In August 2026 I launched a mobile app add-on for Prometora. iOS and Android apps for your marketplace, under your own brand.
So you'd expect this issue to be a pitch. It's closer to the opposite. Almost every marketplace founder I talk to asks "when do I get an app?" sooner or later, and for most of them the honest answer is: not yet. Sometimes: never.
There's a 30-second test that sorts this out, and almost nobody selling apps will give it to you, because the app industry's business model depends on you not asking the question.
The 30-second test
One question:
Is your problem getting new buyers, or bringing existing buyers back?
A mobile app only ever solves the second problem. An app is a retention tool. It is not an acquisition tool. And nearly everyone who asks me about apps is actually trying to solve acquisition.
Here's the quick way to prove it to yourself. Open the App Store and search your niche. Vintage watches, handmade ceramics, hockey training, whatever your marketplace does. What comes up is Etsy, Amazon, eBay, and whichever giant owns your category. A new niche marketplace does not get discovered by App Store browsing. Your new buyers come from where they've always come from: Google, social, communities, word of mouth. And every one of those channels lands people on a website, not in an app store.
So if you're pre-launch, or still fighting for your first hundred buyers, an app does nothing for you. You'd be polishing a retention tool for people who haven't shown up yet.
When you don't need an app
You do not need an app if any of these describe you:
You're pre-launch or early. Your entire job right now is supply and demand: sellers and buyers, on the platform, at the same time. An app adds zero listings and zero buyers.
Your buyers purchase once. Wedding services, high-ticket one-offs. If the natural pattern is "find, buy, done," nobody downloads an app for a transaction they'll make once. The download itself is friction.
Your growth comes from search. If SEO or content is your acquisition engine, your website IS your business. Google indexes web pages, not app screens. Every hour spent on an app is an hour taken from the thing that's already working.
And here's the free move almost nobody uses: any decent marketplace website can be saved to the home screen. Icon, full screen, feels app-ish, costs nothing. Tell your best buyers to do it. If they won't even do that, they were never going to download your app from a store. That's a great zero-dollar test to run before you spend real money.
When an app actually pays off
The test flips when your problem is genuinely bringing people back. Three signals:
1. Repeat purchases are your model. Consumables, collectibles, rentals, bookings. If a healthy buyer comes back monthly, every extra return visit is direct revenue, and that's exactly the lever an app pulls.
2. Your marketplace runs on conversations. Messages between buyers and sellers, offers, booking confirmations. Every one of those is a moment where someone needs to come back. On mobile web, that moment is an email they see three hours later. In an app, it's a push notification on the lock screen the second it happens. "New message." "You received an offer." "Your order shipped." This is the one thing a mobile website fundamentally cannot match. Not design, not speed. The lock screen. That is the entire real value of a native app, and it's worth being honest that most of the rest is cosmetic.
3. You have an audience that identifies with your marketplace. A community, a scene, a following. Those people will download your app, because the icon on their home screen is a badge of belonging as much as a tool.
Two of three signals and an app stops being a vanity project and starts being a retention machine. That's the line.
What the app industry doesn't explain until you're inside it
I've just been through this with Apple directly, so this is fresh.
Apple guideline 4.2.6: apps created from a template or app-generation service must be published under the developer account of the business that owns the app. No platform can legally publish your app under their own Apple account. Anyone promising "we publish everything, you do nothing" is either breaking Apple's rules or wrapping you into a shared app that isn't really yours. The flip side: done properly, the app is genuinely yours. Your Apple Developer account ($99/year), your Google Play account ($25 one time), your business name in the store listing. Apple verifies your business identity before letting you in, and that verification took weeks for me.
Minimum functionality (guideline 4.2): stuffing your website into an app frame gets rejected. The app has to behave like an app. Which is fine, because push notifications were the whole reason you came.
Digital goods: selling digital products inside an iOS app can trigger Apple's in-app purchase system, which takes 15 to 30 percent. Physical products, services, rentals, bookings are fine. If you sell digital, talk to whoever builds your app before committing to anything.
The advice
Run the test before anyone takes your money, mine included. If you're fighting for your first buyers, then skip the app, spend everything on supply and demand, and run the free home-screen experiment when you're curious.
If buyers come back weekly, your marketplace runs on messages and bookings, and you have a community that would put your icon on their phone, then build it.
I made a full video version of this test this week: Does Your Marketplace Need a Mobile App? (Honest Answer). The add-on details live at prometora.com/features/mobile-app.
- Rasmus