Do you need an app, or just a website?

A surprising share of the apps that get built should not have been apps. They cost two to four times what the equivalent website would have cost, they require store approval, they need users to install something, and a meaningful fraction of them are a mobile website in a wrapper.

This is not an argument against apps. It is an argument for asking the question properly before spending the money, because the answer is usually clear once you do.

The five questions

Does it need to work without internet? Not "should degrade gracefully," but genuinely work, offline, with changes syncing later. Field inspections, delivery routing, note-taking, anything used in a basement or on a plane. This is the strongest single argument for an app, and it is difficult to fake with a website.

Does it need the phone's hardware? Camera in a sustained way, GPS in the background, Bluetooth, biometrics, local file storage. Browsers can do some of this now, but the experience is worse and the permissions are more awkward.

Do you need to send push notifications? Real ones that arrive when the app is closed. Web push exists and works on Android; on iOS it requires the user to have added your site to their home screen, which almost nobody does. If notifications drive your business model, that gap matters.

Will people use it more than weekly? An icon on a home screen is worth real money for something used daily. For something used twice a year, it is a thing occupying space that eventually gets deleted, and you paid extra for the privilege.

Is your audience already installing apps for this category? People will install a banking app or a food delivery app without thinking. They will not install an app to book a haircut once a quarter, no matter how good it is.

Two or more clear yeses, build an app. Fewer than two, build a website. And by website I mean a good mobile website, which is a genuinely different thing from a desktop site that shrinks.

What the difference actually costs

For comparable functionality, an app runs roughly two to four times the cost of a mobile website. Some of that is the build. More of it is everything around it:

• Store submission. Apple and Google both review. Rejections are routine and usually about metadata, privacy declarations, or account-deletion requirements rather than the app itself. Budget days to weeks, and it is outside anyone's control.
• Two platforms. Native development means building twice. Cross-platform frameworks like Flutter and React Native reduce this substantially (one codebase to iOS, Android, and often desktop), which is most of why they exist.
• Updates go through review too. A typo fix on a website is live in a minute. On an app it is a submission, a review, and then waiting for users to update. Some never will, so you end up supporting old versions.
• Developer accounts. Apple charges USD $99 a year, Google a one-time USD $25. Small, but they are permanent and they are yours to maintain.

The middle option people forget

A progressive web app is a website that can be added to a home screen, works offline to a degree, and behaves like an app once opened. On Android it is close to the real thing. On iOS the support is meaningfully weaker, particularly around notifications, which is why PWAs are less popular here than their advocates would like.

Still worth considering. It costs roughly what a website costs, ships without store review, and updates instantly. If your five answers came out at one clear yes, this is often the right shape.

What I would ask you

When someone tells me they need an app, my first question is what happens on the phone that could not happen in a browser. Sometimes the answer is immediate and specific ("our technicians are in basements with no signal") and the conversation is over, it is an app.

More often the answer is that an app feels more serious, or more permanent, or more like a real product. Those are real feelings and they are not good enough reasons to double the budget. A fast, well-made mobile website that people actually use beats an app nobody installs, and it leaves you money for the thing that will actually grow the business.

I would rather talk you out of a project than build you one you regret. If you want to work through the five questions with someone who has built both, that is a short conversation.