Do I need a custom web app or a standard website?

You need a standard website when the job is publishing information: who you are, what you do and how to reach you. You need a custom web app when the job is a process: people signing in with different roles, approvals, live data, payments tied to your own rules, or a tool customers use. Many businesses need both, a public site that gets found and an app behind it that does the work.

Signs a standard website is enough

• Visitors read, then call, email or fill in a form.
• Your team updates text and photos, not data.
• The site has fewer than a few dozen pages.

Example: East Coast Utility, a drilling contractor, needs to explain its services across five states and make it easy to get in touch. A fast hand-built website does that.

Signs you need a custom web app

• Different people see different screens: staff, clients, investors, members.
• Something must be approved before it goes out.
• You are running the business from spreadsheets and email threads.
• You want customers to use a tool, not just read a page.

Examples: RoadshowHub gives municipal bond deal teams an approval workflow and investor analytics. BusinessPulse runs 20 AI search questions and emails a report. Neither could be built with a page builder.

When a content management system makes sense

If many people publish frequently, a content management system like WordPress can be the right tool. MuniHub, a municipal bond platform with a deal calendar and member sign in, runs on WordPress for that reason. We keep such sites lean: our own code instead of stacks of plugins.

The pairing most product teams miss

A custom app usually sits behind a sign in, where search engines and AI assistants cannot read it. Pair it with a public website of guides, FAQs and case studies so buyers, and the assistants they ask, can find out what the app does.

How to decide

Describe what people need to do, not what pages you want. If every task ends in "and then they contact us," start with a website. If the tasks involve signing in, submitting, approving or calculating, talk to us about an app. We recommend the smallest project that does the job.