Turn a website into an app: four ways and what they cost

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Can you turn a website into an app?

Yes, in four ways. Which one you choose depends on what you mean by “an app”, because the four differ a lot in what your customer notices and in what they cost. From lightest to heaviest:

1. A shortcut: the customer adds your website as an icon on their phone’s home screen, and the site then opens like an app.
2. A web app: your website, set up to behave like an app, with its own icon, its own window and notifications.
3. Your website in an app for the stores: an app in Apple’s App Store and in Google Play (together, “the stores”) that shows your website and also does something a website cannot.
4. A native app: an app built for the phone that exists separately from your website.

To make it concrete, take an accountancy firm with a website where clients book appointments and send in documents. For each way you will see what a client of the firm notices and what it costs the owner. For each way, allow about €100 an hour, excluding VAT.

A shortcut: your website as an icon on the home screen

With a shortcut, the customer puts your website on their phone’s home screen as an icon. A client of the firm taps the icon and lands straight on the page where they send in documents, with no address to type. You do not have to build anything, so it costs nothing.

On an iPhone the customer opens the website in Safari, taps Share and chooses Add to Home Screen. They turn on Open as Web App and tap Add (Apple’s steps). Without that switch it is a bookmark that simply opens in Safari. On an Android phone they open the website in Chrome, tap More to the right of the address bar, choose Install and create shortcut, then Install (Google’s steps). In Chrome on a computer it is More, then Cast, save, and share, then Install page as app.

The drawback is that few customers know they can do this. Put the steps on your website, or on a card with a QR code. Check on your own phone first that the site loads quickly and reads well: a shortcut is exactly as good as the website behind it.

A web app: your own icon, window and notifications

A web app is your website, set up so that a customer can install it as an app. The customer gets your own icon and name, a window with no browser around it, and notifications. Part of the site keeps working when there is no signal, such as the pages the customer looked at last. The firm can send a client a notification as soon as their annual accounts are ready. On an iPhone, web apps on the home screen can send notifications since 2023.

A web app does not get you a place in the App Store or Google Play. Customers find it through your website and install it from there. If your customers already know you, that is often what you need.

What a web app costs depends on your website. For a site of about eight pages it is about 17 hours of work, so €1,700. Depending on your site it lies between 12 and 22 hours, so between €1,200 and €2,200. That covers the setup, the icons, deciding what stays available without a connection, and testing on iPhone, Android and a computer. If your site is built from plain files, a static website, there is less to do. If it runs on a content management system such as WordPress, there is more.

Your website in the App Store and Google Play

Many people mean an app in the stores, Apple’s App Store and Google Play, when they say “an app from my website”. Such an app can show your website, and building that is not hard. The problem is the review. Apple checks every app before it appears in the App Store, and in guideline 4.2 it requires an app to be more than a repackaged website. An app that only shows your website can therefore be rejected.

Apple wants an app with features of its own. Examples of features a website does not have: notifications you send yourself, signing in with a fingerprint or face, a part that works without a connection (a ticket, say) or the camera for scanning something. That extra work sets the price. An app that shows your website, with notifications and sign-in by fingerprint or face, is about 25 hours of work, so €2,500. Each feature you add, such as the camera, costs €400 to €1,500. The 25 hours are built up like this:

If your customers have no use for notifications, device sign-in or the camera, this way buys you a place in the store and nothing else, and that earns less than it costs. You also end up looking after two things, the website and the app around it. What publishing itself costs and requires is in what it costs to put an app in the App Store.

Wondering which feature would get your website through Apple’s review? Request a quote and add what your customers do on the website today.

A native app

A native app is an app built for the phone that exists separately from your website. You need one when it has to do things a browser only partly allows, such as following the location in the background or keeping a lot of data without a connection, or when it really has to feel like an app. An accountancy firm rarely needs that.

A simple native app costs from €2,500: one purpose, a few screens and a sign-in. The more your website already does, the more screens a native app has to rebuild, and each screen costs €200 to €600. What an app costs works that out part by part. A native app is not a follow-up to your website but a product of its own, and its upkeep is around 15 to 20% of the build cost a year.

Which one fits you?

You choose by looking at what the app has to be able to do at a minimum. Go through the questions in the figure from top to bottom. The first yes points to the way you need. The heaviest requirement comes first because it decides the way: an app that has to follow the location in the background can never be a web app.

If you are not sure, start with the shortcut. It costs nothing and shows you whether customers open your website often enough. Look in your website’s statistics at how many visitors come from a phone and how many come back. If most are on a phone and many return every week, a web app is the next step.

If your website is already an application, with logins and bookings, an installed web application is often what customers mean by an app. For most businesses a shortcut and a better website are enough. Someone who looks up opening hours now and then will not install an app, and people who find you through Google do not find you through the store.

Torn between two of the four ways? Request a quote with your website’s address, and you get the way that fits and what it costs.

What you have to arrange yourself for a store app

A store app needs an account with Apple and one with Google. Open both in your company’s name and not in the builder’s. Then the app stays yours, even if you change builders later. Apple also requires a privacy statement with every app (guideline 5.1.1). What the accounts cost and which business details become public is in what it costs to put an app in the App Store.

Frequently asked questions

Having your website built into an app

You do not need us for a shortcut, and any developer who looks after your website can make a web app. If you want a native app, or your website in an app with a feature Apple will accept, we build it from €2,500: once for iPhone and Android, from your own store accounts, so the app stays yours. Request a quote and describe what the app has to do for your customer. If a shortcut is enough, that is the answer you get.