Why We Believe Plates is the Best Gym Workout App for iPhone

There are countless workout apps out there, and picking one as a gym-goer comes with analysis paralysis. With so many options how do you know which one to choose? We hope to make this decision a bit simpler and outline why we believe that if you’re on iPhone you should give Plates a try.

Beautifully Designed & Smooth Experience

The core reason we built Plates was that we wanted an app that feels like it belongs on an iPhone. Plates is built using native technologies from Apple and follows Apple’s design language. You can feel this when using Plates in everything from the design, to how smooth the animations are, to how it never feels like it's fighting you. On the other hand, most other apps you’ll see feel more like utilities. There is not a hint of craft or originality in them and each action you perform does its job, but it just feels mundane, like filling out a doctor’s form.

Plates has Features That Just Make Sense

There are countless small annoyances when logging things in the gym. They’re not anything disastrous on their own, but they compound and take away your focus from the workout. Things like doing plate math. It’s not exactly advanced calculus, but when you're exhausted, figuring out what the machine base weight and 4 plates add up to can be frustrating. We solved that by building a plate keyboard. Or what about adjusting the weight? Yes, you can tap through 8 fields to add 10 kg to each set, but wouldn’t it be nice to have something like bulk edit that does it for you? What if you want to start logging RIR instead of RPE? In many cases that means switching to a different workout app. In Plates, it's one toggle away.

These aren't just a few features our competitors can copy to close the gap. Yes, they might add a plate keyboard. Bulk edits and RIR logging too (long overdue). But it’s about the approach and philosophy. The fact that they haven’t yet tells you more than any feature list we can make. Their priorities don’t lie in making your logging experience easier. Ours do.

Workout App That’s Just a One-Time Purchase

We hate subscriptions. These days everyone wants to lock you into a monthly fee for an app that barely changes. Not Plates. Plates is $19.99 once, with a 7-day free trial to make sure it's right for you. We can do that because we don't run servers of our own, so there's no monthly bill we need to pass on to you. Pay once and it's yours.

Your Data Stays Yours, Because We Have No Accounts

Plates has no accounts. Everything is completely private and backed up to your iCloud, so your workouts can sync across all your Apple devices. Plates has no servers of our own and only you have access to your workout data.