This comes up most often right after a competitor launches one. Before matching them, it is worth knowing that an app is not a more advanced website — it is a different product, with a different cost, and it only pays off for a narrow set of businesses.
What an app genuinely gives you
Four things, and only four really matter:
- An icon on the home screen. Being one tap away, permanently, is worth a lot — but only if people open you often enough to want you there.
- Push notifications. The strongest reason to build one. Nothing on the web reaches a phone as reliably.
- Device features. Camera, GPS, offline storage, background work. Web can do some of this now, but not all of it as well.
- Performance for heavy use. If someone uses your product for an hour a day, an app feels better.
What it costs, including the parts nobody quotes
The build is the smallest part. An app also means:
- Two of everything — Android and iOS, unless you build cross-platform, which trades some quality for one codebase.
- Store review, every release, with a developer account for each store and an annual fee on one of them.
- Permanent maintenance. Phone operating systems change twice a year; an app left alone for eighteen months starts breaking on new devices.
- Getting people to install it, which is the part that kills most business apps. You have to persuade someone to spend storage and twenty seconds on you before they have got any value — a website asks for neither.
The three questions
- How often does one person use you? Daily or weekly justifies an app. A few times a year does not — nobody keeps an app for something they do twice a year.
- Do you genuinely need push notifications or a device feature? Not "would be nice" — need. If the honest answer is that you want to send offers, that is email, SMS or WhatsApp, all of which reach more people for less.
- Do you already have an audience? An app is a retention tool, not an acquisition one. Nobody discovers a business by browsing an app store. If you need more customers rather than more engagement from existing ones, an app is the wrong spend.
Three yeses and an app is probably right. Two or fewer and the money is better spent on the site and on getting people to it.
The option in between
A progressive web app is a website that can be installed to the home screen, works offline, and on Android can send push notifications. It is built once, needs no store approval, updates instantly, and costs a fraction of a native app.
For a great many businesses asking this question, that is the honest answer: the thing they actually wanted was the icon and the notifications, not a native app. It is worth asking about before committing to a far larger project.
Where most businesses should spend instead
If you have an audience problem rather than an engagement problem, the same budget goes further on a fast, findable website that converts — the thing people reach from a search or an ad without installing anything. Our traffic but no enquiries piece covers the usual gaps there.
We build both, which means we have no reason to push you toward the bigger invoice. Tell us what the thing has to do and we will tell you honestly which it is — including when the answer is neither.