% of kids show symptoms of anxiety disorder because of stress. 

Because of this, more and more people are becoming conscious of the ill effects of stress and turning to meditation to improve their mental health. Something that is giving a push to the mindfulness app development market.

[Also Read: Top Mental Health App Ideas for Startups]

2. Rise in Use of Smartwatches and Smart Screens

With an increase in the number of smartwatches and smart screens, people are getting an opportunity to keep a real-time record of their mental health and well-being. So, whenever they are feeling low or stressed, they turn to meditation apps like Calm that guide them into a state of mindfulness. This is again favoring the flourishing market for meditation apps.

Now while you know the reasons that ignite the zeal to develop mindfulness apps like Calm or HeadSpace, let’s move to the best mindfulness meditation apps in the market.

Top Players of Mindfulness Meditation Market

All these best mindfulness meditation apps – right from Headspace to Happier, Buddhify, Insight Timer, Smiling Mind, and The Mindfulness App, are doing an amazing job in the marketplace. But, in this article, we will focus entirely on the Calm application.

Calm Meditation App – A Basic Introduction

Introduced back in 2012 as a meditation tool, Calm has now gained huge momentum in the marketplace as a guide for proper sleep and relaxation. The application, to date, has over 100 million downloads and 4 million paid subscribers. It has also received the title of the ‘Top grossing’ Health and Fitness Application and the ‘’World’s Happiest App’’. A credit of which can be given to the simple working mechanism of this application.

The rising demand and increasing popularity of such apps has made every business enthusiast interested in Calm-like meditation app development and studying guides around mood tracking app development. Assuming that you are also one of those who wish to try their luck in this field, let’s get into the steps required to build a successful meditation app like Calm.

How to Create a Meditation App Like Calm?

To succeed in meditation app development, you need to go through the stages described below.

1. Decide on your Business Idea

To make a successful app, you have to decide what exactly you’re going to offer your users. It’s important to ensure that your app idea is worthwhile and unique. Currently, there are the following types of relaxation meditation apps in the market: 

• Yoga app
• Mental health tracker app
• Meditation music app
• Guided sleep meditation app
• Weight loss meditation app
• Meditation app for beginners
• Walking meditation app
• Breathe meditation app
• Women health tracking app

2. Competitive Research and Analysis

Once you have decided on the app concept, the next step is to understand your competition. Knowing market leaders will help you find a unique value proposition for your application to stand out. You should also dive deeper into user reviews for top-ranking meditation apps in the market. This will help you to come up with a better product.

3. Choose the Right Platform

Your mindfulness and meditation app can be compatible with both Android and iOS platforms. However, it will certainly increase app development costs. So, if you have a confined budget, you can develop just an Android or iOS app. After that, you can boost your service so it can perform on another platform also. Read to know how much Android or iOS app development costs.

4. Build MVP

If you want to validate your app idea without spending a fortune, consider developing a minimum viable product (MVP). An MVP is the first version of a product with a basic set of features. It determines whether or not the product has the potential to succeed. Moreover, you give users an opportunity to participate in MVP software development. Users can leave comments and feedback about their experience with your app, telling what functionality they would like you to add to your product.

In this way, you will not only save money but also analyze user behavior to add the most demanding features during the second development stage.

While developing an MVP, it’s advisable to refrain from sophisticated features like in-app payments, video streams, and chats. Instead, your app MVP should include primary features like:

• Registration and sign-up
• User profile with progress stats
• Short video or slides for introduction
• Library with pre-listed meditation sessions

5. Choose the Right Approach to UI/UX

When developing an app like Calm, you should build a program aimed at helping people with stress, anxiety, and depression. The correct UI/UX approach plays a pivotal role in this case. Users who suffer from anxiety or depression can easily get irritated and leave because of poor navigation, messy interface, annoying colors, and other details. Therefore, make sure to involve UX/UI specialists at this stage. 

Here are a few tips that you can consider to avoid mistakes when designing an app like Calm:

• Don’t use bright colors. Instead, you can go for pastel shades
• Abstain from overloaded patterns as they may distract app users
• Use animations instead of text

6. Test your App

Once the app has been built, it’s essential to test the app’s performance in terms of speed, response time, scalability, and compatibility on the universal platforms. Testing will also help ensure that all app features work correctly and there are no significant bugs that crash the app.

7. Submit app to Play Store/App Store

Once you’re satisfied with the app’s performance, you can submit your app on Android or iOS app stores. However, publishing an app to the App Store and Google Play is not always as straightforward as you’d expect. Not only do you need to comply with Apple’s and Google’s developer guidelines, but you should also align your monetization model with their requirements.

But even though the application has to meet tons of requirements to end up there, it’s worth it. By adding your meditation application to the App Store and Google Play, you can reach a global audience and millions of potential users.

8. Measure User Engagement

Post-launch, you will need to meticulously track user engagement to understand where you can improve your product. Some of the user experience traits you’d want to track include:

• What are the most popular paths that users take inside the app?
• Are there any roadblocks that prevent them from taking action?
• How long does it take them to reach a goal?

Besides, there are also more economic KPIs like:

• Retention and churn rates
• App stickiness
• The average revenue per user (ARPU)

Meditation App Features That Your Calm-like App Must Have

In this section, we have listed down the mainstream meditation app features that any user expects. These features will help you engage and retain your mindfulness app users on a long term basis:

1. Profile Creation

When it comes to Calm-clone app development, the foremost feature you need to focus on is profile creation. 

This feature, as depicted from the name, will enable users to create their own profiles on the application where they can see/store all the information related to them or the activities they have participated in.

2. Sleep Stories

Under this category, users can choose the best of the stories that relaxes their body and mind and help them sleep nicely.

3. Introductory Tutorials

This feature will include introductory courses and programs to assist beginners. These kinds of onboarding tutorials highlight the basics of meditation and related exercises along with step-wise guidelines to make the best use of this app. Such introductory tutorials must be visually appealing and concise to deliver quick responses to the app users.

4. Masterclasses

The Masterclasses feature of the app will let users avail exclusive classes from the world’s best mindfulness experts across the globe.

5. Meditation Library

Your library should include hundreds or even thousands of meditation sessions. You should categorize them and offer each user sessions that are suitable for them. For each session, you should show how much time it will take, its category, and other information so users know what to expect. A library for sleep meditation app can include soothing music, bedtime stories, etc.

6. Personal Statistics

This feature will allow users to keep track of their progress in everyday meditation. If you integrate with wearables, you can also show stats from smartwatches and fitness trackers to demonstrate how a user’s quality of sleep is improving over time. Personal statistics should be visual, so take care of data representation and add animations.

7. Reminders

Under this category, the mobile app will send different kinds of reminders to users for living a stress-free life. This includes reminders to practice mindfulness, sleep, and check-in the app.

8. Chat Support

In case your users have questions, they can ask right from your app. You can implement chat support in the form of a chatbot that can answer simple questions. You can involve your support team for more complex inquiries.

9. Discovery Screen

You can present all meditation sessions and materials on this screen and also display updates and the most popular programs. This screen must provide materials in various categories and always have something exclusive.

10. Stories

The stories feature has proved useful for lots of apps. You can add this feature to encourage your users to share stories of how meditation has helped them overcome anxiety and depression or improve their overall lives.

These meditation app features have shown given peace of mind to users. But, what has given a new definition to calmness is the unique user experience strategy this application has worked with.

So, taking the same into consideration, let’s take a sneak peek at the Calm meditation app design strategy.

UI/UX Analysis of Calm Mobile App

Now that you have a clear idea about the key features needed for an app like Calm, it is time to take a look at the key UI/UX design attributes for such apps. Below are the key UI/UX design considerations for an app like Calm.

1. Aesthetic Vibes

Right from the icons to the typography, colors, and visual elements used in the Calm mobile application, everything gives a feeling of warmth and tranquility. A major focus has been kept on making intense topics like stress, anxiety, relationships, and self-care seem balanced and a bit more comfortable.

2. Minimal App Design

Calm app has also followed the concept of minimal app design thoroughly. The app has introduced the least required features and elements on the screens to give a soothing experience to users. An evidence of which is the ‘Breathing Exercise’ app screen.

3. Push Notifications

The Calm mobile application uses the power of Push Notifications to remind users about their scores, next activity schedules, and more. This is not solely helping users enjoy the higher benefits of this mindfulness app, but is also making it imperative for other business enthusiasts to build a push notification strategy that boosts conversions.

4. Ease of Search

The Calm app smartly categorizes content under different labels that ease the process of finding the right content. Also, it avails content in the voice form that lures users to pick this mindfulness meditation app over others.

5. Localization

The Calm-like mobile app has also invested in App Localization. Meaning, the app content is available in six different languages including English, German, and Spanish.

This gives users an option to grab the content in their local languages, which increases the possibilities of acquiring more users.

With this covered, let’s climb to the next level of the ladder and see what mindfulness technology stacks back these functionalities.

Mindfulness App Tech Stack to Pick for Your Calm-Clone App Development Project

As we’ve already shared in our blog on picking the best technology stack for your app, the programming languages, frameworks, and tools we consider leave a great impact on the outcomes. While the right technology stack results in the proper working of your app and enhances the results, the wrong one can ruin your app’s image.

So, understanding the intensity of knowing the right tech stack, let’s check for what comes under the label of mindfulness app tech stack.

Now as you know the basic technicalities, it is likely that you would be expecting discussion around the cost to develop a mindfulness app like Calm in the next section.

But, wait.

Before we switch to Calm like meditation app development cost, it is necessary for you to be familiar with the challenges your hired app development company would face while building the app, alongside the market-related issues you would come across. 

So, let’s check for the challenges you might come across while building an app like Calm.

Challenges You Might Face While Creating a Calm-like App

There’s no doubt that building an app like Calm comes with several challenges. From loading speed issues to high subscription fees, there are numerous challenges that you need to deal with while launching a successful meditation app for your users. So, without further ado, let’s dive in!

1. Simplicity and Speed

The headmost challenge your hired team app developers would face is maintaining simplicity and higher loading speed while adding ample options into the application.

2. Localizing App Content

When talking about app localization, there are various key challenges associated with developing multilingual apps. Mitigating those challenges and delivering the app on a pre-decided timeline would again be a challenge for your hired app partners.

3. Transparency

In the present scenario, there are various mindfulness meditation apps available in the market. However, only a few of them are backed by solid research. This has made consumers skeptical about which app to prefer and which not. And thereafter, made it challenging for business enthusiasts to win the trust of these customers and keep them hooked to their platform.

Something that is possible if you introduce the right amount of transparency into your app working.

4. Higher Subscription Rate

Users, when concentrating completely on the mindfulness market, are majorly not in favor of paying a subscription fee for the apps. Likewise, the companies in this domain are extensively focusing on implementing effective price benchmarking to get better outcomes.

So again, a higher subscription rate can be a stumbling block in the path of entrepreneurs planning to invest in Calm-like meditation app development.

With this, let’s wait no further and tear down the cost to build a mobile app like Calm.

How Much Does it Cost to Build an App like Calm or HeadSpace?

The average cost to build an app like Calm or Headspace varies from USD 170K to USD 193K. However, the cost to make an app, as described in detail in our mobile app development cost guide, is not fixed. It varies depending on various factors such as:-

App Specifications – The Calm app cost value is directly proportional to the app size and complexity. So, if you are planning to build a full-fledged app, the budget you require would undeniably be more. 

Development Team – The size, location, skills, and experience of the mobile app development company you hire also make a huge difference in the app price. 

Tech Stack – Likewise, the programming language, tools, and other technical elements you put into your development project will also influence the cost of Calm-like meditation app development. The more tools and technologies you integrate, the more will be the cost of app development. 

In such a scenario, the optimal way to get an the exact cost of developing an app like Calm is to contact the best app experts.

Now, while this would have shared insights around how much you need to invest into the Calm-like meditation app development, let’s turn towards how to earn back the money. Or simply say, let’s learn about the business and revenue model of Calm mobile application.

How to Earn Back Money From Your Calm-like App?

Now that you know how to create a meditation app like Calm and what Calm app features you should integrate to make a successful meditation app, it’s time to look into the popular app monetization models that will help generate maximum revenues from your meditation app development.

1. Subscription Model

Calm and other such mindfulness meditation apps highly rely upon the subscription model. That implies, a meditation app monetization model where users pay a fixed subscription fee for unlocking the advanced features of the app on a monthly or yearly basis.

2. In-App Purchase

Under this label, mobile apps like Calm and HeadSpace provides users an opportunity to pay for purchasing some services/products related to meditation from the platform itself. 

By embracing this Calm app business and revenue model, you would be able to generate revenue nearly equal to that of the Calm application. But, to outshine the mindfulness app market, you would have to put in some extra efforts. 

Wondering what those extra efforts would be? What ways can you accelerate the pace of gaining the Calm-like meditation app development cost back? Let’s wrap up this article covering the same.

Tips and Practices to Opt for Successful Calm-like App Development

For successful meditation app development, here are the top essential tips and practices that you need to consider when developing such an app:

1. Search Option

Though the Calm app has efficiently categorized the content to deliver a better search experience, a search option on the app screen can elevate the outcomes. So, look ahead to introduce a search filter option into your meditation and mindfulness app like Calm.

2. Use Technologies like AR/VR

AR/VR technology trends can take users to a virtual environment which can trigger their fears and anxieties in a better manner. And this way, speed up their process of relaxing and improving their mental health.

So, discussing the integration of such cutting-edge technologies while planning a Calm-like app development process is also an effective way to raise the outcomes.

3. Start with an MVP

While building a Calm-clone application is a profitable business, it is again a good decision to start with an MVP first. The Minimal Viable Product (MVP) will help you to enter the market with less resources, time, and budget, and improve your application depending on the changing user behavior and needs.

4. Consider Gamification to Engage More Users

Adding a gamification feature in your meditation app will help get more user engagement. For example, users can earn a badge for completing a workout session. The urge for maintaining the score will extend the KPIs automatically and result in purchasing the paid subscription eventually.

[Also Read: How AR VR Apps Are Gamifying Exercise And Workout?]

How Appinventiv can Help in your Meditation App Development Journey?

As a leading mobile app development company, we have developed many apps for our users. We have a highly skilled team of app developers who have mastered the technologies that are needed to develop top-notch healthcare and meditation apps. 

So, in case, you also have some interesting app ideas on your mind, feel free to contact us. Our experts will offer the best mental healthcare mobile app development services and bring your idea to life.

Frequently Asked Questions about Calm-like App Development

Q. How to make a meditation app like Calm?

A. When talking about developing a meditation app like Calm, the process is not as easy as it seems. You would have to focus on multiple things both from the development and business front. So, we recommend you consult with top Wellness & Fitness app development company for getting a relevant answer.

Q. Is the Calm meditation app free?

A. Some features of the Calm meditation app are free to use. But, to unlock more features and explore the world of mindfulness, you would have to pay a monthly/yearly subscription fee.

Q. How much does the Calm app cost?

A. The average Calm app cost varies from USD 170K to USD 193K. However, the final cost of such apps depends on a number of factors such as the complexity of the app, features included, and choice of platform. 

THE AUTHOR

Amardeep Rawat

Co-Founder and Director