If you have a loved one trying to start a fresh wellness routine as the new year arrives, the perfect gift could be an annual subscription to a wellness app! These apps make great presents because they can motivate or inspire someone to take charge of their health habits and accomplish big goals over the coming year.
Here are some of the best digital subscriptions that will make their year special.
1. Calm: Relax With Guided Meditations
Meditation can be an easy, healthy, and safe solution to a lot of daily challenges. A guided meditation app like Calm can be a great gift for someone who deserves some quiet time for themselves.
Calm offers guided meditations and breathing exercises with brainwave entrainment effects specifically designed to help your loved one relax, focus, reach flow states, and even deal with chronic health issues.
The app brings together various modes of guided meditations across categories such as sleep enhancement, personal growth, increasing focus, and more. It offers several ways to practice and explore different aspects of mindfulness, including 10-minute morning “Daily Calm” sessions, sleep stories, and expert-led masterclasses.
Calm also features a collection of ambient sounds that are great for relaxing or falling asleep.
The app comes with free and paid versions. The premium version provides unlimited access to the entire library of sleep stories, guided meditations, and more. It's available as an annual subscription for $69.99 or as a lifetime purchase for $399.99.
Download: Calm for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)
2. Strava: Track Outdoor Activities
The Strava app provides a social network for fitness enthusiasts while offering a wide variety of training plans and challenges. The premium subscription expands the Strava experience with an array of additional features.
By gifting an annual Strava subscription, you can ensure that the cyclists and runners among your friends and family will get access to advanced training and performance monitoring tools.
The Strava app offers live segment performance data, personalized training plans designed by certified coaches, ongoing challenges with prizes and leaderboards, a race analysis after each workout, and many other advanced features.
An anual Strava subscription costs $59.99 per user.
Download: Strava for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)
3. Deliciously Ella: Eat Healthy With Plant-Based Recipes
With a focus on yoga, nutrition, mindfulness, cooking, and holistic living, this app includes over 700 plant-based recipes to get your loved one started on a new wellness journey.
From breakfast to dinner with baked goods and snacks in between, Deliciously Ella is full of healthy, calorie-controlled recipes that fit right into a busy lifestyle. The catalog of recipes, along with over 250 instructor-led movement sessions and mindfulness exercises, makes the perfect gift for anyone looking to improve their wellness.
You can find guided video lessons with ingredient lists and instructions organized into easy-to-follow steps in the app's beautifully designed interface. You can also filter recipes by category, duration of prep, or portion sizes to make it easier to choose.
Meanwhile, an array of useful tools such as meal planners, shopping lists, a personal wellness tracker, and helpful podcasts and guides allow you to easily monitor and take control of your diet, exercise, and sleep routines.
Your loved one can even share their activity with you and their other family and friends.
You can choose from three subscription tiers and, on compatible iOS devices, share the subscription with family members.
Download: Deliciously Ella for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)
4. Planta: Care for Plants
Plants can play a vital role in a healthy lifestyle, and for someone with a green thumb, a Planta subscription could be the perfect gift.
With its easy-to-navigate interface, Planta does much more than simply identifying plants. The app helps you manage the entire lifecycle of your indoor and outdoor plants by providing smart care reminders, light meter suggestions, and other helpful information.
The app will tell you the type of soil, light, and water requirements that your favorite plant needs to stay alive and healthy. The "Dr. Planta" feature is like an intelligent plant companion that offers insights into the health of your plants and offers customized treatment recommendations for specific issues.
With Planta, you can make plant care a relaxing ritual instead of a stressful chore.
The premium version includes additional features including recommendations and identification of plants, plant care tips, and more. It's available as a monthly subscription for $7.99, a quarterly subscription for $17.99, or an annual subscription for $35.99.
Download: Planta for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)
5. Audible: Find Inspiring or Relaxing Audiobooks
Audiobooks are an excellent way to escape the stresses of everyday life. Whether it's a gripping novel or an upbeat podcast, listening on the go has never been so easy.
Audible memberships make amazing gifts for people who love a rich, immersive journey into the world of books with the convenience of just a smartphone and a pair of headphones.
The app will put new releases, great classics, and buzzy bestsellers right in your loved one's ears, delivering one of the best digital libraries on-demand.
Audible's audiobook player offers easy-to-use playback controls and gestures, with chapter navigation, bookmarks, a sleep timer, and variable playback speeds to make listening easier.
With an active subscription, you can also ask Alexa to play your audiobooks for you on the Amazon Echo range of speakers and other supported devices. Audible Premium Plus memberships start at $15 per user for one credit per month, which is redeemable on any audiobook on Audible.
Download: Audible for Android | iOS (Subscription required, free trial available)
6. Day One: Save Memories With a Journal
The Day One app is a versatile writing environment: your loved one can use it for journaling, essay writing, brainstorming, note taking, or as a research log. Then, they can add photos, tags, weather data, and a location to each post for rich memories.
With advanced encryption and backup capabilities, Day One offers an accessible and modern way to record even the smallest details of everyday life. It's a great gift for someone who loves writing down their thoughts and savoring memories.
The premium version of the app offers additional features such as integration with the IFTTT platform, writing prompts, and video entries. It's available as an annual subscription and costs $34.99 per user.
Download: Day One for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)
7. Spotify: Unwind With Music
If you have a friend or family member who loves music and uses it for relaxation, motivation, and recharging after a long week, then a Spotify subscription will make a fantastic gift.
From playlists that are tailored to their preferences to radio stations based on artists whose work they're into, Spotify is the best way for them to discover and share new music while enjoying their favorite feel-good tracks and artists. And Spotify will learn their musical tastes over time to get better at making recommendations.
Gift a Spotify Premium subscription to the music enthusiast in your life and give them access to millions of ad-free songs across multiple devices.
Download: Spotify for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)
Give the Gift of Wellbeing to Your Loved Ones
Health and wellness trends aren’t fleeting—they’re intended to be long-lasting, and they have the potential to change lives. What's a better gift than making a positive impact on the lives of friends and family?
From the apps and services in this list, you can choose the perfect digital gift for your loved ones. It’s never too late to start a healthy new year, and maybe these apps will help you kick off a new lifestyle as well!