Does my business need an app or a website?
The test is short: do you need what only an installed app provides, meaning offline use, camera and GPS inside workflows, push notifications, or an icon staff tap every day? If not, a fast mobile website does the job with no store approvals, no update lag and a smaller invoice.
The longer answer
In practice.
When the app genuinely wins
Field crews capturing photos and signatures with no reception, staff tools
used hourly, anything where the phone's hardware is part of the workflow. Those
are app-shaped problems, and pretending a website solves them wastes money in the
other direction.
When the website wins
Customers finding you, reading about you, booking you, paying you. They will
not download an app for that, and the app stores are a tax on updates you do not
need to pay. A web app can even sit on their home screen like the real thing.
The vested-interest warning
Anyone who only builds apps will find your problem app-shaped. I build both,
per mobile apps and
websites, so the recommendation costs me nothing
either way.
Same rabbit hole