Everybody thinks they need a mobile app. When you see what one actually costs — and what a responsive web app can do — most businesses change their plan. We think that’s the right call.

If you’re in a market like restaurants, salons, or retail, this decision is easy: white-label apps for ordering and booking already exist, they’re inexpensive, and you shouldn’t build custom software to compete with them.

For everyone else, here’s the part that surprises people.

One “mobile app” is five projects

A mobile app needs data and function, and that means real architecture: a data layer to store everything, an API to move data between your systems and the app, a management console so your team can run it, usually a web version of the same functionality — and then the iOS app and the Android app themselves. Count them: that’s at least five development projects wearing one app’s name. That’s where the sticker shock comes from, and no honest developer can make it disappear.

The answer most businesses actually need

Modern web applications are responsive by default — they look and work great on a phone, tablet, PC, or Mac, from one codebase. Build the web app once instead of five times, and your users get the same capability at a fraction of the cost. Frankly, if we wrapped a well-built web app inside a native shell, most users couldn’t tell the difference.

When a native app genuinely earns its cost

  • Field teams — collecting signatures, uploading site photos at time of service, working with device hardware like the camera or GPS
  • A real mobile user base — enough daily mobile users that native polish and offline capability pay for themselves
  • A consumer product idea — where the app is the business, not a channel for it
  • No off-the-shelf option — your niche is too narrow for the white-label market to serve

We’ve built native apps for online testing, retail shopping, and customer account management for utility companies — when the case was real, and we’d do it again.

Our recommendation, honestly

We’re happy to build you a mobile app. We’re just as happy to tell you that you don’t need one. There’s a certain panache to having your icon on someone’s home screen — but panache has a price, and our job is to get you the best solution, not the most expensive one. Tell us what you’re trying to do and we’ll walk the options with you — or see how we build cross-platform systems.