I'm Mikael, founder of Crew (http://crew.co) and Unsplash (http://unsplash.com). Before starting these sites, I was an independent designer and I'd often get the question from potential clients, "Should I make an app, website, or both?"
While mobile might seem like the obvious choice because of how it's changing the world, building an app might not be best decision for every particular situation. Granted, down the line a mobile app may make sense. I don’t discount where technology is headed. But a mobile app might not be where you need to start.
The decisions depends on a variety of factors like your long-term goals for your idea, your features, and your budget, etc. Thinking through all these variables can make the decision harder.
To help make it easier to consider the tradeoffs between building an app or website, I took all the questions I used to ask potential clients and made this tool called (perhaps, unsurprisingly) App vs Website.
It walks you through a few 'yes' or 'no' questions and in a minute or so, you have an answer.
I hope this helps give potential clients a better idea if they should start by building an app or a website based on their specific situation.
If you have any thoughts, I'll be around to hop in on any comments.
Well, if I say that my budget is below 10k USD I just get redirected to a website. I understand the rationale, but there's plenty of apps that you could build with, say 9k$ :D
Fair point. We added an explanation on the result page for that use case that says:
"Most successful mobile apps cost upwards of 10K USD to build due to features, level of expected design, connection to a website, and if you’re building across multiple platforms (iOS, Android, etc.). If your budget is less than 10k, it’s more likely a website would be a better route to go. You can however test a mobile app idea out with a website. Here’s how (https://crew.co/how-to-build-an-online-business/build-websit...)."
The purpose was to try and make it clear that most (not all) successful mobile apps cost upwards of 10k USD.
I'm Mikael, founder of Crew (http://crew.co) and Unsplash (http://unsplash.com). Before starting these sites, I was an independent designer and I'd often get the question from potential clients, "Should I make an app, website, or both?"
While mobile might seem like the obvious choice because of how it's changing the world, building an app might not be best decision for every particular situation. Granted, down the line a mobile app may make sense. I don’t discount where technology is headed. But a mobile app might not be where you need to start.
The decisions depends on a variety of factors like your long-term goals for your idea, your features, and your budget, etc. Thinking through all these variables can make the decision harder.
To help make it easier to consider the tradeoffs between building an app or website, I took all the questions I used to ask potential clients and made this tool called (perhaps, unsurprisingly) App vs Website.
It walks you through a few 'yes' or 'no' questions and in a minute or so, you have an answer.
I hope this helps give potential clients a better idea if they should start by building an app or a website based on their specific situation.
If you have any thoughts, I'll be around to hop in on any comments.
Thanks for taking a look.
Mikael
If you're curious, here's how we made it: http://backstage.crew.co/announcing-app-vs-website/