PWA to App Store
publish your website as an app

What does it cost to publish a PWA as an app?

The costs are predictable because the app builds on your existing website. All items at a glance:

For comparison: a custom native app usually starts at 10,000 EUR depending on scope — and every content change needs an app update. The PWA approach uses your website as the single source: maintain once, current everywhere.

How to publish a PWA to the Play Store and App Store

Publishing a PWA to Google Play: Trusted Web Activity and Digital Asset Links

On Android the app is a Trusted Web Activity. That is not a rebuilt WebView shell: Chrome renders your existing PWA full-screen inside a thin Android container, so what users see is the site you already maintain, without browser chrome around it.

The link between app and website is a file at /.well-known/assetlinks.json on your own domain. It has to be served over HTTPS as application/json, answer with a plain 200, and contain the package name and the SHA-256 fingerprint of the signing key. Redirects are not followed — a 301 to the www version is enough to break the verification.

This is where most self-built TWAs go wrong, and the mistake is always the same one. If you use Play App Signing, the fingerprint that belongs in the file is the one from the key Google holds (Play Console, under Release, Setup, App signing), not the one keytool printed for your local upload key. The two differ, and with the wrong one the app opens with a browser address bar across the top instead of full-screen. The free AASA validator checks exactly this link for both Android App Links and iOS Universal Links.

One thing worth clarifying early, because it decides your timeline: developer accounts registered as an individual after 13 November 2023 have to run a closed test with at least twelve testers, opted in continuously for fourteen days, before Google grants production access. Organisation accounts are exempt, as are individual accounts opened before that date.

Tools such as PWABuilder and Bubblewrap do the packaging part of this, and PWABuilder uses Bubblewrap under the hood. What they hand you is an .aab file, a keystore and a draft assetlinks.json — a package, not a published app. Upload, store listing, review and release stay manual either way, which is the part I take over.

Web app only, or into the app stores?

A PWA is installable without any store — straight from the browser. For many projects that is enough. The stores pay off when your audience actually searches there: a store listing adds visibility, works as a trust signal and makes your app discoverable via store search. My recommendation is deliberately staged: PWA first, stores second — so you only pay for store publishing when it adds real value.

Guideline 4.2: why Apple rejects repackaged websites

Apple deliberately makes life harder for web apps than Google does, and the rule behind it is Guideline 4.2, Minimum Functionality. Apple's wording is that an app should offer features, content and UI that lift it beyond a repackaged website; 4.2.2 adds that apps should not primarily be web clippings or a collection of links. The hurdle is therefore not the packaging — any PWA can be wrapped and submitted. The hurdle is the review, which is why a package that falls out of a generator is an attempt, not a result.

What lifts the iOS app above a wrapped website is native behaviour: push notifications through the Apple Push Notification service, Universal Links so links to your site open in the app, and a proper launch sequence. The push part is not a stylistic choice. Since iOS 16.4 web push does exist, but only for web apps added to the home screen from Safari — inside a native app it is unavailable, so an app from the store needs APNs.

Two rejection reasons hit CMS projects more often than the guideline itself. The privacy policy has to sit at a URL that is publicly reachable at review time. And if your site lets people create an account, the app must offer account deletion inside the app — mandatory since June 2022, and deactivating an account is explicitly not enough.

From real experience: the first submission of the reference app What's On Lincoln was rejected by Apple because an autoplaying intro video led to a blank launch screen on iPad. After a targeted fix, the second round passed. This is exactly why two Apple review rounds are included in the fixed price.

Case study: What's On Lincoln

The events portal What's On Lincoln from the UK runs on Joomla and became a Progressive Web App with miTT PWA. On top of that I built the Android app as a Trusted Web Activity and the iOS app as a native wrapper with push integration — both apps are live: on the Apple App Store and on Google Play.

Turn your WordPress website into an app

To convert a WordPress site to an app, nothing is rebuilt: the miTT PWA plugin for WordPress turns your site into a Progressive Web App, and that PWA becomes the Android app as a Trusted Web Activity and the iOS app as a native wrapper with APNs push. WordPress stays the only place you edit content, and a new post appears in the app without a store update.

One thing I would rather say than leave out: the app I have published so far, What's On Lincoln, runs on Joomla, not WordPress. The route is the same either way — the plugin exists for both systems, and everything from the Trusted Web Activity to the Apple review is identical. But if you want a live WordPress app to look at before you decide, I cannot point you at one yet.

There is an honest line between this and the subscription builders that fill this market. If you want a self-service dashboard and monthly billing, they are the better fit. This is the other option: a one-time fixed price, both developer accounts in your name, and someone who carries the app through the review instead of handing you a package.

Two WordPress specifics are worth knowing before we start. Aggressive caching plugins and a service worker can work against each other, so the caching rules need checking. And a theme with fixed widths tends to fail Apple's review on an iPad screen, because the reviewer sees a stretched desktop layout rather than an app.

Joomla mobile app and WordPress app without double maintenance

Whether Joomla mobile app or WordPress app — the content always comes from your CMS. Editing, approvals and SEO stay in one place, the app loads the website. If you also want someone to keep the site itself up to date, that is what WordPress and Joomla maintenance is for. App icons and splash screens in all sizes are generated by the free PWA Asset Generator, and the free AASA validator checks whether your Universal Links and Android App Links are set up correctly.