Your own branded app as a personal trainer: what it takes
Your own app, with your name and logo on your clients’ home screens, makes your business look established and keeps clients coming back to you rather than to a software company. “Branded app” can mean three quite different things, though, and the differences matter.
Three kinds of branded app
Your logo inside someone else’s app. Clients download the software company’s app from the store and sign in, and your logo and colours appear inside it. It is usually the cheapest option, but the app on their phone carries the company’s name and icon, not yours.
Your own store app. An app with your name and icon, listed in Apple’s App Store and Google Play. Coaching platforms that offer this build it from their own template and publish it for you, usually on their higher plans.
An installable web app. Your app runs at your own web address, and clients add it to their home screen, where it opens full screen with your name and icon, like any other app. There is no store listing, so there are no store fees or reviews.
What a store app takes
- Developer accounts. Apple’s Developer Program costs $99 a year, or the local equivalent, and a Google Play developer account costs $25 once.
- Your own Apple account. Apple’s App Store rules say that apps made from a commercial template must be submitted by the business whose content they hold, so the developer account is normally in your business’s name, not the software company’s.
- Business details. To enrol a business with Apple, you need a D-U-N-S number for it. It is free, but can take some time to arrive.
- Store reviews and listings. Each new version is reviewed before it goes live, and each listing needs screenshots, a description and a privacy policy.
- A higher plan. Branded store apps are often on a platform’s top plan, or an add-on. When we checked on 8 October 2026, Kahunas included one on its $99 a month Ultimate plan, PT Distinction on its Pro and Master plans, and Harbiz offered a custom branded app as a €49.99 a month add-on.
What an installable web app takes
- A web address, ideally your own, such as app.yourgym.co.uk.
- Your brand: a square logo for the home screen icon, your colours and your app’s name.
- One step for each client: adding the app to their home screen from their browser. On an iPhone, that is Share, then Add to Home Screen.
Installable web apps can send notifications. On iPhone and iPad, this works from iOS 16.4 onwards, once the app has been added to the home screen.
The trade-off is that an installable web app cannot read Apple Health or Android’s Health Connect, which need a store app. Many wearables, such as Garmin, can still connect through their own accounts.
The rest of your brand
The app is only part of it. Your clients also see:
- your web address, in links and in the browser;
- your emails, such as sign-in links, receipts and reminders, ideally sent from your own address;
- your website, with your timetable and prices;
- your name on their bank statement, which comes from having your own payment account.
Which is right for you?
If being listed in the App Store matters to you, budget for the developer accounts and a higher plan, and allow time for set-up and reviews. If what matters most is your clients seeing your name, logo and colours every day, an installable web app gives you that, and you can start straight away.
How Apogee does it
Apogee’s client app is an installable web app in your brand, with your name, logo and colours on the home screen icon, in the app, in emails and on your website. Inside the app, your clients see only your brand.
Your app starts at yourname.apogee.coach. Connect your own domain, such as app.yourgym.co.uk, and your own email address, and Apogee disappears from both. Notifications work on iPhone and Android once the app is on the home screen, and with the Nutrition and data module clients can connect wearables such as Garmin, Oura, Polar, Whoop and Fitbit.
Payments go into your own Stripe account, so your business name is the one on your clients’ statements. See how it works, or try the demo in four different brands.
