It is Saturday morning at the salon. The router drops, the booking screen spins, and three walk-ins are waiting by the door. Or it is market day, your stall has one bar of signal, and the card reader keeps trying to connect.
An offline business app is meant to keep you working through that. If you are looking for an app that works without internet for your small business, though, the phrase covers three very different things. Some apps stop the moment the Wi-Fi does. Some carry on for a while and catch up later. Some never needed the internet in the first place, and the listings rarely say which kind you are looking at.
This guide explains the three kinds in plain words, what still needs a connection even in a fully offline app, the backup habit that matters more than any feature, and eight questions to ask before you pay anyone. You should know our angle: we make apps of the third kind, for shops, salons, landlords, farms and other small businesses. We have tried to be fair to the other two, because for some businesses they are the better choice.
What “works without internet” really means: three kinds of app
When a listing says an app works offline, it usually means one of these.
1. Online only. The app runs in a web browser, or every screen loads from the company's server. When the internet drops, it stops, and it stays stopped until the connection comes back. Salonized, a salon booking system, says plainly in its help centre that you need an internet connection to reach your account. That is honest, and plenty of salons run well on systems like it with good Wi-Fi. It just is not an offline app.
2. Works offline for a while, then catches up. The app keeps a note of what you do while the connection is down, and sends it to the company's cloud when the connection returns. Most till systems work this way, and so do most of the farm record apps you will find. Some features stop while you are offline. U.S. Bank's guide to running a till through an internet outage lists gift cards, refunds and exchanges, menu edits, and syncing orders between tills as generally unavailable. You pay a monthly subscription, and your records live with the company.
3. Lives on the phone. Everything is stored on the phone or tablet itself. There is no server, no account to sign in to, and nothing to catch up on, so a dropped connection changes nothing. There is no monthly cloud bill either. The price of that is real: your records are on one device, and keeping a backup is your job, not the company's.
| Online only | Offline for a while, then catches up | Lives on the phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| When the Wi-Fi drops | Stops until the connection comes back | Keeps going, with some features switched off | Carries on as normal |
| Monthly bill | Usually a subscription | Usually a subscription | None for a server |
| Where your records live | On the company's server | On the company's cloud, with a copy on your device until it is sent | On that one phone or tablet |
| Can two staff phones share the same records? | Yes, live | Yes, once each one is back online | No, not without custom work |
| If the phone is lost | Log in on another phone; nothing is lost | Log in on another phone; anything already sent is safe | The records go with it, unless you have a backup |
If you run several tills, or a receptionist and three stylists all need the same diary at the same moment, the second kind is often the right choice. The subscription pays for something real there: keeping every device in step. The third kind fits a business where one phone or one tablet does the job, and the owner would rather not pay every month for a server they never think about.
What still needs a connection, even in an offline app
An app that lives on the phone does not need the internet to do its job. A few things around the edges still do, and it is better to know them before a busy day than during one.
Card payments
Taking a card payment means the bank has to approve it, and that needs a connection somewhere. Some card readers have an offline mode that stores the payment and sends it later. Shopify's guide to offline payments says this carries “a higher risk of fraud”, because the payment cannot be checked straight away, and that swiping, typing in a card number, gift cards and Tap to Pay do not work offline on its system. U.S. Bank suggests setting a maximum purchase amount during an outage. Cash is not affected by any of this.
Our own POS app records the sale, the stock and the receipt. It does not take card payments, so card payments stay on whatever card reader you already use, with that reader's own offline rules.
Sending a backup off the phone
Making a backup file works with no signal. Sending it somewhere safe, such as Google Drive, your email or WhatsApp, needs a connection. Our apps make the file on the phone and then hand it to whichever app you choose to send it with, so that step simply waits until you are back online.
Sending a receipt or invoice
The app can make the PDF receipt or invoice with no signal. Sending it to a customer by WhatsApp or email waits until you are connected again.
Ads, if the app has them
Some of our apps include optional ads from Google, and ads need a connection to load. Our salon and membership apps have them, each with a switch to turn them off, and our cleaning app's ads are off unless someone turns them on. A version built for one business would normally have them switched off. Our POS and landlord apps have no ads at all.
App updates
New versions of any app arrive through the app store, so updates wait for a connection. The app keeps working on the version you already have.
One thing that does keep working is reminders. In our landlord, salon and vehicle apps the phone itself schedules each reminder, with no server involved, so a rent reminder or an appointment alert still goes off when the shop has no signal.
One phone, your records, your backup
An app that lives on the phone has no accounts. StockPilot, our POS app, has no server and no user account. Rent Folio, our landlord app, has no account either. Your records live on the one phone or tablet you entered them on. Nobody else can see them, and nobody else can lose them for you. It also means you cannot log in from a second phone and see the same records.
If two people need the same records at the same time, you need syncing: two tills selling from one stock count, a stylist and a receptionist sharing a diary, a field worker and the office looking at the same job list. That is custom work. Our farm app's own page says cloud syncing would be added as custom work for a client who asks for it, and the same goes for all our apps. It can be done, but it is a project, and it brings back the server and the monthly bill.
Two tills going offline at once is where things quietly go wrong: both print the same receipt number, or both sell the last bottle on the shelf. If you are talking to a developer about it, our write-up on how an offline POS keeps receipts and stock right across tills is the one to hand them. It is written for developers, so you do not need to read it yourself.
The backup routine
If the phone is lost, broken or stolen, the records go with it unless a backup exists. No feature fixes that after the fact. A routine does:
- At closing time, make a backup from the app's settings. It works with no signal.
- When you are back online, send the file off the phone: to Google Drive, to your own email, or to a computer at home.
- Once, on a quiet day, restore that file on a spare phone, so you know it works before you need it.
Restoring should not be a gamble. StockPilot and Rent Folio check the whole backup file before they change anything, and neither leaves you with half a restore if something fails partway. StockPilot's backup covers products, sales, categories and shop settings, but the backup file itself is not encrypted, so keep it somewhere private. StyleBook, our salon app, puts everything, including every client photo, into a single file.
The privacy upside
Your customers' names, phone numbers and notes are not sitting on anyone's server. Some of our apps go a step further and encrypt the records stored on the phone: StockPilot, TutorTrack and MemberKeep do. Our other apps' pages make no such claim, so treat the phone's own screen lock as the lock on your records. Whichever app you use, protect the phone with a PIN or fingerprint.