Documentation · 4 min read
What you get with a web app
Apps, tools and games are the same pipeline and the same ownership as a website — with one honest difference, which is where the data lives.
What counts as an app here
Four kinds of thing get built: a website, an app, a game, or a tool. The last three are what this page is about, and the split is about what the thing DOES rather than how it is made.
A website is pages somebody reads. The other three are something somebody uses — a booking form that works out a price, a scoreboard, a quiz, a calculator, a small game. Same builder, same export, same ownership.
The four kinds
- Website
- Pages people read. Your business, your work, how to reach you.
- App
- Something people use. Trackers, planners, booking tools.
- Game
- Something people play.
- Tool
- One job done well. A calculator, a converter, a generator.
Note. The kind is chosen when you start and it can change later. It steers what gets built rather than locking anything.
What is the same as a website
Almost everything. It is worth saying explicitly, because "app" sounds like a different product and it is not.
- A live address you can send to anybody
- Your own domain, if you have one
- The export — real files, which run without Grafter
- The dashboard, with its visitor counts
- Changing it by describing the change
Where the data lives
This is the difference, and it is the one thing to understand before you build something you intend to rely on.
An app built here keeps its data in the browser it is running in — the visitor's own browser, on the visitor's own device. There is no server database behind it.
What that means in practice
It works, and it works well, for a large class of genuinely useful things: a tool that calculates something, a game that remembers a high score, a planner somebody keeps for themselves on their own laptop.
It does not work for anything where two people need to see the same data. Two visitors do not share anything. What one of them types is not visible to the other, and it is not visible to you either.
Browser storage: the shape of it
- Stored where
- In the visitor's own browser, on their own device
- Shared between visitors
- No
- Visible to you
- No
- Survives a reload
- Yes, on the live site
- Survives a different device
- No — a phone and a laptop are two separate copies
- Survives clearing browsing data
- No
In the preview it is switched off entirely
While you are building, the preview runs the app in a sandbox where browser storage throws an error on every read and write. That is a property of the sandbox, not a bug in what you built.
So an app that appears to forget everything on a reload in the preview will remember properly once it is live. Apps built here are written to expect this and to look right either way.
Tip. Judge how an app FEELS in the preview, and judge whether it remembers things on the live address. Testing the wrong one against the wrong question is the most common confusion on this page.
What this suits, and what it does not
Worth being blunt, because the answer decides whether you should build the thing here at all.
| Idea | Works | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A price calculator | Yes | Nothing needs storing between people |
| A quiz or a game | Yes | Scores are the player's own |
| A personal tracker | Yes | One person, one device |
| A shared team board | No | Two people would each see their own copy |
| Accounts and logins | No | There is no server to check a password against |
| A public leaderboard | No | Nothing is shared between visitors |
Note. If your idea is in the bottom half of that table, the export is the route: the files are real, and a developer can put a database behind them without starting over.
Getting leads from an app
A form in an app posts to your dashboard exactly as a form on a website does — that path is not browser storage, and it is the one way data does reach you.
So a tool that works something out and then asks "shall we call you about this" is a perfectly good shape to build here, and a common one.
- Build the app and ask for a contact form at the end of it.
- Open the live address and send yourself a test message.
- Check the Leads screen on the site's dashboard.
Common questions
Can people sign in to my app?
Not with what is built here — there is no server holding accounts or checking passwords. An app that needs real sign-in wants the export and a developer.
My app forgets everything when I reload it
If that is in the preview, it is expected: storage is switched off there deliberately. Check the same thing on the live address before treating it as a fault.
Can I see what people entered into my app?
No. It is in their browser, not on a server, and that is a privacy property as much as a limit. If you need the data, ask for a form that sends it — that arrives on your dashboard.
Is an app more expensive to build than a website?
It is charged the same way: a turn costs what it actually uses. A complicated app costs more than a simple page for the same reason a long conversation costs more than a short one, and nudging something afterwards costs a fraction of the first build.