Do I need an app, or is a website enough?

App or website: the three questions to ask before deciding

Whether you need an app or a website is enough comes down to three questions. First: how often do people use your offering? Someone who looks for a tradesperson once a year won't install an app. Second: does the application need device features such as the camera, Bluetooth or location? Third: where do your users come from – Google, your existing customer relationships or the app store?

If the answers are “rarely,” “no” and “through Google,” a good responsive website is the right investment. The more frequent the usage and the more important device features become, the more a web app or native app makes sense. Many companies start with a website and a web app and only add the native app once actual usage justifies it.

Web app vs. website: what's the difference?

A website informs: services, case studies, contact. A web app lets users get something done: book an appointment, configure a quote, upload documents, check order status. Technically, both run in the browser, but a web app has user accounts, roles, a database and business logic. That makes it a tool that noticeably takes load off processes in your company. Typical examples are booking flows, customer portals or forms that have so far been handled by email and phone.

As a progressive web app, the web app can additionally be installed, loads content from the cache and can send notifications. For many customer portals and employee tools, this is the best compromise: one project, all devices, no store publishing and updates with no waiting time. We go into the exact differences between a PWA and a native app in a separate comparison.

Native app vs. responsive website: when an app is really worth it

A native app is worthwhile if it is used daily or several times a week and works deeply with the device. Typical examples are a service technician app that documents jobs in a basement without network coverage and syncs photos later, a learning app with reminders, or a customer app with a loyalty program. Here, reliability and ease of use are decisive.

The ongoing effort is often underestimated: operating system updates, store guidelines, privacy disclosures and testing on many devices. Cross-platform frameworks or a native wrapper around an existing web app can reduce this effort. Whether a wrapper is enough depends on the real added value: under Apple's guidelines, apps that merely embed a website risk rejection. That's why, before every app project, we check which features can only sensibly be implemented natively.