Is your business ripe for a mobile app in 2023?

The video asks the question; this is how we answer it when a prospective client asks us directly. There are three tests, and a business that fails all three is usually better served by a website, a better booking flow, or an AI agent answering the phone.

The first test is repeat use. An app earns its place on a home screen only if someone opens it weekly — a fitness programme, a loyalty scheme, a field team logging jobs. If the customer interaction is annual, a website does the same work for a tenth of the money. Custom mobile app development starts at $20,000 for an MVP here, and that number should be justified by frequency before anything else.

The second is whether you need the device. Camera, GPS, offline operation, push notifications, Bluetooth, biometrics, background processing: these are the things a browser either cannot do or does badly. Needing one of them is the clearest argument for native development. Needing none of them is the clearest argument against an app at all.

The third is whether the work behind the app already runs. An app is a window onto a process. If the process is a spreadsheet three people update by hand, the app will expose that rather than fix it — and the fix is usually cheaper. This is the most common reason we tell someone not to build yet.

If you are unsure, the scoping phase is the cheap way to find out: one to two weeks, ending in a written fixed-price estimate and a straight answer about whether the thing is worth building. We would rather say no at that stage than take a build we do not believe in.