01The test that actually tells the two apart
Ask what happens the moment two different people visit at the same time. On a website, they see the same pages, the same words, regardless of who they are. On a web app, one of them might see their own order history, their own dashboard, or a menu that changed because a producer somewhere just published a new batch. If the answer involves a login, a personal state that persists between visits, or data that updates live from somewhere else, the build is a web app whether or not it looks like a simple site on the surface.
- If two visitors see different content based on who they are, that is a web app
- A login, a persistent account state, or live data from elsewhere signals a web app
- A page that says the same thing to everyone, every time, is a website
02Why the timeline and price change with it
A website of up to about five pages ships in 48 hours because the work is mostly content, layout and copy, all of it decided before building starts. A web app needs a data model, accounts, permissions and usually a backend database that has to survive real use, not just look good in a preview. That is genuinely more engineering, not more marketing polish, and it is why PROOF48 never implies a web app ships on the same 48-hour timeline as a website, and prices it starting from 5,000 EUR instead of the 500 to 2,500 EUR website band.
- 48 hours covers content, layout and copy decided before building even starts
- A web app needs a data model, accounts and permissions that must survive real use
- Web apps start from 5,000 EUR and get their own timeline, never 48 hours
A marketplace, not a brochure
FreshBatch is not a website with a menu on it: producer accounts publish live batches from a phone in seconds, customers get notified the moment food lands nearby, and the underlying data changes constantly with real use. It runs on .NET 9, Blazor and PostgreSQL, with more than 19 businesses publishing on it, exactly the kind of build that needed its own timeline rather than a 48-hour turnaround.
See the build: FreshBatchQuestions, answered
Can a web app start as a website and grow into one later?
Yes, and that is often the right order. Launch the website first to prove the offer works, then add the app layer once you know exactly what accounts and data it needs to hold.
Does adding a booking form make a site a web app?
Not by itself. A simple form that emails you a request is still a website. It becomes a web app once that booking needs its own login, real-time availability, or an account each customer returns to.
Where PROOF48 fits
If two visitors would see different things or trigger a change in the underlying data, you need a web app, not a website. PROOF48 prices and schedules the two very differently: 500 to 2,500 EUR in 48 hours for a website, from 5,000 EUR on its own timeline for a web app.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.