Headspace & Calm

Meditation Apps as a path to mindfulness.

There are numerous meditation apps accessible to smartphone users all over the world. If you’re looking for a meditation app to bring some mindfulness and tranquility into your day and consequentially, into your life. These apps may be one path in that journey.  

I’ll look at two of the leading providers in the mindfulness and meditation market Headspace and Calm – measured by the several thousand users they each have across Android, iOS and other devices, and top ratings on Google Play and the Apple App Store. The focus here is on the user experience, technicalities, and the uniqueness of each of these apps in approaching customer needs and touching on their respective pricing strategies. Although each app has its unique advantages and a few blind spots, I aim to get a view of what each has to offer and what can be made better for your needs.

Why Headspace?

The Headspace mobile app help users in the practice of meditation and mindfulness. It is a great fit for anybody who would love to learn the art of meditation for the purpose of enhancing awareness and control, reducing stress and anxiety.

Why Calm?

The Calm meditation app familiarizes users with the foundation of mindful meditation, and Daily Calm sessions that help users focus on handling stress and sleeping issues better, calming anxiety and getting into a more relaxed and happy mood. It also offers a variety of outdoor sounds and different ambiances to suit your mood.

Subscription, how affordable is the Cost?

The Headspace meditation app allows a ten-session beginner course, which allows you the first ten sessions of the “Basics,” which comes with video illustrations and infographics for every concept. After these ten sessions, you’d be required to subscribe to continue to use the app. Subscription rates cost $12.95 for a monthly subscription or $95.88 for a yearly subscription. No lifetime plans, but the Family Plan caters for six accounts for $19.99 monthly. Headspace also gives discounts and promotion codes for long-term subscriptions. Slightly higher subscription rate but great content when compared to Calm. Introduction of a lifetime subscription package might be a better appeal than the Family Plan – Considering not all family members might not want to meditate.

Calm, on the other hand, gives users a seven-day free trial period; this is tagged the “Seven Days of Calm,” which features seven sessions of meditation, ten minutes each, offering both guided and unguided sessions. Full access for continued usage and other features in the Calm catalog would require a subscription. Subscription rates vary to suit user’s preference from between, $12.99 monthly to $59.99 yearly and a one-time $299.99 payment for a lifetime subscription. Even cheaper rates and great value when compared to Headspace. Calm is the more affordable meditation app of the two.

Target Audience, Customer Preference:

The Headspace app is mostly targeted at persons that are new to the art of meditation and those just beginning the concept of mindfulness. Its secular nature makes it open to a general audience across the universe. It covers all age ranges, including children. Even psychologists and practitioners recommend Headspace as a support tool, not as a replacement for treating mental illness but to enhance mindfulness in daily activities such as running or cooking and performance like creativity and happiness.

Using the Calm app can be appreciated by all users, from beginners to seasoned meditators across every category. The broad selections listed in the calm catalog also make its secular nature open to a general audience across the universe, helping them form new habits in productivity and sleep with the aid of guided sessions and a varying ambiance. It also reduces stress and improves the quality of their users’ lives.

Meditation Content,  and Style:

Judging with several factors like the duration of sessions, guides, style, and options for selection.

On guided meditations, both apps do have a guide for sessions. British Meditation professional and author, Andy Puddicombe is the guide for Headspace. Puddicombe, who also trained as a Buddhist Monk for over ten years, sometimes provides a brief educative analogy on particular sessions. There is a known lack of variety for users to choose from regarding their preferences to meditation and experience, with adjustable session lengths, unlike Calm. Headspace also has a wider expanse of guided meditations than Calm, covering almost every imaginable topic you can think of in its Meditation library.

Tamara Levitt is the writer and narrating guide for Calm, and it still offers you have the option to switch to a male narrator, John Armstrong. The unique approach of this app gives you a feeling of a yoga class with lengthy educative talks before getting into the meditation itself – which could be as long as ten minutes depending on the program.

There is a sleep feature on both apps; Headspace’s Soundscapes gives different ambient music with a descriptive voice in the background. Calm’s Sleep Stories has similar features, but with a bedtime story function inclusive. Ultimately, Headspace does provide a fairly better meditation experience for users.

User Experience:

Both apps do have unique user experience designs; being rationalized and user-friendly applications, Headspace allows users to get the best of psychoeducation with the aid of animations, infographics and videos that appeal to users across all ages. Both apps have the multilingual option, adjustable volume, pause, play, and stop functions, time-tracking sessions for monitoring your progress and an offline download function that gives the user an easier approach to the dynamics of meditation and mindfulness.

The Calm app is a visually beautiful application designed in an intuitive manner that utilizes a more natural scenery to improves its effectiveness. Calm provides a variety of meditation features to help your needs while Headspace is primarily effective for learning the art of meditation. A little glitch in closing out the Calm app, as it would keep running in the background and require relaunching and pausing or stopping meditation to close it.

Summarily, both Headspace and Calm deliver fantastic results, and have even been evaluated and recommended by psychology experts. The final choice depends largely on personal preferences after considering what each has to offer and figuring which one best suits you.

Recent Feature Releases

Headspace was likely aware of competition in the space from the likes of Calm and others focusing on sleep with its recent addition of sleep features. Calm took a direction of sleep stories where famous narrators like Mathew McConnahey & Steven Fry talked about relaxing country sides to lull people gently to sleep. Headspace has added sleepcasts and sleep soundscapes both about 45 minutes in length. The which begin with pre sleep meditations they call wind downs and then continue with  

Headspace also continued on a track toward holistic health. They started with a few active meditation guides for walking and cleaning. Then expanded into stretching/mobility sessions and then adding full exercise sessions with varying degrees of intensity from gentle movement to high intensity cardio and body weight resistance training. While they’ve released these new elements to their product, they have kept a very clear thread of mindfulness throughout. Reinforcing the core idea that mindfulness and meditation isn’t just something separate, that can only be done in silence, in special rooms but it is a way to improve the way one lives their life all the time. Being more present and aware in every moment of life to appreciate and experience thoughts and emotions but not be overwhelmed by them. Now this is no easy task and doesn’t happen instantly, “hey I just meditated for the first time, I’m now enlightened!” But like any new skill, each time you do it, you become a little better at it.