Do you need a mobile app or a website?

Everyone wants “an app”. Most businesses don’t need one — and the ones that do can usually launch smarter. Here’s how to tell.

“We need an app” is one of the most expensive sentences in business, because a native app is often the most costly, slowest way to solve a problem that a website would solve for a fraction of the price. Sometimes an app is exactly right. The trick is knowing which situation you’re in before you spend.

First, the honest truth: most businesses don’t need a native app

If your goal is to inform, sell, take bookings or generate enquiries, a fast, well-built website does that better — no download, no app-store approval, and it shows up in Google. Asking a customer to install an app just to book a table or buy a product is friction most won’t bother with. A great mobile website almost always beats a mediocre app.

When a website (or web app) is enough

You’re marketing, selling products, publishing content or capturing leads.
You want to be found on Google — apps don’t appear in search the way pages do.
You need it live sooner and at a lower cost.
Your “app-like” needs (logins, dashboards, saved data) can live in a web app that runs in the browser.

When a native app genuinely earns its place

Native apps are worth the investment when you truly need what only a native app can do:

Offline use — the app must work with no connection.
Push notifications that are core to the product, not a nice-to-have.
Deep device features — camera, GPS, sensors, background tasks.
A home-screen habit — something people open every day, where the polish of native motion matters.
Performance-critical, interaction-heavy experiences a browser can’t match.

My Orbit apps are a good example: a field crew needs the worker app on their home screen, offline-tolerant and instant — that’s a real native use case. You can try Orbit Team and Orbit Base live in your browser to see the bar an app has to clear.

The middle ground: a PWA

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a website that can be “installed” to the home screen, work partly offline and send some notifications — without the cost of two native builds or the app-store gauntlet. For plenty of businesses it’s the pragmatic best of both worlds, and a fraction of the cost.

The money-saving move: start with the smallest version that proves the idea — often a web app or PWA — launch, learn from real users, and only build native once you know it’s worth it. Building the full app first is how budgets vanish.

Not sure which you need?

That’s exactly the conversation to have before spending anything. Describe your idea in the AI sketch tool for a quick read, see how I approach mobile app development, or just tell me what you’re trying to do and I’ll give you an honest answer — even if the answer is “you don’t need an app”.