When you're building a fitness app, every engineering hour spent wrestling with wearable APIs is an hour not spent on the features that actually differentiate your product. Built With Science recognized this early and made a strategic decision that's supporting their science-based fitness app.
Instead of building wearable integrations from scratch, they partnered with Spike API to handle the complexity while their team focuses on what they do best: science-based fitness algorithms that actually work.
The science-based fitness revolution
Built With Science has revolutionized fitness by applying scientific research to workout and nutrition planning. Founded by Jeremy Ethier, the company evolved from creating evidence-based YouTube fitness content to developing Built With Science+, a comprehensive mobile app that has helped over 200,000 people transform their bodies through personalized, science-backed programs.
Built With Science identified what many fitness apps miss: combining workout programming with nutrition tracking while maintaining data accuracy and transparency that users can trust. Their app delivers personalized fitness coaching that learns and evolves with each user. Achieving this vision, however, depended on reliable integration with wearable devices to track real-world progress.
Why Built With Science chose Spike API
After evaluating multiple integration solutions, Built With Science selected Spike API based on specific criteria:
Immediate user onboarding without engineering overhead
Spike enables Built With Science users to connect data tracking during initial app setup, handling device discovery, authentication, and initial data sync automatically.
For Built With Science, this meant launching with a complete user experience instead of promising "wearable support coming soon" while they built infrastructure.
Complex wearables management made simple
Wearable APIs aren’t a simple 'integrate once and you're done' solution.They’re complex systems with constant provider updates, authentication requirements, and platform-specific quirks. Spike handles all of this complexity that would be consuming Built With Science engineering time.
The Built With Science team specifically appreciates Spike's diverse point of contact approach. When integration challenges arise, they get direct access to engineers who understand their specific implementation needs.
The wearables and fitness activity industry is highly fragmented, with platforms constantly changing. For a small engineering organization like Built With Science, managing these integrations would consume significant resources that could be better spent on core product features.
Freeing up engineers to focus on what matters
This was the deciding factor. Built With Science needed to evaluate whether building comprehensive wearable integration would provide sufficient value compared to focusing on their core fitness algorithms and user experience features.
"We needed wearable integrations, but building and maintaining that infrastructure ourselves just didn’t make sense. It’s not where we win." says Kevin Lam, Principal Software Engineer at Built With Science.
With Spike handling integrations, their engineers could focus on developing enhanced nutrition algorithms using health data, expanding workout personalization features, and preparing for future capabilities like sleep tracking.
Spike’s support and responsiveness
Kevin particularly appreciates Spike's engineering support approach: “Everyone, especially the engineering support team, has been incredibly responsive. I’m actually impressed by how many different engineers we interact with, whereas usually these things feel like you get just one point of contact.”
“It feels like there’s a whole engineering team behind the scenes, actively engaging and supporting us. That really speaks to your company culture,” he adds.
The business impact: continued growth and feature development
Built With Science continues expanding their science-based approach to fitness technology. Their current roadmap includes further developing nutrition calorie recommendation systems using integrated health data and exploring additional fitness API integrations.
The partnership with Spike API supports this growth trajectory. As they roll out new features, the team can tap into additional Spike capabilities without rebuilding their wearable infrastructure from scratch.
“Spike gave us a huge shortcut. It would've taken months to get wearables working right — and even then, we'd still have to maintain them. Now we just build on top,” says Kevin.
This ongoing collaboration allows the team to focus engineering resources on what matters most: refining evidence-based fitness algorithms and delivering personalized user experiences.
“Our relationship with Spike has been pretty good,” he adds. Spike continues to handle the integration complexity that would otherwise consume their small engineering team’s pipeline.
Lessons for fitness app developers
Built With Science's partnership with Spike API demonstrates several key principles you can apply to your own development decisions:
Calculate the true cost of building vs. buying
Don't just compare the obvious costs. Factor in ongoing maintenance, new device support, API changes, and opportunity cost of engineers not working on differentiated features.
Consider whether the engineering time spent on wearable integration infrastructure would be better invested in features that directly improve your core value proposition.
Plan for scale from day one
Built With Science designed their integration strategy to support their roadmap, not just their current needs. Spike's platform accommodates their plans for additional integrations, specific metrics tracking, and enhanced data utilization without requiring architecture changes.
Focus on what differentiates your app
Built With Science demonstrates that successful fitness apps can prioritize their core competencies over commodity integrations. Their users engage with science-based workout and nutrition features because their engineers can focus on algorithm development instead of debugging wearable APIs.
Ready to focus your engineering resources where they matter most? Explore our documentation to see how Spike API wearable integration works, or contact our team to discuss your specific integration requirements.
Start with a clear integration strategy, and you'll ship user-focused features faster — just like Built With Science.