Curious about Flutter and its potential for your upcoming app?
In this post, we’re taking a closer look at what Flutter offers as a cross-platform framework. We’ll explore its features and discuss which businesses can make the most of its capabilities. Let’s dive in and uncover how Flutter could be the solution for your next digital project.
What is Flutter
Flutter is an open-source UI toolkit developed by Google, made for building mobile, web, and desktop applications by using a unified codebase. This allows to deliver applications significantly faster compared to native approach.
A brief Flutter overview:
- Flutter was created by Google and introduced to the public as an open-source project in May 2017. The stable version was later released in December 2018.
- Initially, Flutter was aimed at mobile platforms, specifically iOS and Android devices. In this year's Stack Overflow Developer Survey, Flutter has outperformed its primary competitor React Native, and its popularity keeps growing.
Moreover, on GitHub, Flutter has more stars than its main competitor, React Native (156k vs. 111k as of August 2023). This gap keeps growing each year. In 2023, Flutter remains strong, drawing more attention away from its rivals as it advances.
- Flutter's ecosystem continues to expand, featuring a variety of packages, libraries, and tools that speed up development by leveraging existing solutions.
- Beyond its technical aspect, Flutter nurtures a collaborative community where developers actively share insights, contributing to its growth and refinement.
- Prominent companies like eBay Motors, Reflectly, and Alibaba have embraced Flutter for their apps, highlighting its usefulness for practical business purposes.
What is Flutter used for?
Flutter allows businesses to create applications for multiple platform, it supports iOS, Android, Web and desktop. By using a single codebase across multiple platforms, Flutter significantly reduces development time and effort. It boasts an impressive collection of user interface components, delivers top-notch performance, and features a hot-reload function for quick iterations during development.
Flutter is a perfect fit for:
- Cross-platform mobile applications
- MVP and prototyping
- Web applications
- PWA (Progressive web apps)
- Desktop applications
- Simple 2D games
- IoT and embedded systems
Why you should consider Flutter for your app development?
Flutter transforms the development process with its robust Software Development Kit (SDK) and a wide range of comprehensive tools, that bring real value.
Cross-Platform Efficiency
Flutter brings significant value by allowing mobile app code to power a website too. Since its stable version launch, Flutter Web lets you run your app in a browser without changing the core code.
Flutter covers all the main platforms, making it a standout among similar frameworks.
- iOS
- Android
- Web
- Windows
- macOS
- Linux
This makes Flutter a true cross-platform powerhouse and go to solution for crossplatform MVPs.
Cost-Effective Development
Cost-effectiveness always stands as a crucial concern. In today's mobile app development landscape, creating your own app can cost you around US $40,000. When dealing with two native apps, expenses double – one for iOS, and one for Android. Expanding to multiple platforms is even pricier. With Flutter, you invest in a single source code that works across all platforms, cutting both expenses and compatibility issues.
Beautiful User Interfaces
Flutter offers a variety of customizable widgets out of the box, covering everything from basic elements to complex animations. Prefabricated widgets are available in both Cupertino(iOS) and Material(Android) style guides, which is a huge advantage.
Native-Like Performance
A Flutter app's performance is nearly identical to that of a native app. This is achieved by building the Flutter app directly into the virtual machine code. Unlike most other cross-platform tools that rely on various interpretations and intermediate code representations, Flutter's approach ensures optimal performance.
High Development Velocity
The Hot Reload feature is at the heart of Flutter's efficiency. Any changes made to the source code are instantly visible in the running app without the need for recompilation or restarting. This immediate feedback loop enables developers to witness code changes in the app instantly. Depending on project complexity, this can result in time savings ranging from 20 to 50%. This saved time can then be channeled towards the creation of additional valuable functionalities.
Effortless Scalability
Scalability is a major strength of Flutter.
A single Flutter team can seamlessly utilize the same codebase to create versions of the application for any additional supported platform in the future. Furthermore, it simplifies business growth and speeds up time-to-market rather than you’d be using native technology. Ultimately, this significantly boosts the business value of your Flutter app.
Diverse Industries
When choosing Flutter for your next app development project, don't worry about the industry – Flutter fits all. With years in the market, it's stable across all platforms. It's embraced in critical sectors like healthcare, banking, wellness, food tech, and e-commerce proving its maturity.
Which apps are created with Flutter? Real-life examples
In a nutshell, Flutter is a good choice for almost any product. It has gained widespread adoption among big players like Uber, Google Ads, Airbnb, and Alibaba. Ideally suited for medium to large businesses, Flutter remains accessible for small businesses too.
With Flutter, you can craft applications for:
- Diverse retail needs (loyalty programs, catalogs, online stores)
- Banking and fintech (PFM, neobanking)
- Supply chain (logistics, warehouse and inventory management, etc.)
- Wellness and Productivity (meditation apps, sleep tracking, fitness tracking)
- Foodtech (delivery apps, food sharing apps, nutrition and meal planning, farm-to-table apps, etc.)
- Large enterprises (ERP, HR systems, internal operations)
Flutter is an exceptional option for startups seeking to develop MVPs. Whether you're aiming to speed your time to market or showcase a working prototype to investors, Flutter fits the bill ideally. Why?
- It's cost-effective, as you only need to develop and maintain one app for both iOS and Android.
- A single developer can build your MVP.
- The similarity between a Flutter and a native app is so close that the difference is minimal.
- Flutter's highly customizable widgets enable beautiful UI designs.
Thanks to flutter scalability, there is no limits for your product ambitions. Many worldwide brands have their own Flutter app for powering their primary services.
The list keeps on growing and illustrates that Flutter is huge across different industries — diverse consumer applications, finance and banking, wellbeing, enterprise-level SaaS systems, utilities, e-commerce, and more. In essence, Flutter is well-suited for a broad spectrum of business objectives.
Wrap-up
Flutter stands out as one of the most innovative mobile technologies today. It presents an excellent choice for businesses aiming to create beautiful applications for both iOS, Android, and web — all while reusing one codebase. When time to market, developing costs, and adaptability are top priorities Flutter is a superior choice.
In the next 2-3 years, we assume a substantial segment of medium and large businesses will transition to Flutter. This trend follows the footsteps of industry giants like Google Ads, Tencent, and Uber, who have already embraced IT
If you're aiming to enhance your business processes and create modern, user-friendly digital products, consider giving Flutter a try. Our skilled Flutter development team is available to guide your business in determining if this framework aligns with your specific needs.
