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Web Development5 min read
They both open in a browser. Almost everything else about scoping them is different.
Both open in a browser. Both have pages, a design and a URL. From the outside they can look almost identical — which is why projects so often get quoted as one and turn out to be the other.
A website mostly shows you things. A web application mostly does things for you.
On a website you read, browse and get in touch. In a web application you log in, enter data, and the system processes it — checking rules, updating records, notifying people, producing documents.
The difference is not cosmetic. It changes what has to be designed and what has to be protected.
A typical arrangement is a public website that explains what you do and captures enquiries, with an application behind a login where customers or staff actually work. Same brand, same domain, two different pieces of engineering.
They are frequently built together, and there is real benefit in that — shared design, shared components, one login journey from the public site into the account area.
Scoping an application as though it were a website. It usually happens because the requirement arrives as "and a small portal where customers can check their orders", which sounds like one more page.
It is not one more page. It is accounts, authentication, permissions, a data model, and a security boundary that has to hold. Recognising that at the quoting stage is the difference between a project that lands and one that runs over.
Ask whether anyone needs to log in. If nobody does, it is a website. If someone does, work out what they can see and change once they are in — that answer is the actual scope of the project.
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