We often get requests like “I want a website where clients place orders, see stock and receive the invoice”. That is not a business website, it is a web application. The difference is not only price, it is which problem you solve.
Business website: be found and convince
A business website has one job: the visitor understands what you do, gains trust and contacts you. Pages are the same for everyone, content changes rarely, and the only “interaction” is the contact or booking form.
You need a business website if:
- customers search for you on Google and you want to be found;
- you sell services that get discussed on the phone or in a meeting;
- you want to show your portfolio, prices, team, opening hours.
Cost: from €600 with us, €1,500–5,000 at large agencies. Duration: 2–4 weeks.
Web application: do the work, not just describe it
A web application has users who log in, data that changes in real time and business rules. Each user sees something different. Examples from our portfolio: a B2B portal where clients configure orders, an ERP for a non-profit, a CRM for a consultancy.
You need a web application if:
- you keep records in spreadsheets that travel by email and nobody knows which version is right;
- clients or partners call you for information they could see themselves;
- you have pricing, stock or approval rules that a standard store does not cover;
- you do the same operation dozens of times a day, by hand.
Cost: from €3,500 for an internal application, €10,000–30,000 for a portal or an ERP with several modules. Duration: 4–8 weeks for the first usable version, then stages.
The quick test
Answer three questions:
- Do all visitors see the same thing? If yes, it is a website.
- Is there data that changes daily and has to live somewhere? If yes, it is an application.
- Does someone in the company lose hours a week on a repetitive task? If yes, the application pays for itself quickly.
When you combine them
Most often, a company needs both: a public site that brings customers and, behind it, an application for clients or for the team. Mediklass has a business website with a booking form; if tomorrow they want real-time bookings with a calendar per doctor, that becomes an application, built on the same site.
The advantage of working with a team that does both: you do not explain what your company does twice, and the site and the application speak the same language.
The classic mistake
Ordering “a website” at a website price and expecting an application. The result is a WordPress with 15 plugins approximating a portal, slow, breaking on updates and impossible to extend. If you need application features, ask for an application from the start and a fixed price after a specification.