A few years ago, we spent a hiking trip in Scotland. Looking for a suitable app to record our hikes we learned that the existing apps on the market did have too many annoying advertising pop ups or one had to register without knowing what will happen to the data. Therefore, it was clear to us as hikers and software engineers: A new fitness app needs to be developed. Our app should be free of charge, free of advertising and the user should have full control of their data at any time. The app should have similar functionality and quality of existing apps and additionally detailed statistical analysis of the data on the mobile without data transfer to a server. It also should have data import and export with other programs such as Google Earth. We were so excited by this idea that we spent more time conceptualizing this app then hiking.
In 2014 the new Sportractive app was ready to launch. The name captures all the things the app is about: "sport", "active", "track" and "attractive". Sportractive is the GPS tracking app for all your fitness activities like walking, running, jogging, hiking, cycling, mountain biking and many more. It helps you to stay motivated and reach your training goals faster by tracking, monitoring and analyzing your personal fitness performance.
Update 2021: Sportractive has now been around for 7 years and has been installed more than 8 million times. With the help of a number of users the app has been translated into 11 languages and the app's range of functions is now enormous. At the same time, the list of wishes is long and we have had to learn a lot since 2014. Among other things, we’ve learnt how time-consuming and expensive it is to maintain an app. The app must be adjusted almost continuously to keep up with the evolution of phones and the Android OS and with Google’s requirements. To cover the ongoing costs, we introduced premium features as subscriptions in 2019 and in some countries there are variants of the app that are ad-supported. However, we have remained true to the basic idea of building an app where the user has full control over their data at all times. We hope you continue to have fun and good training results with Sportractive.