Building an app is only half the equation. Getting it in front of people willing to actually pay for it is the other half, and that's where the App Store does something no independent website or standalone platform can replicate on its own — instant access to hundreds of millions of people who already have a payment method saved and a habit of buying apps.

Trust is built in from the start. A user downloading through the App Store isn't wondering whether the app is legitimate the way they might be with an unfamiliar website asking for a credit card. Apple's review process, imperfect as it is, functions as a real trust signal most independent platforms simply don't have.

Discovery works differently too. Search inside the App Store connects people actively looking for a solution to exactly the kind of problem your app solves, without you needing to build that discovery mechanism yourself from scratch. That's real, built-in distribution most new businesses spend years trying to replicate.

None of this means the App Store is free of friction — review times, guidelines, and Apple's cut of revenue are all real costs of doing business there. But weighed against building an entirely independent distribution and payment system from nothing, starting where the buyers, the trust, and the discovery already exist is usually the faster, more realistic path to an app actually finding its audience.