Earlier this week MyFitnessPal rolled out its new premium app, an ad-free subscription with advanced tools and better analysis for a more customized fitness and nutrition experience. Purchased by Under Armour for $475 million earlier this year, MyFitnessPal helped Under Armour create the world’s largest digital health community with more than 120 million members.Since the purchase, financial experts have speculated on how Under Armour might monetize MyFitnessPal which has an estimated 85 million users. It looks like we have our answer – a premium subscription model. For $9.99/month or $49.99/year, subscribers get a more robust, personalized experience on MyFitnessPal. Here are a few of the new features offered to those who upgrade:
- Ad-free app
- Priority customer support
- Exclusive content
- Customized goal setting by the day
- Customized exercise calorie settings
- Nutrient dashboard to determine what will help users achieve their goals
- Better graphics representing progress, health, fitness, and nutrition intake
According to a product review by Digital Trends, the premium version of MyFitnessPal also allows users to choose one of four profiles which most closely matches their goals: macronutrients, heart-health, carb conscious, or custom. Subscribers also get access to exclusive content including recipes, nutrition tips, meal plans and more. And, of course, subscribers will still have access to all of the free features that it has grown to love – being a part of the MyFitnessPal community, calorie counting, nutrition and fitness tracking, a blog with tips, recipes and inspiration, social media connections and more.Insider Take:Under Armour made a huge financial investment to acquire MyFitnessPal. Considering only subscription revenue, Under Armour needs 9.5 million of MyFitnessPal’s 85 million registered users to convert from free to paid members at $49.99/year to recoup its initial investment.Converting free members to paid members isn’t as simple as it sounds though. In fact, conversions of free apps to premium have conversions can vary significantly and some well below 1%, so it could take time for Under Armour to recoup its investment. In addition, there will be costs involved to convert and retain those users, so we will be watching to see how and when they get to profitability.Financially, it makes sense to go the subscription route for MyFitnessPal to ensure long-term financial viability for a 10-year-old company that has already proven its success. Under Armour has the opportunity to cross-promote MyFitnessPal with its other companies, MapMyFitness and Endomondo, so it has built-in audiences with similar interests. With auto-renewals and an affordable price point, we think Under Armour will do very well with its new premium product.MyFitnessPal is not offering a free trial, but since users can use the free version, that isn’t really a concern, but we think MyFitnessPal could improve upon explaining the new changes and what you get for converting to the premium version of the app.When logged into a free account, desktop and mobile Android app, we could not find any samples or screenshots of the premium version. After a little digging, we found an introduction to the premium tools with screen shots on the Hello Healthy blog which had an FAQ page buried at the bottom. To excite users to become subscribers, the user experience and upsell could be improved upon.Aside from that, we think MyFitnessPal will continue to be successful, and Under Armour will continue to enhance the health and fitness of its customers while converting to a subscription model.
