Web app or website: which one do you actually need?
The difference between a website and a web app in practical terms, what each costs to build and run, and how to tell which one your business needs.
·5 min read
People use “website” and “web app” as though they are the same thing sold at
different prices. They are not. They are different kinds of software with
different costs, different risks and different reasons to exist, and picking the
wrong one is the most expensive mistake a small organisation makes early on.
Here is the distinction that actually matters.
The test that separates them
A website tells people things. A web app lets people do things and
remembers what they did.
Your marketing site is a website. Visitors read it, decide something, and
contact you. Nothing about the site changes as a result. Every visitor sees the
same pages, and if the site went down for an hour, nothing was lost except an
hour of traffic.
A booking system is a web app. People log in, create records, change them, and
the state persists. Two people can act on the same data at the same time. If it
goes down for an hour, someone double-books a room and you find out on Monday.
The dividing line is state. Once the software has to remember something on
behalf of a specific person, and other people can see or change that same
something, you have crossed into web app territory and the cost profile changes
with it.
Why the cost gap is so wide
A five page marketing site is a well-understood job. The content is the hard
part, the engineering is not, and once it is built it mostly sits there.
A web app has to handle every case where two things happen at once, where
someone hits back mid-form, where a session expires, where the same person is
logged in on a phone and a laptop. None of that is visible in a design mockup,
and all of it is real work.
Roughly, and these are Canadian small business numbers rather than agency
retainer numbers:
Marketing site: a few thousand dollars, hosting under twenty dollars a
month, maybe nothing at all on a static host.
Small internal web app: several times that, plus a database, plus real
hosting, plus somebody to call when it breaks.
The gap is not margin. It is authentication, permissions, data integrity,
backups and the fact that a web app is never really finished. We wrote about the
site end of that range in what a website costs in
Alberta.
The middle ground people miss
A great deal of what gets scoped as “we need a web app” is a website with two
or three dynamic pieces bolted on. A contact form that files into a spreadsheet.
A member area with one gated document. A calendar that shows availability but
does not take bookings.
That middle ground is worth aiming for deliberately. A static site with a
handful of serverless functions costs close to nothing to run, has almost no
attack surface, and covers a surprising amount of ground. You get the dynamic
behaviour you needed without signing up for the maintenance burden of a full
application.
The question to ask is not “could this be an app?” It is “what is the smallest
amount of state I can get away with?”
Four questions that decide it
Do people need accounts? If yes, you have a web app. Authentication is
the point of no return: passwords, resets, sessions, and the obligation to
protect whatever is behind the login.
Do two people ever change the same record? If yes, you need a real
database with real constraints, not a spreadsheet or a form dump.
Does anything need to be correct rather than merely current? Money,
inventory, schedules and legal records all need to be correct, which means
transactions and audit trails.
Would a wrong answer cost you money? If a double booking or a lost order
has a dollar value, that value is your engineering budget.
Answer no to all four and you almost certainly want a website. Answer yes to
any one of them and stop scoping a website, because you will end up rebuilding.
What to do when the answer is “both”
Most businesses actually need a public website and a small private application,
and the mistake is trying to make one piece of software do both jobs. A single
platform that serves marketing pages and runs your operations is slow, harder to
secure, and impossible to change quickly on either side.
Split them. A fast static marketing site that anyone can edit, and a separate
application behind a login that only staff or customers reach. They can share a
domain and a look. They should not share a codebase or a deployment.
This is also the cheapest arrangement to run, because the public side is the
part with all the traffic and it costs nothing to serve, while the expensive
part only wakes up for the handful of people who log in.
The honest recommendation
Start with the website. Ship it, use it, and let real usage tell you which
dynamic pieces you actually need instead of guessing in advance. The list you
write before launch and the list you write after three months of enquiries are
never the same list, and the second one is right.
Then build the app around whatever survived that filter. That order costs less
and ends with software people use, which is not the usual outcome.
If you are trying to work out which side of the line your project sits on,
describe what you want people to be able to do and you will get a
straight answer, including “you do not need an app for that” when that is true.
One email when something new goes up, roughly twice a month. Plain
writing on what software costs and what is worth building. No sequences,
no sales calls, and one click to leave.
Tell us what the problem is. You will get an honest read on whether it is worth building, what it would take, and roughly what it would cost. No pitch deck, no pressure.
Six things: marketing websites, web applications, internal tools, AI systems, AI agents and MCP servers, and database work. Most projects touch two or three of them rather than sitting neatly in one.
Yes. Marketing sites, landing pages and content platforms, built on modern static tooling rather than page builders. They load in under a second and have the technical SEO groundwork done properly.
Yes. Customer portals, dashboards, booking systems and SaaS products. The kind where users log in, data persists and money changes hands, so it has to be right.
Software your staff use rather than your customers. A dashboard pulling numbers from systems that do not talk to each other, a job tracker matching how you actually work, or a scheduled job replacing a report someone assembles by hand every Monday.
Yes, and we will tell you when it is the wrong tool. Retrieval over your own documents, support assistants, document extraction and classification, all built with evaluation and guardrails from the start.
MCP is the standard that lets AI assistants reach your real systems instead of guessing. We build MCP servers that expose your data and tools to Claude and other clients, and agents that carry out multi-step work with permissions and audit trails.
Yes. Schema design, query performance work, migrations between systems, ETL pipelines and reporting layers. Usually called in when the database has quietly become the bottleneck, or the risk.
Not native iOS or Android apps. We build web applications that work properly on phones, which covers most of what businesses actually need. If you need a true native app, we will say so rather than talk you into a compromise.
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We design and build the sites and applications we make. We do not do standalone brand identity, logo design or print work. If you already have brand guidelines we will follow them.
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Often, yes. The first step is a short paid audit of the existing code and infrastructure, so you get an honest assessment of what is salvageable and what it would cost either way before committing to anything.
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Yes, if you want it. You can also take the project and run it yourself using the documentation provided. Both are genuine options and there is no pressure toward a retainer you do not need.
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A marketing site typically lands between $3,000 and $12,000 depending on page count and complexity. You get a written fixed price before any work begins, so the number you approve is the number you pay.
Applications and internal tools are scoped individually and most start around $15,000. Once users log in and data persists, you are buying software rather than a website, and it is priced like software.
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A single automation or integration is usually $2,000 to $6,000. A proper internal application with its own database and user roles runs $6,000 to $20,000. Anything your operations depend on goes up from there.
Fixed price wherever the scope can be fixed. That means we absorb the overrun rather than you, and it is usually worth the small premium on a first project together. If something changes mid-build you hear about it before the work happens, not on the invoice.
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A static marketing site is commonly free to host and stays free at traffic levels most local businesses never reach. A well-built internal tool usually runs $10 to $50 a month. Budget 15 to 20 percent of the build cost annually for maintenance.
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Copywriting, photography, ongoing SEO work and third-party subscriptions are the four things most commonly assumed by the client and excluded by the quote. Ours states what is and is not covered explicitly.
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Yes, typically a portion up front with the remainder on delivery, or split across milestones for larger projects. The exact split is agreed in the written proposal before work starts.
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Rarely page count. Integration complexity, how much the process changes mid-build, and how clean your starting data is. Messy historical data is the single most common reason projects overrun.
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Usually. Tell us the number and we will tell you honestly what fits inside it and what does not. That is a more useful conversation than pretending everything fits.
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Yes. Scoping conversations and written proposals cost nothing and carry no obligation. We will also provide a written quote for a grant application without charging for it.
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Yes, and they are meaningful. Registered charities, non-profits and small local businesses get reduced rates on every service, because a tight budget should not be the reason an organisation is stuck with software that does not work.
Registered charities and the volunteer-run groups that support them, non-profits and community organisations, and small owner-operated businesses including new ventures still finding their feet.
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There is no application and no paperwork. Mention it in your first message and the reduced rate is built into the quote you receive.
It depends on the project and the organisation, and you are told exactly what it is before committing to anything. We do not publish a single percentage because it would be either misleading or useless.
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Often, yes, and they are widely underused. Google for Nonprofits, TechSoup Canada, community foundations and your existing funders are all worth approaching. We wrote a guide to what is actually available.
If you are small and owner-operated, yes. Ask when you get in touch and we will tell you straight rather than making you guess.
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Four stages. Scope: a conversation about the problem, not the tech. Plan: a written proposal with price and timeline. Build: short cycles with something working at the end of each one. Ship and support: deploy, hand over documented code you own outright.
A straightforward marketing site takes two to four weeks from kickoff. Applications and internal tools usually run six to twelve weeks, delivered in cycles so you see something working every week rather than waiting until the end.
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Completely. Code lives in your repositories, hosting and domains are registered in your name, and everything is documented at handover. There is no licence to keep paying and no lock-in forcing you to stay.
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You keep everything, because it was always in your accounts. Documentation and a clean handover are part of the work rather than an extra, precisely so that another developer can pick it up.
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Most of it is at the start, agreeing what gets built. After that, expect a short check-in each cycle to look at progress. The most common cause of delay is waiting on content from the client side, so having copy and images ready helps more than anything else.
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Yes, and it is normal. You hear the cost and timeline effect before the work happens, so a change is a decision you make rather than a surprise on the invoice.
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Yes. Content is set up so you can change text and images without a developer in the loop, using either a CMS or markdown depending on what suits your team.
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Yes, routinely. Send yours over or ask and we will provide one.
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Often. Being brought in for a specific piece, or to work alongside an in-house team, is common and works fine as long as the boundaries are clear up front.
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A description of the problem. Not a specification, not a wireframe, just what is going wrong or what you are trying to do. Everything else comes out of the scoping conversation.
Astro and Next.js for sites and applications, React and TypeScript on the front end, Node.js and Python on the back, PostgreSQL and MongoDB for data, and Netlify or Vercel for hosting. Chosen per project rather than by habit.
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Only when it is genuinely the right answer, which is less often than it is used. For most marketing sites a static build is faster, safer and cheaper to run. For a large store or complex memberships, WordPress earns its place.
Wherever you need it. AWS and Google Cloud both have Canadian regions in Montreal and Toronto, and hosting in Canada is straightforward and usually costs nothing extra. If your customers ask where their data lives, that is worth having a clear answer to.
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Usually not. PIPEDA does not require personal data to be stored in Canada, provided you are transparent and the data receives comparable protection. Rules that do mandate it are mostly provincial public-sector rules. Health data and government contracts are stricter, so check those specifically.
Yes. Sites are built to WCAG 2.1 AA, which covers keyboard navigation, screen readers, colour contrast and focus states. It is part of the build rather than a paid extra.
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Sub-second loads and 95 or better on Lighthouse are the target, and normally the result. Static output with no render-blocking JavaScript is most of how that is achieved.
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The technical groundwork, yes: structured data, sitemaps, clean semantics, fast pages and unique metadata per page. Ongoing content and link building is a different discipline and we will say so rather than sell it.
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A static site has no database to breach, no admin login to brute force and no plugins running server-side code, which removes most of the attack surface. Where an application does need those, authentication and permissions are built to hold up.
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Usually. If your CRM, accounting package or booking system has an API or webhooks, it can be connected. Integration between systems you already pay for is one of the highest-value things to automate.
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Backups you have actually tested, not just configured. Restoring from a backup nobody has ever tried is a plan with an unknown failure rate.
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Often not, and we will say so. It is worth it when the task involves unstructured language, the rules are fuzzy, you can tell right from wrong, and a wrong answer is survivable. Fail any of those and something simpler is the better build.
Answering questions over your own documents, extracting structure from messy input like invoices and forms, triaging and routing incoming work, and generating first drafts a human then edits. Those four cover most of the real value.
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Chatbots on the front page, which almost nobody wants. Anything needing exact numbers, because models are not calculators. And automating a process nobody has written down, which just scales the confusion.
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Less than most people expect. A well-built retrieval system for a small business commonly runs in the tens of dollars a month. Costs balloon from stuffing whole documents into every request and using the largest model for tasks a smaller one handles.
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It can, which is why systems are built to answer from your data with sources attached rather than from memory. Anything that matters gets a human in the loop, and evaluation is built in from the start so you know when it works.
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A system that takes multiple steps toward a goal without being prompted at each one. Impressive in demos, frequently disappointing in production, and the gap is engineering rather than model quality.
Worth it when your team already uses an AI assistant daily, the information lives in a system with an API, and people ask the same questions repeatedly. Start with one read-only server answering a single question, which takes days and cannot break anything.
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It is, when scoped properly. Expose the narrowest set of capabilities that answers the real questions, separate read from write, put approval gates on anything destructive, log every call, and give it its own credentials rather than a shared admin account.
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Call, email, or use the contact form. The form asks a few questions up front so the first reply can be useful rather than a request for more information.
Within one business day, usually sooner. If it is urgent, calling is faster than the form.
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Alberta, Canada. Work happens remotely with clients across Canada and the United States, over email, video calls and shared preview links.
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Regularly. Location has never been a constraint on this kind of work. Being Canadian helps with timezone overlap, invoicing in Canadian dollars and familiarity with the privacy rules, but it is not the deciding factor.
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That is the preferred starting point. No pitch deck, no pressure, and no obligation. You will get an honest read on whether the thing is worth building at all.
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That is the normal case and completely fine. Describe what is going wrong or what takes too long, and working out the shape of the solution is part of the job.
