Flutter for Business: Challenges and Benefits

Quick Summary: Is Flutter a good platform for app development? Is Flutter better than React Native? What are the Flutter pros and cons in mobile app development for app owners? Let’s find out essential information in this detailed content for Flutter for App Owners, Flutter for Startups, Flutter for Product Owners, and everyone who wants to develop an application using Flutter.

Flutter has become the talk of the town when it comes to cross-platform mobile app development. And it suddenly created a buzz when Google I/O decided to announce some amazing and overwhelming news about Flutter.

Let us share some news with you as well:

• Google came up with a new preview version of Flutter for the Web. And that is no longer called Hummingbird, but a Flutter Web.
• The latest and new version of Flutter – Flutter 3.3 - was released with new improvements. You can check out its Flutter changelog document.
• Flutter has started providing support for building Chrome OS applications.
• Recently, Google released Dart 2.18 with new support for Objective-C and Swift interop.

Tim Sneath, Product Manager of Flutter, stated at Google I/O 2021 that Flutter is growing momentum for the leading UI toolkit for multiplatform development.

At the same time, the number of launched mobile applications built with Flutter in the market continues to increase. Flutter is a trending platform and has secured its place in the list of top cross-platform frameworks.

When a developer plans to go for iOS and Android app development, they have to write different codes for both platforms. It has become a very costly and time-consuming option for business owners as well. Eventually, the native app development lands you to a huge amount of money for mobile app development. That’s where Flutter app development comes into the picture to make a budget-friendly application for you as a business owner.

If you plan to build a mobile application that runs on every device and comes in a very pocket-friendly budget, you should be aware of such questions – 1) What is Flutter? 2) What are the advantages and disadvantages of Flutter? 3) Why should you choose Flutter mobile app development for business?

Let’s start with the basics to understand what Flutter is.

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What is Flutter?

Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit and mobile app SDK, developed and launched by Google. Flutter is a portable UI toolkit that allows developers to build visually attractive and fast mobile apps for all platforms – Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, and Fuchsia.

Flutter allows developers to leverage a feature, which enables them to write only a single codebase for one platform and use it for different platforms. Hence, developers don’t need to write code for iOS and Android apps separately. This helps business owners or startups to save development costs and hire a developer for Flutter for app development. That’s why Flutter is the first choice for startups or business owners.

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Many times, as a renowned Flutter app development company, we receive a simple query from various prospects and clients (business owners or startups), asking about what exactly Flutter is! Because, sometimes, all the available content on the internet makes them confused to consider Flutter as a framework or platform.

We completely understand your curiosity to know what exactly it is. That will only help you decide to go further in Flutter app development.

So, allow us to clarify it here to make sure we are on the same page, and we could be beneficial to you in the long-term journey of your Flutter application development.

“Flutter is not a framework or library. Flutter is a complete SDK and open-source technology for developing mobile, desktop, and web apps using a single code base. Flutter uses Dart – a programming language for app development.” (As per the official Flutter website)

If we precisely talk about what is Flutter SDK, it’s a Software Development Kit. Flutter SDK consists of multiple libraries, documentation, tools, APIs, and sometimes frameworks, which are required for software development.

Anything you would like to know more about Flutter, let’s read – what’s more in Flutter:

• Flutter is open-source, thus free.
• Flutter uses Dart – an object-oriented programming language, which is easy to understand and learn.
• It has a set of widgets, which are easy to customize. Also, Flutter offers a high-performance rendering engine.
• Flutter widgets are very rich, allowing developers to build an intuitive look and feel for an app.
• The Flutter architecture is similar to React, which is based on today's very popular reactive programming.
• Flutter is giving tough competition to React Native for native app development. You can read our detailed article in Flutter vs React Native.

Here, we are making it much easier for you to show the real face of Flutter. Being into the Flutter app development industry since its creation, it’s our responsibility to guide you through its advantages and disadvantages so that you can make a choice whether Flutter app development services is best for your startup project or not.

Now is the time to take you on the ride of the pros and cons of Flutter. But we bet you even if Flutter has several cons, they won’t surpass its pros.

Why Choose Flutter for Your Project?

If we keep ourselves in your (business or app owner’s) shoes, then Flutter offers various important advantages, which are:

Flutter is the perfect technology for cross-platform app development, which enhances the mobile app development process. Moreover, it strengthens the development team to build an intuitive UI with smooth animations. And the best part? Flutter is a future-proof framework which is backed by Google, ensuring its continued development and support. This means anyone can confidently invest in Flutter for their mission-critical projects.

Let us share a list for you that highlights why Flutter is the best choice for your startups. We have come up with points that are prepared with the help of our Flutter experts, Vinit Kariatukaran and Mounil Shah – our Android app developers who use Flutter for various clients’ projects.

Pros of Flutter App Development

What’s the unique and innovative thing that makes Flutter stand among competitors? Let’s go through their features and pros that will make you abandon other platforms.

Widgets for Fast UI Coding

Flutter is all about widgets. It enables developers to customize widgets as per their requirements and create UIs of an app. Flutter follows a unified object model, which is a very different approach that uses different objects (controllers, views, and layouts).

An object from Flutter is considered a widget, be it a button, a font, or padding. Flutter widgets are arranged in trees, which is useful for rendering, but may cause the entire structure to become excessively complicated. You'll need to prepare the structure in advance for large apps because it may take up to 10 layers of code to generate a simple project.

Widgets can be combined to create layouts. You can use Flutter widgets at any level of customization, from any level of customization.

Widgets from Flutter follow Apple's Cupertino design and Android's Material Design looks. This allows the UI customization (which typically requires the most time) in cross-platform development to be completed quickly.

One Code for All Platforms

Flutter gives freedom to developers to write just a single codebase for all the platforms. Flutter app development is not dependent on the platform as it has its own widgets. This allows the execution of the same application on different platforms.

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Hot Reload for Instant Updates

Flutter has one amazing feature, which enhances your business application. That’s Hot Reload. So, whenever developers make any changes in the code, they can see the changes in real time. This reduces the development time by fixing any encountered error right away, without restarting the whole thing.

Hot reload enhances the development productivity with quick iterations and allows them to experiment without a long time.

If we compare Flutter with other competitors – React Natives comes up with a similar feature named Fast Refresh, and Xamarin with XAML Hot Reload.

High Performance

When it comes to app performance, many factors are responsible for it. Here in Flutter app performance, average response time, CPU usage, number of requests per second, number of frames per second, and many more play essential roles.

Flutter claims to offer 60 fps or 120 fps performance on every device if they have 120Hz updates (for 120 fps). As a result, your app screen can display a smooth picture.

Therefore, the Flutter app works seamlessly and faster on every device without any interruption. You can read this article if you want to dig out its technical information about Flutter’s performance. Moreover, you can also read the informative document about best app performance practices.

If we compare Flutter with Xamarin and React Native performance, Flutter stands first with 58 fps and a 220-ms launch time. Xamarin has 345 ms with 53 fps, and React Native has 229 ms and 57 fps. This information is compared in the researched document.

Huge Community Support

Flutter is stronger than React Native for their GitHub Stars. This only shows that many developers are more interested in Flutter and use it over React Native.

Moreover, the craziest fans of Flutter on Stack Overflow, Discord, Reddit, Medium, and Gitter won’t leave without satisfying their thirst. Besides, Dart communities are indeed helpful.

As per the StackOverflow research, Flutter comes in the first number of most popular frameworks and libraries in different domains. As you can see, it’s above React Native.

Flutter for MVP

Do you need an MVP to showcase to your stakeholders or end-users? Flutter is there for everything you need when you are running out of time.

If you have no idea how Flutter MVP will look, you can check on the Flutter Gallery app.

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Support for Desktop and Web

Flutter is no longer used for mobile app development. With the latest release of Flutter 3.0, Flutter offers stable support for desktop and web applications. Flutter does not just help developers to build mobile apps, but also web applications using a single codebase.

The next release of Flutter – Flutter 3.3 now provides better support for all desktop platforms, like macOS and Linux for desktop applications.

Cons of Flutter App Development

Is Flutter all about plus points, though? Not really. As with any technology, it has its dark side, too. We tested Flutter in our daily development practices to see whether that’s the case. Instead, what we found out are very few cons, which don’t outweigh its pros.

Emerging Technology

Flutter is still taking a baby step in the cross-platform development industry. Therefore, it’s not easy to find Flutter tutorials and learning materials as compared to other frameworks in the market.

Limited Packages and Plugins Available

While talking about Flutter vs React Native for plugins and packages, Flutter has very limited numbers. Why not? It’s a new framework, because the first stable version of Flutter was launched on 4 December 2018.

As additional plugins and packages for Flutter are created by the community, the effect of this limitation should gradually be reduced. There are currently over 26K packages that make it easier to create Flutter apps, and the number is constantly increasing.

Application Size

Since Flutter uses built-in widgets rather than platform widgets, the final outcome of the app is larger in size. As we know, larger applications consume more space in a device and require a longer time to download.

However, the size of the Flutter app can be decreased by using particular libraries and packages, asset compression, and the deletion of unused resources.

Smaller Dart Community

The developer's community in Dart is much lesser than in JavaScript. This only defines that there are very limited resources available that could help developers to learn Dart.

Should You Use Flutter for Your App Development?

Flutter app development has been an exceptionally powerful platform for application development. Moreover, the new release of Flutter 3.0 has gained great momentum, and its capabilities are getting stronger.

So as a business owner, before considering Flutter to build an app, you should surely check its advantages and disadvantages. And then finally, decide on how good or bad it’s for your startup app.

As an experienced and award-winning application development company, we believe Flutter will play a major role in app advancement as it supports all platforms with a single codebase. While there are certainly pros and cons of using Flutter for app development, the platform’s SDK and API make it a compelling choice for businesses of all sizes. For this, we surely recommend you to choose Flutter to develop cross-platform apps and reach out to a wide range of audiences to deliver your services.

One more thing is, Flutter is greatly inspired by React, and the Flutter web apps can adapt to any platform. This is very similar to responsive/adaptive web design.

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One Senior Android Developer from Groupon – Tomek Polański gave a presentation at the TOAST – Android Developer Meetup #17, named: “I convinced my company - Groupon - to use Flutter. Do the same with your company.”

Do you know what he said in the presentation? Let’s read it here:

“Flutter is perfect for creating a customized application experience. Time and time again it has been shown that award-winning applications (MWC’s Glomo Awards, TIME’s Best Apps of the Year and the Webby Awards Mobile Apps) focus on delivering beautiful custom experiences rather than the pixel perfect native iOS/Android look – and Flutter delivers on this.

On one hand, you have the ability to create a simple UI rapidly and, on the other, Flutter is a powerful tool to create beautiful custom applications, thanks to its extensibility. The thing that I’ve found positively surprising is that we have communicated those developing applications in Flutter is much faster than native, product people were still astonished that’s true in practice.”

Get Started with Flutter App Development TodayWe can finally conclude that Flutter gives you unmatched advantages like faster development and cost savings for your startups. And its advantages can be game changers when your business is new to the market, you have a limited budget, and you have to reach a wider audience. Because faster development will help you build MVP so that you can validate your business idea, implement required changes, and save money.If that’s striking to you, Flutter app development could be the right choice for your business. And connect with the proficient and versatile Flutter app development company, Radixweb, that can help you achieve your dream by building an app with Flutter. Give us a shout.