A straight answer to the question that decides your budget. Most businesses asking for an app need a better website.
This question is worth getting right because the answers differ by an order of magnitude in cost. A good website might be $5,000. A comparable app might be $50,000. Choosing the app when a website would do is the most expensive mistake in this field.
You probably need a website
- You want to be found by people searching. Apps do not appear in Google results.
- Customers interact with you occasionally rather than daily.
- You are selling products or services to new customers.
- You need something live in weeks, not months.
An app might genuinely be right
- People use it repeatedly, ideally several times a week.
- You need device features: camera, GPS, offline storage, push notifications.
- It has to work without a connection.
- The users are existing customers or staff, not strangers you need to attract.
The install problem
Getting someone to install an app is genuinely difficult. They must find it, decide it is worth the space, wait for a download, and grant permissions. Every step loses people. A website is one tap from a search result.
This is why so many business apps sit unused. Not because they were built badly, but because the install cost exceeded the value for an occasional user.
The middle option
A progressive web app sits between the two. It runs in the browser, can be added to a home screen, works offline, and can send notifications on both major platforms now. It costs closer to a website than an app.
It is not the right answer for everything. Anything needing deep device integration or app store distribution still needs a real app. But for a lot of what businesses describe as 'we need an app', it is the sensible middle.