If you are asking "do I need an app or a website?", the answer for most businesses is a website, built properly for a phone. It is the answer we give in most first calls, and it is the one that costs us work.
An app is the right call when your customers use you daily, when the product needs the phone's hardware, or when it has to work with no signal. Everything else, which is most things, is a website job, and the numbers on how people treat the apps they install are the reason.
Why do most businesses not need an app?
Because people delete apps they only need occasionally, and most businesses are used occasionally. Adjust's retention benchmarks (April 2024), the median across every category it tracks, put day-one retention at 26 per cent, day seven at 13 per cent and day 30 at 7 per cent. Ninety-plus people in every hundred who install your app are gone within a month.
AppsFlyer's app uninstall report (2025 edition) measured 46.1 per cent of Android installs uninstalled within 30 days globally in 2024, 47.90 per cent in the UK, most of them on day one.
And the slots are taken. Ofcom's Online Nation 2025 (December 2025) found UK adults used 41 apps a month, and the top three (WhatsApp, Facebook, Google Maps) are the same three every year. A booking app for a plumber is competing for one of the remaining slots against things people use every day. Globally, Sensor Tower's State of Mobile 2026 counts 149 billion downloads a year against 34 apps actually used a month.
What does an app cost that a website does not?
More to build, more to run, and a cut of every sale. Our published ranges put a mobile app for iOS and Android at £40,000 to £100,000 against £20,000 to £60,000 for a web portal or platform, with support at 15 to 20 per cent of the build cost a year in both cases.
Then the stores take their share. Apple's standard commission is 30 per cent on digital sales, or 15 per cent if you earned under a million dollars last year. Google Play charges 15 per cent on the first million and 30 per cent above it, and from 30 June 2026 UK transactions moved to a new table running 10 to 25 per cent plus a 5 per cent billing fee. A website charging through Stripe pays a card fee and nothing else.
Every change goes through review, too. Apple says 90 per cent of submissions are reviewed in under 24 hours, and still a day you do not wait when a website fix is live the moment you publish it.
Can a website be found in ways an app cannot?
Yes, and this is the argument that decides it for most of our clients. Apple's own figures say 70 per cent of App Store visitors use search to find apps and almost 65 per cent of downloads happen straight after a search. To be found in the App Store, the customer has to already be in the App Store looking for you. Nobody types "emergency plumber Bedford" into the App Store.
They type it into Google, three billion times a month in the UK according to Ofcom, and increasingly they ask an assistant. Ofcom's 2025 report found 30 per cent of Google searches now show an AI overview and ChatGPT took 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025. Those answers are assembled from web pages, and your app's content is not a web page.
When do you need an app rather than a website?
When the phone is doing something a browser cannot, or when people use you every day. The test we apply:
Build an app when | Build a website when |
|---|---|
Customers use you daily or several times a week | Customers use you monthly, quarterly or when something goes wrong |
The product needs the camera, Bluetooth, sensors or precise location | The product is content, forms, booking, ordering or account management |
It has to work with no signal and sync later | Users will have a connection when they use it |
Background activity matters (tracking, device control) | Notifications are useful but not the product |
You have a marketing budget to win a slot on the home screen | Search and links are how customers will find you |
Our hardware work sits on the left. Asset Snap photographs building assets on Ministry of Defence sites with no connection and syncs when one returns, and Blackstar's Beam app is most of the product, controlling an amplifier over Bluetooth.
The middle ground has moved. A website can now install to the home screen, work offline and send push notifications: web.dev and MDN document the capabilities, and Apple added web push on iPhone in iOS 16.4, with the caveat that on iPhone it only works once the user has added your site to their Home Screen. For a lot of "we need an app for notifications" briefs, that is the app.
What should you build first?
A website that is fast on a phone, and then watch what people do with it. Only 43 per cent of sites pass Google's Core Web Vitals on mobile according to the Web Almanac 2024, so a slow responsive site loses this argument, and the recommendation is a fast website rather than any website.
Cinetopia Connect is what that looks like when it goes right. Edinburgh's film community wanted somewhere to exist between its events. Research with more than 100 film workers pointed at profiles, connections and opportunities, none of which needs a phone's hardware, so we built a responsive web app with no app store between a member and the platform. A member sends the link to a colleague, who is using it thirty seconds later.
If you arrive certain you need an app, we will still start with two weeks of discovery, because we have talked a client out of a £100k build before. Sometimes the answer is an app. More often it is a good website, with a mobile app in phase two once the website has proved that people come back.