The honest answer
Almost everyone asks us some version of this. It's a fair question and it deserves a straight answer rather than a sales pitch — including the things a web app genuinely cannot do.
First things first
The words "web app" make people picture a website, so they undersell it. On your phone it behaves exactly like anything you'd download:
The difference isn't how it looks or behaves. It's how it gets there.
Getting it onto a device
Every extra step loses people. That matters most when the people you're losing are your own staff on a busy shift.
Side by side
The case for
Spot a mistake on a Monday morning and it's fixed and live on a Monday morning. With an App Store app, that fix joins a review queue. If your prices, stock or opening hours change regularly, this is the difference you'll feel every week.
Nobody needs a particular kind of phone to do their job, and you're not buying devices to suit the software. With an App Store app the office computer is simply left out — and that's where the invoicing and the figures usually get done.
You send a link. That's the whole process. Nothing to install centrally, no store accounts to set up, nobody stuck on last month's version. When someone new starts, they're working within a minute.
An iPhone build, an Android build and a website is three things to keep in step, and they drift apart. One web app is one thing, always current, everywhere.
The case against
These are real. If one of them is central to what you need, a web app is the wrong tool and we'll tell you so.
If a piece of kit can only connect by Bluetooth and has no way of joining your wi-fi, a web app can't reach it directly. There's a way around it, and most equipment isn't affected — the next section explains both.
A web app can use location while it's open on screen. It can't track continuously in the background with the screen off. Live driver tracking and automatic "arrived at the customer" alerts aren't something we can deliver this way, on either iPhone or Android.
Some businesses want the credibility of a store listing. That's a real commercial consideration and we won't talk you out of it. It's worth being clear that it's about perception rather than function, and that it carries ongoing cost.
The bit people get wrong
If the equipment can get onto your wi-fi, the app can work with it — from any device in your business.
The app doesn't connect to the machine. Both connect to the internet, and they meet in the middle. That's why the iPhone's Bluetooth restrictions don't apply.
A card terminal links to the app once. From then on the app sends the amount to it, the customer taps, and the app knows it's paid and can fire the order through to the kitchen. A cheaper option hands over to the Square app on a phone or reader instead. Online payments, including Apple Pay and Google Pay, work as standard.
Commercial printers from the likes of Star and Epson are built for exactly this. The printer checks in with the system for new jobs and prints them. An order taken anywhere — the counter, a table, the office — prints in your kitchen seconds later, with no tablet sitting there running it.
Commercial scales with a network connection can be read straight into the app. Older Bluetooth-only equipment needs a small box on site to bridge it onto your wi-fi. That works, but it's a physical thing needing power and the odd bit of attention, so a networked version of the same equipment is usually the better buy.
Does this need equipment that can't get onto your wi-fi, or tracking in the background?
If yes — we should talk about a native app, and we'll be straight with you about the cost.
If no — and for the large majority of businesses the answer is no — a web app gives you the same thing on every device you own, at a lower and more predictable running cost, and lets you change your mind whenever you like.
If you later decide you do want a store listing, a web app can be wrapped and submitted without starting again. Nothing here is a dead end — it's a question of sequencing. Build the thing that works, prove it earns its keep, and add the store later if there's a reason to.
Several of the iPhone limitations above are Apple's own choices rather than technical ones, and UK regulators have ordered Apple to start opening them up over the course of 2026 and 2027. We don't build plans around that — but it moves in your favour, not against you.