The App Trap: Why Smart Businesses Are Choosing the Web Over the App Store

It is the digital equivalent of a neon sign.

You look at your smartphone, and you see them: The green circle of Spotify. The black square of Uber. The blue bird of Twitter.

For a business owner, the “Home Screen” feels like the ultimate real estate. It represents legitimacy. It suggests that you have “made it.” Naturally, when companies look to digitize their operations or connect with customers, their first instinct is: “We need to build an app.”

But there is a massive difference between the apps you use as a consumer (B2C) and the tools you need to run a business (B2B or Internal).

At Ryse Software, we have seen this scenario play out dozens of times. A company allocates a massive budget to build a native iPhone and Android app, only to realize six months later that they have walked into a trap of diminishing returns, gatekeepers, and taxes.

Before you commit to the App Store, you need to understand the ecosystem you are buying into. It is not as friendly as it looks.

The Economics: The “Apple Tax” and Margin Destruction

Let’s start with the money.

If you are building an app to sell a service—whether it’s a subscription, a digital course, or premium content—you are stepping into a partnership with Apple and Google. But it is a forced partnership.

If you charge $100 for a subscription inside your app, Apple demands a 15% to 30% commission.

You might think, “I’ll just put a link in the app that sends them to my website to pay, bypassing Apple.”

You cannot do that. This is known as “Steering,” and it is strictly forbidden by App Store guidelines. If you try to steer users to a payment method that doesn’t pay Apple, they will reject your app or ban your account.

The Math of the Web vs. The App

• Web App: You sell a $100 product. Credit card fees take ~$2.90. You keep $97.10.
• Native App: You sell a $100 product. Apple takes $30. You keep $70.00.

For a business operating on standard margins, losing 30% of top-line revenue is catastrophic. It is the difference between profitability and bankruptcy. By choosing the web, you retain control of your revenue.

The Operational Trap: The Myth of “Build Once”

A common sales pitch in the development world is that modern technology (like Flutter or React Native) allows you to “Write Once, Run Everywhere.”

While this is true for the code, it is not true for the administration.

Even if your code runs on both iOS and Android, you still have to manage two different store listings. You have to create screenshots for iPads, iPhones, Android Tablets, and Android Phones. You have to deal with two different review boards.

And then there are the updates.

The “Tuesday Bug” Scenario

Imagine you launch a critical update on a Tuesday morning, but you realize there is a bug that crashes the app for 10% of your users.

• On the Web: We push a fix. 30 seconds later, every user in the world has the fixed version. Crisis averted.
• On the App Store: We submit a fix. It goes into a queue. An Apple employee reviews it. Maybe they approve it on Thursday. Maybe Friday. For three days, your customers are broken, and you are powerless to help them.

The Distribution Nightmare: Private Apps

This is the most overlooked hurdle, specifically for businesses building Internal Tools.

Let’s say you run a logistics company. You want an app for your 50 drivers to track deliveries. This app contains sensitive client data, so you obviously don’t want it public on the App Store for anyone to download.

You might assume you can just email the app file to your drivers.

You cannot.

Apple’s ecosystem is a “Walled Garden.” They do not allow you to install apps from outside the App Store unless you jump through massive hoops.

The Hurdle of “Enterprise Distribution”

To get a private app onto your employees’ iPhones, you generally have two options:

1. Custom Apps for Business: You must register for Apple Business Manager, verify your corporate D-U-N-S number, and go through a rigorous verification process. Then, you publish the app privately to your specific Business ID.
2. MDM (Mobile Device Management): You require your drivers to install “Device Management” profiles on their phones. This gives your company control over their device.
   • The Problem: If your drivers are using their personal phones (BYOD), they will likely refuse to install corporate tracking software on the device they use for their family photos and banking.

We have seen internal projects stall for months, not because of coding issues, but because the business couldn’t get verified by Apple to distribute their own software to their own employees.

The Solution: The Progressive Web App (PWA)

If the App Store is expensive, slow, and restrictive, what is the alternative?

For 95% of businesses, the answer is the Progressive Web App (PWA).

A PWA is a website that has been engineered to behave exactly like a mobile app. It is accessible through a standard URL (like app.yourbusiness.com), but it has “superpowers” that standard websites don’t have.

Why the PWA Wins

1. The “Home Screen” Experience: Users can tap “Add to Home Screen” on their phone. The PWA installs an icon. When they open it, the browser bars disappear. It looks, feels, and animates exactly like a native app. Most users cannot tell the difference.
2. Zero Gatekeepers: You don’t need Apple’s permission to launch. You don’t need a review to push an update. You own the distribution channel.
3. Offline Capability: Modern PWAs can store data on the device. If your employee enters a tunnel and loses signal, the app keeps working and syncs the data when they reconnect.
4. Universal Access: It works on iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux. Instantly.

When Is a Native App Actually Necessary?

We want to be fair. We aren’t saying native apps are dead. There are specific use cases where the friction of the App Store is worth the benefit.

You should only consider a Native App if:

• You are a Consumer Brand (B2C): If you are Starbucks, Nike, or a local gym chain, your customers expect to find you in the App Store search bar. The app is a marketing channel.
• You Need Heavy Hardware Access: If your app needs to communicate with a Bluetooth medical device, use the iPad’s LiDAR scanner for measuring rooms, or run complex background biometrics.
• You are Building a High-End Game: If you need to squeeze every ounce of graphical performance out of the phone’s GPU for 3D rendering.

The Verdict: Strategy over Vanity

The decision to build an app should be based on ROI (Return on Investment), not vanity.

If you build on the web (PWA), you save money on development. You save money on maintenance. You keep 100% of your revenue. You control your distribution.

If you build Native, you are renting space in someone else’s building. You play by their rules, you pay their taxes, and you wait for their permission to open the doors.

Before you sign a contract for a mobile app, ask yourself: “Do I need the phone’s hardware? Or do I just want the icon?”

If it’s just the icon, the Web can do that for you—without the tax.