The short version.

Field workflows split cleanly along one line: are these people getting FileMaker licenses, or are they not? Regular staff on the payroll, using FileMaker every day, with iPhones or iPads — FM Go is the right answer and is what Claris built it for. Everyone else — Android users, seasonal or 1099 workers, customers who need to sign something, temporary crews for a single project — is better served by a small web app on top of the same FileMaker system.

FM Go is for the users you already licensed. The web app is for everyone else.

What FM Go is genuinely good at.

FM Go is FileMaker itself on iPhone and iPad, and it keeps working without a signal. For staff who already know the layouts on their desktop, FM Go feels familiar — the same fields, the same scripts, the same workflow — with buttons sized for a phone. It works offline and syncs when a connection returns, which matters for field crews in low-signal environments. It runs your existing FileMaker scripts and calculations as they are. There's no second program to keep up.

For a business with a fleet of company-issued iPads and a stable roster of licensed users, FM Go is the boring correct answer and stays that answer for years.

Where FM Go's limits start to matter.

It runs on iPhone and iPad only. Android users cannot use it, full stop. For any business where field crews bring their own phones and some of them are on Android, FM Go covers only part of the workforce.

Every user consumes a FileMaker license. A driver checking in twice a day, a contractor filling out a single form per site visit, a seasonal worker for two months — each of them counts against your FileMaker licenses the same way a full-time desktop user does. For a small stable team this is fine. For high user counts with light usage, the licensing math turns bad quickly.

Layouts designed for desktop rarely feel right on a phone. Building a good FM Go experience means separate layouts optimized for touch, which is developer work not always budgeted for. A layout squeezed onto a phone screen frustrates users into stopping using the system.

Customers are awkward to fit in. A driver who wants a customer to sign for a delivery cannot easily hand them FileMaker on a phone. A one-off form filled by someone outside your organization doesn't fit how FM Go works at all.

Users have to install the app. For staff and long-term contractors this is fine. For a one-time task, most people give up before the app is installed.

What a web app on top of FileMaker does differently.

The web app uses the same FileMaker system that FM Go connects to. FileMaker keeps the real records. Your existing FM Go users, if you have them, keep using FM Go. The web app is an addition that serves the users FM Go does not fit.

How it works. A small program runs on a server in your name and passes records to and from FileMaker Server. The person opens a link on their phone. They see a page designed specifically for the task — one form, three fields, a photo upload, a submit button. They submit. The service writes the record into FileMaker. Done.

What that changes:

  • Any device works. iOS, Android, older phones, tablets, browsers on a laptop. If it can open a web page, it can use this.
  • No license used. People sign in to the web app (by phone number, a link texted to them, or an employee ID), and the web app signs in to FileMaker with one shared account. They don't count against your FileMaker licenses.
  • Nothing to install. The URL is the app. Text a link, click, use.
  • The screen fits the task. Not a FileMaker layout squeezed onto a phone — a purpose-built form for the specific workflow. Faster to use, less to train.
  • Customer-facing works cleanly. A driver hands their phone to the customer, the customer signs, the driver takes it back. No accounts, no logins for the customer's side.

What the web app pattern is not good at.

Offline. If your field crews work in genuine no-signal environments and need to log data offline for later sync, FM Go handles that natively; a web app needs specific engineering to do the same and is more complex. Not impossible — but for offline-heavy workflows, FM Go usually wins.

Complex, rich interactions. If the workflow involves many screens, complex conditional logic, or heavy interaction with existing FileMaker scripts, FM Go is where you get all of that for free. A web app can do it too, but you're building more.

Users who are already deep in FileMaker. If a staff member spends four hours a day in the desktop, a two-hour field task in FM Go is a small step from what they already know. A separate web app for those hours is unnecessary friction.

Neither one is "better." One fits the users you have.

The typical split, in practice.

Businesses that do this well often end up running both. FM Go for regular staff on company-issued iPads, running most operations. Web app for the specific groups FM Go does not fit — drivers submitting damage reports from their own phones, customers signing deliveries, contractors filing one-off site visits, dashboards for owners who do not need a license.

That's not a compromise. It maps to a real split in your users. Building both is much less work than trying to force one to cover users it was not designed for.

What sets the size of the job.

FM Go. The app is free. Each user consumes a FileMaker license. The work is making existing layouts work well on a phone, and it depends on how many layouts there are and how much they need reworking.

Web app on top of FileMaker. A single-workflow field app — driver form, technician submission, customer signature, similar shape — is the small end. Multiple workflows, offline capability, or lots of photos or video scale from there. No per-user licensing cost. Ongoing hosting is small.

For businesses where the web-app approach would replace ten or more FM Go licenses, the licensing savings alone typically pay for the web app within the first year.

What to do next.

The free triage call is where we sort out the split. You describe who your field users are, what devices they carry, how heavy their use is, and which workflows are on the phone versus the desktop. Thirty minutes tells you whether it's FM Go, a web app, or both.