January 2022 - Codiant

A Simple Step By Step Guide To Meditation App Development

Anxiety, depression, peer pressure, mood disorders, uneasiness, etc. are the biggest enemies of humans these days. And agree or not these are the direct by-products of changing lifestyles and complex minds that are unequipped to handle the duality of human existence. How to control this horribly argumentative mind? Is there any psychological or physiological manifestation? Is there any instrument that can help us evolve in today’s era where almost everyone has their toes dipped in the dopamine of digitalization? Thankfully yes! Meditation with the wings of technology— also known as On-Demand Meditation App; they have been a pivotal instrument to help an individual achieve mindfulness and peace through mental training practices. These apps are enormously helping people in large to practice self-regulation and self-consciousness through mental exercises such as deep breathing, relaxation, guided imagery and visualization, and more. The unhealthy lifestyle and enhanced anxiety levels have increased the usage of meditation apps even more after the world got hit with COVID-19. The market of meditation apps is anticipated to outpace a market value of US$ 180 Mn by the end of 2032, witnessing a CAGR of 8.4% through 2022-2032.

Market Growth Figures of Meditation App

meditation-app-stats

Image Source: Statista

The above stats showing leading health & meditation apps depicts the leading market players in the meditation app space who are doing exceptionally well and earning a good percentage of revenue. The calm app is at the top in terms of revenue generation which has supported society in providing a stress-free and healthy life. In addition to this, the user penetration of meditation app is expected to be 7.48% in 2022 and is expected to hit 11.23% by 2025. So, the above figures indicate the massive growth opportunities from both user and market perspectives and considering that you must think of investing in a similar field. In this post, we will be discussing all the essential aspects of meditation app development. There are already a few ruling meditation apps in the market like calm, headspace, shine, inside timer, etc. that can help you pull inspiration and business model. We have tried to envelope all those features as well. Consider reading this full guide and find a way ahead to bring a radical up-gradation in the meditation app development market and reach the peak to meet your business goals.

Steps To Follow While Creating A Meditation App

To ensure that you are making the right moves in your app development lifecycle, you need to include some of the essential elements in your app development process:

1. Bring Clarity Of The Business Idea

It’s always good to explore things before you actually begin. So, while you are already planning to invest in meditation apps, make sure you have a thorough idea about its basic concept and all the categories that are available in the market. Consider the different options like weight loss meditation apps, walking meditation apps, mental health tracker app, yoga apps, breathing meditation apps, morning meditation apps, guided meditation apps, and so on.

2. Choose The Right Product Platform

“When you keep your feet on the right street, your foundation becomes more concrete”. Said that, to make a concrete start conduct a deep study on the product platforms available for you i.e. both iOS and Android. The things you need to consider while choosing the platform are your target audience, user preferences, location, income, education, and so on. The choice of the platform is also necessary as it directly affects the overall costing of the app development project.

3. Upgrade Your Limits Using AR/VR Technology

Give your users near to real experiences with virtual lenses. The AR/VR technology is doing a remarkably great job in making it easy for the users to experience the best relaxing sessions; which are integrated with the meditation apps. This AR/VR-based UI will increase user engagement and encourage them to practice regularly. Thus, increasing your client retention rate.

4. Make Use Of The MVP Models

It’s always good to taste a piece before buying the whole cube. The MVP model works on the same concept. It is a kind of tester phase where a developer has the space to add or eliminate multiple features before moving on to the second phase. The developers are always advised to restrain from complex features like video streams, in-app payments, in-build chats, etc. in the MVP model initial phase. Rather they are tasked to focus on simple features to check the viability of the app with features like:

User profile with Sign-in/Sign-out feature
Initial introductory video
Customer progress statistics
Push-Notifications and other basic features

5. Select The Right Set Of UI/UX Approach

The key to success lies in what your customer gets to see. So, putting the right set of UI/UX approach is necessary. It assures you of a better ROI and helps in building your confidence. The things that need to be focused on deciding the UI/UX approach are the perfect combination of colors, prioritizing animations over fonts, and avoiding the cluttered and overloaded design patterns. Initially, you need to pay more attention to the above patterns because they can distract you from achieving your business goals on the first try only.

6. App Integration With Wearable Devices

The connections get stronger when things are closer. And adding meditation apps to wearable devices is reducing the distance between the user and technology. Users will feel more comfortable when doing meditation will be a super easy process for them. They will be able to get instant access to the processes using wearable devices like smartwatches, fitness trackers, etc.

7. Choose The Best Development Team

The right choice of the development team is what brings success to your meditation app. It is necessary that your development team must have in-depth knowledge about the features, functionalities and technologies that can make your app a superlative of all. Some of the essential features are explained here in detail:

Key Features of Meditation App Development

Profile & Sign-In/Sign-Up ManagementInitially, just to ensure that your users don’t lose interest, make sure to provide an easy and quick sign-up process. Allow them to register using mobile numbers, social media handles, or email ids. Moreover, provide a good process for profile creation where it is easy for them to save and access their personal information and all the activities that they perform.
Meditation Program ManagementThis is the core of your app. If you wish to stay ahead of the market competition then make sure that you are putting in a variety of options in your meditation programs library. Grab the user’s attention by regularly updating things and improvising on your basics or the app.
Push NotificationsStay connected with the customers by keeping them updated about all the essential information. This feature is usually used to promote promotional offers, remind users about their meditation time or recommend multiple other meditation sessions.
Play ButtonPlay button is a prerequisite to control the different types of meditation sessions and to make the process easier. To make it more attractive it is advisable to set the desired background to both photos and videos.
Easy SearchIt is the responsibility of the development team to categorize the right set of content under the required labels so that users can find the content easily.
Meditation LibraryThe user retention rate is likely to increase when people have multiple options to choose from. A meditation library will keep them engaged and develop a curiosity to try new sessions. Remember to list down the sessions in logical groups that make it easy for users to browse the library easily.
Personal ProgressIt is always good to have a track record of what you do. Reviewing reports and experiencing progress with rewards and badges increases a person’s motivation and helps them in sticking to it.
Payments OptionsThe payment stage is the most fragile one where the chances of losing customers are more if you fail to provide the payment option they use. So, integrate multiple payment options (i.e. credit/debit card, mwallet, and Apple Pay, Google Pay, or PayPal integration) only after understanding your target audience and their preferences.

Know the Business Model of Top 5 Meditation Apps

Before you jump into the meditation app development, take inspiration from the top meditation app leaders and plan your smart move to thrive in this industry.

Calm App

calm app This meditation app has the highest flexibility level. It is good for beginners, especially those who have less time. The app is less affected by the calming background sound and is really very easy to follow.

Insight Timer App

insight-timer-app It is known for its giant library having 45000+ free meditations along with seven days intro course. This insight timer offers easy search and filter options and also access to a free community of meditators.

Headspace App

The user-friendly interface of the Headspace app provides guided sessions for beginners and helps in coping with the external sounds from a bundle of pre-recorded meditations to choose from.

Shine App

shine app This app allows users to use features that are more than just meditation. It has the option to offer bedtime stories, self-care exercises, gratitude check-ins, etc. It also aids users with motivational text messages about life and positivity.

Ten Percent happier App

Ten-Percent-Happier-App People who are suffering from lack of sleep and heavy stress must use this app. This app enables users to connect with experts to ask relatable questions and provides more than 100 free meditations to learn.

How Much Does It Cost To Develop A Meditation App?

There is no fixed estimated cost for developing a meditation app. The app development cost entirely depends on its features, its platform, hourly development rate, the team structure, location of the development team, etc.

App Platform – Do you want to develop the app on the iOS platform or Android or both? The cost varies platform wise.
App Design – The user interface and user experience is the essence of any app that woo users’ attention and keep them glued. So, you should not compromise with the design for cracking down the cost and hire the best UI/UX development company after checking their portfolio.
The Development Team – The type of development team will affect your development cost because it will vary depending on the features like location, team experience, size, expertise, etc. Ultimately, the differences in these factors will fluctuate the cost.
Third-Party Integrations – Apart from the development of features and functionalities in the User app and Admin Panel, if you go for any third-party integrations it will add to the cost more as its development is time-consuming and require extra efforts.
Features and functionalities – It is obvious that app features play a crucial role and if the features are complex it will cost more. Therefore, it is always recommended to have a good budget if you are planning for a full-fledged app, or else you can either go for the basic app in a low or minimum budget.

A Ballpark Figure

But still if you’re looking for a ballpark figure, the estimated cost of the meditation app development starts from around 20k and it keeps on increasing as the requirement changes in your development process.

Wrapping Up!

Meditation apps are no doubt taking a huge market share these days and helping people to de-stress and increase concentration powers. But with technological advancement, the number of market players is increasing to offer the best in class services. So, if you need to take competitive advantage and join the leadership journey of meditation apps then focus on the leading companies and their marketing strategies. This post has covered all the essential aspects to include in the meditation app development, now just develop a thorough understanding and make a smart move. Let society be overwhelmed with your efforts of eradicating the rising issues of anxiety and stress among all age groups.

AWS Vs. Azure: Which Cloud Platform Is Best

Time and time again, Cloud Computing is proving its eternity in the world of technology. The shift from conventional software models has promised that Cloud is no more a fad. It’s a data hub promising new ways to collaborate anywhere, through mobile devices.

As cloud computing grows in popularity, a plethora of companies are simply testing their waters and increasing equities through cloud offerings. Among the various available cloud service providers; AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Azure (Microsoft Azure) are the top two cloud service providers that organizations are using to build robust, secure, and reliable platforms.

The cloud industry is a new entrant, thus it’s evolving regularly and enhancing the experiences of software development, deployment, reliability, security, and performance.

Well, we understand, just simply stating the names of the two best cloud service providers won’t be much of a help. As the question pops up which one is going to be the right solution for your business! Therefore, to drill down the best, we have prepared a comparative analysis on AWS and Azure. Let’s understand both the services and perform an informed comparison of AWS vs. Azure.

What is AWS?

AWS- Amazon Web Services is currently the market leader in cloud computing services. It is the most mature cloud platform, incepted in 2006 and offers a wide range of services to all its clients’ i.e. large organizations or individual developers, and even the government organizations.

The AWS cloud services are designed in such a way that they work with each other to deliver an efficient and scalable output. The services are divided into 3 categories;

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS),
Software as a Service (SaaS), and
Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Overall, AWS offers more than 200 services, such as application services, deployment, database, compute, storage, networking, management, mobile management, developer tools, etc. The AWS evolved into a publicly available cloud platform, includes services like Amazon S3 cloud storage and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Some of the prominent AWS clients are;

Netflix
Coinbase
Coca-Cola
Expedia
Lyft
Coursera
Airbnb
Intuit
Formula1
FDA (Food and Drug Administration), etc.

Advantages and Disadvantages of AWS Cloud Services

Advantages	Disadvantages
Provides multiple services, ranging from networking to robotics.	The developer and enterprise support needed to be purchased.
A mature cloud service.	Could be complicated for a beginner to handle a number of available services and options at a time.
Provides top-quality security and reliability with cloud services.	It has limited options for hybrid cloud, as compared to other cloud services.
As compared to Azure, AWS has more computable capacity and GCP.
The major software providers or companies can make their programs available on AWS.

What is Azure?

Azure is a Microsoft product and the second-largest cloud platform. Microsoft Azure was introduced in 2010 to provide a highly secure and competent cloud computing platform for businesses. It offers more than 100 services like networking, storage, computing, analytics, the Internet of Things, and many more. It also provides a wide range of customized services for Microsoft-centric organizations/enterprises.

Microsoft extends its support in making the switch to a cloud or a hybrid-cloud environment quite smooth for organizations. Its services can be categorized under two different phases;

Platform as a Service (PaaS), and
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Azure is not only confined to Windows-based services, but it also supports open-source platforms, technologies, and languages. Hence, it allows the liberty to build and support any application. The global network of data centres supports Microsoft to enable the building, deploying, and managing of apps and services.

Some of the prominent Microsoft Azure clients are;

Asos
McKesson Group
Starbucks
3M
HSBC
HP
Renault
Mitsubishi Electric
Daimler AG
Nation Health Service (NHS), UKgg
Centre of Disease Control (CDC), US, etc.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Azure Cloud Services

Advantages	Disadvantages
For existing Microsoft services, it becomes easy to integrate and migrate.	As compared to AWS, it has lesser services to offer.
Provides multiple services, such as Analytics services, best-in-class AI and ML.	Specially focused on enterprise clients.
Extends great support for Hybrid Cloud Strategies.
Comparatively Cheaper than other services, like AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

Amazon AWS Vs. Microsoft Azure

1. Computation Services

AWS- AWS provides numerous virtual computation services for effective computing. Some of the best computing infrastructures are AWS Lambda, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Elastic Beanstalk, etc. AWS uses EC2 Container Services and EC2 Container Registry, as a primary solution for scalable computing and software container management with Docker or Kubernetes. The AWS EC2 users can configure their own Virtual Machines (VMs), customize Machine Images (MIs), or select pre-configured MIs. The user can choose the power, size, number, and memory capacity of VMs they require.

Azure- Azure is the largest cloud computing service provider. It provides numerous infrastructures, such as functions, services, container services, VMs. etc. However, for computing purposes, Azure prefers virtual machines, and to scale at a greater level, it uses virtual machine scale sets. For software management, in the Docker container, Azure uses Container Service (AKS) and uses Container Registry for Docker container registry.

2. Storage Services

AWS- AWS storage services rely on a virtual machine hosted on AWS infrastructure. The storage is basically for individual instances; the temporary storage is assigned once for each instance and destroyed after the instance is terminated. AWS uses Simple Storage Service (S3), and it provides an immense amount of documentation and tutorials. S3 is offered with object storage and data archiving services with Glacier. It entirely supports NoSQL, Relational Databases, and Big Data.

Azure- Azure cloud computing supports import-export, site recovery, and backup for retrieval and archival options. Azure primarily stores data in the Microsoft cloud and is built to provide feasible solutions for the ongoing data storage concern. It uses storage block bob for data storage, which is a combination of blocks and uploads large blobs easily. Azure also stores temporary data by using blocks, disk drives, and file system services.

3. Networking Services

AWS- It uses Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to enable users to develop an isolated private network, network gateways, private IP address, subnets, and route table within the cloud umbrella. To make it possible, AWS uses API gateways for cross-premises connectivity. Hence, to provide smooth and cordial operations, it uses elastic load balancing while networking.

Azure- Microsoft Azure follows slightly a different approach. It uses a Virtual Network instead of VPC that gives the user the ability to develop an isolated network, subnets, private IP ranges, route tables, and network gateways. For cross-network connectivity, can use a VPN gateway. During content delivery to balance the load, it deals with load balancer and application gateway.

4. Database Services

AWS- To handle both structured and unstructured data, AWS uses relational databases for durability, and it also supports multiple database engines like MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Amazon Aurora, and MariaDB. For caching purposes, it also provides NoSQL and DynamoDB solutions and Elastic Cache.

Azure- To manage structured and unstructured data, Azure uses PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL databases, for the relational database, Redis Cache for caching purposes, and Cosmos database for NoSQL solutions. The Azure Stack allows bringing Azure functionality to clients’ on-premise data centers.

5. Deploying App

AWS- AWS allows its users/developers to deliver the application on multiple servers virtually by leveraging the capabilities of Platform as a Service (PaaS). It provides the solution with Batch, Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk, Container Service, etc. However, it doesn’t have all the supportive features of app hosting.

Azure- Azure cloud services provide a simple application deployment process. It also leverages the capabilities of Platform as a Service (PaaS). In Microsoft Azure, the user has multiple app deployment tools, such as container service, cloud service, app services, functions, batch, etc.

6. Pricing Model

AWS- Amazon AWS follows a pay-as-you-go model and charges on per hour basis. The user can save more with increasing usage i.e. the more you use, the less you pay. The user can purchase AWS cloud services under the following models;

Reserved Instances- Pay an exact or fixed amount based on the storage size; the client can reserve the storage space for 1 to 3 years.
On-Demand Instances- The user has to pay only for the storage space they are using, without paying any upfront charges.
Spot Instances- Based on the prediction of storage requirements and the available space, the client can bid for additional space requirements.

Azure- Microsoft Azure also follows the pay-as-you-go model, but charges per minute, which provides a more accurate pricing model. It also provides short-term associations with the options of pre-paid or monthly payment structure. However, Azure’s pricing model is less flexible and almost twice costlier than AWS.

Wrapping Up!

The selection of a suitable and correct cloud platform is entirely dependent on the structure and needs of an organization. Both Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud services are dynamic and powerful platforms. Moreover, both AWS vs. Azure cloud services are stuffed with a list of features but the selection can only be made after analyzing the business requirements.

We hope you gained a good understanding of the services offered by AWS and Azure cloud services. If you are looking for a wider range of tools and services or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) then go with AWS. On the other hand, if you are looking for Windows Integration or Platform as a Service (PaaS) then select Azure.

Well, we are here to make the entire process easier from start to finish. If you are looking for reliable and experienced hands to build or migrate your business data to the clouds, then Codiant could be the apt solution builder. For further consultancy, reach out to our experts, to get what you need.