One App or Separate Apps Per Location? A Decision Guide

If you run a restaurant chain, gym franchise, med spa group, or any brand with more than one physical location, the app question comes up fast: do you build one app that covers every location, or a separate app for each one? It feels like a simple choice, but it affects your app store listings, your marketing budget, your ratings, and how much you’ll pay developers every time you open a new site.

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This guide walks through how to make that call, what Apple and Google actually allow, and the situations where a separate app is genuinely the right move instead of just the easy one.

Quick Answer

For almost every multi-location business, one app with a location selector (or automatic location detection) is the right choice. It consolidates your app store ratings and reviews, cuts development and maintenance cost, and is what Apple and Google’s store policies actually push you toward. Build separate apps only when locations are functionally different businesses, run by different owners, or serve genuinely different purposes.

Why One App Wins for Most Multi-Location Businesses

A single app with a ‘select your location’ or ‘find nearest location’ screen lets customers order, book, or check loyalty points at whichever site they’re near, without downloading a new app every time they visit a different branch. That matters more than it sounds: a customer who already has your app from one location won’t bother installing a second copy for another location in a different city.

Reviews and ratings also pool into one listing instead of being spread thin across a dozen near-identical apps, each starting from zero. A new location under an existing app inherits the trust and rating history of the brand instead of launching with no reviews at all.

On the cost side, you maintain one codebase, one set of app store listings, and one round of updates. Adding a new location becomes a data entry task (add the address, hours, and menu or service list) rather than a new development project. That difference compounds quickly once you’re past three or four locations.

A single app also gives you one place to run loyalty programs, push notifications, and promotions across the whole brand, while still letting you target a specific store’s customers with local offers when needed.

What Apple and Google Actually Require

This isn’t just best practice, it’s policy. Apple’s App Store Review Guideline 4.3(a), covering spam and duplicate apps, specifically calls out this scenario: ‘If your app has different versions for specific locations, sports teams, universities, etc., consider submitting a single app and providing the variations using in-app purchase.’ Apple’s example is a map app that submits a separate app for every city instead of one app that lets users search any city. A chain of near-identical location apps is exactly the pattern Apple flags as spam, and repeated violations can get a developer account removed from the Apple Developer Program.

Google Play has a similar Repetitive Content policy: apps that merely duplicate the experience of another app already on the store, including a business’s own other listings, without adding distinct value, can be rejected or removed. In practice, both platforms want you to consolidate location-based variants into one app rather than clone it per site.

The exception both platforms allow is for genuinely separate businesses. Independently owned franchise locations, or brands where each ‘location’ is really a distinct legal entity with its own operations, aren’t the pattern the spam policies target.

Tips and Common Mistakes

Do build in a location switcher or GPS-based auto-detect from day one, even if you only have two locations today; retrofitting it later is more work than building it in from the start.

Do keep a single design and navigation structure so every location’s staff and customers get the same experience, then layer in local menus, hours, staff, and promotions as data rather than as separate app builds.

Avoid building a second app just because a franchisee wants ‘their own’ branding. That’s usually solvable with a location profile inside the shared app, and it protects the franchisee from starting their app store presence at zero.

Avoid submitting near-identical apps to hit local SEO or App Store search results for each city; both Apple and Google treat this as spam and it can get all of your apps pulled at once, not just the newest one.

Consider a separate app only if a location sells a fundamentally different product line, operates under a different brand name, is independently owned and operated as its own company, or needs to be listed and updated on its own release schedule for regulatory reasons.

Explore more: explore more app development guides.

One app vs. separate apps per location FAQs

Can I still have location-specific branding inside a single app?

Yes. A shared app can pull in a location’s logo, color accents, hours, and offers dynamically based on the location the user selects or is nearest to, without needing a separate app build.

What if my franchisees each want to own their own app store listing?

That’s usually a business decision about who controls the brand, not a technical requirement. Most franchise systems keep the app under the parent company’s developer account and give franchisees a managed profile within it, so ratings and updates stay unified.

Does a single app hurt my chances of showing up in local app store search?

No. App store search ranks primarily by keywords, category, ratings, and downloads, not by whether the app is named after a specific city. A single well-reviewed app with strong overall ratings tends to outrank a thin, low-review app tied to one city.

Is there a size threshold where a single app stops making sense?

Not really, this pattern works from two locations to thousands. Very large chains just invest more in the location-selection experience (search, filters, saved favorites) rather than switching to per-location apps.

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Photo: Syced / CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Originally published at gtstu.com.