Companies and startups often face the dilemma of whether to launch their product on Android or iOS first. How about the fact that you can easily implement an app for both systems, with a single code? This is a possibility provided by cross-platform technologies such as Flutter. In this article, we’ll help you learn more about its amazing capabilities!
What is Flutter?
It is a Software Development Kit (SDK) created by Google, which made it available as an open-source project. Flutter was based on Google’s proprietary programming language, Dart, which from the beginning was designed for applications that put a special value on good design and customer experience.
It enables the development of cross-platform web, mobile, and desktop applications from a single code base for Android and iOS, Windows, and Linux. From a business point of view, this is very advantageous, because you only need to build one code, which takes less time, and involves only one team of specialists, so the entire process is also cheaper.
It has to be said that Google is doing a great job with Flutter, as it not only openly communicates the improvements they plan to make, but also implements them based on the voice of the Flutter community. What’s more, many Google-managed brands have already migrated their platforms to Flutter, which strongly signals the trust Google has in its tool. These are brands such as Google Pay, Google Ads, Blogger, Google Analytics, Cloud Search, and NestHub.
Examples of applications developed in Flutter
Google Ads
Google AdWords is a great example of the use of Flutter technology, as it was created exclusively with it. It is a platform that is used to increase the effectiveness of marketing treatments, allows advertising of additional materials, and helps increase the visibility of online platforms. With Google Ads, users can easily monitor their marketing and advertising processes.
Alibaba
This is one of the largest eCommerce providers in the world, and its platform was created through Flutter. Several million people use it every day. Thanks to Flutter’s technology, they can enjoy a smooth transaction flow and a clear UX/UI design. The app was developed by a team of developers from Xianyu, and it has been downloaded more than 50 million times. Alibaba had a pre-built app, and its use of Flutter consisted of implementing its features one at a time, adding each functionality. Choosing Flutter allowed the team to save time, which certainly paid off. Currently, Alibaba has more than 10 million active users.
Pacific
The Pacific app is used to exchange money. Easily, app users can transfer money between each other, as well as convert their account funds. Every 0.1% of transactions through Pacific are donated to cleaning up the oceans and seas, while for payments, the app’s creators prepared cards made from recycled plastic from the oceans. The app runs on both iOS and Android and was built using Flutter, which drastically reduced development time and cost.
Cryptograph
The Cryptograph app allows users to receive notifications about changes in cryptocurrency rates. This allows users to track price fluctuations and analyze them. Cryptograph is an app developed with Flutter that makes getting the latest exchange rate data for any cryptocurrency easy.
Groupon
Groupon is an online portal where users can make various types of purchases within local and travel services. The company decided to implement Flutter into its existing solution to avoid writing an application from scratch. This is because Groupon already had two types of applications (customer-facing and merchant-facing), each with a huge number of downloads, so using off-the-shelf applications was an understandable solution in this case.
Why is Flutter the best cross-platform framework?
However, Flutter’s growing popularity is a result of many more factors that make it a valued tool with great potential. Here are its most frequently listed advantages:
- The Hot Reload function allows making immediate changes to the application. This relies on the fact that it is possible to preview all the changes made to the application as they are being developed. It affects a significant reduction in production time, as it does not require restarting the application after making changes to the code to check the results.
- Flutter allows the creation of expressive user interfaces using widgets, layers, and interactive resources. Two separate sets of widgets are available to the developer: Material Design, which follows Google’s design guidelines, and Cupertino, which follows Apple’s guidelines for the iOS device interface.
- Because Flutter is an open-source tool, its community is highly developed, which offers great support during product development, and on top of that, it is backed by Google.
- Flutter has simple and clear documentation.
- It has high compatibility with many operating systems.
What are the advantages of using Flutter?
Using Flutter to build applications brings many benefits for both developers and entrepreneurs. The most important ones to highlight are:
- One code base.
This is one of the main benefits of Flutter. With this solution, you only need to write one code that can be used virtually anywhere. So you can forget about writing long codes for each platform separately and use components and scripts freely between iOS, Android, or Windows
- Performance close to native
One of the most essential advantages of Flutter is its performance. Applications written in Flutter are compiled into native code, which greatly benefits their operation’s speed. In addition, the graphics engine strives to run at 60 frames per second, and if the device allows it, Flutter can maintain up to 120 fps. There are also tools at developers’ disposal designed to diagnose any performance drops.
- Fast time to market.
Developing a single code is much faster than creating two separate native applications dedicated to only one operating system.
- Lower implementation costs
Designing and implementing separate mobile apps for Android and iOS usually comes at a high cost. It is necessary to create two development teams within both environments. Flutter, being a cross-platform technology, significantly reduces this cost, which is similar to the development of a Progressive Web App (PWA).
- User growth
A multi-platform application is available simultaneously in all distribution channels, which supports reaching a maximum wide range of users.
Disadvantages of using Flutter
While there are definitely many advantages to using Flutter, like any technology it also has some disadvantages that you should be aware of.
One of the primary disadvantages of Flutter is the relatively high entry point. Learning Flutter requires knowledge of native application development. This is necessary for it to be possible to build a cross-platform application. It’s a feature that can make it difficult for beginners to implement in Flutter, especially since the Dart language is much less popular than JavaScript, for example. Flutter also has the disadvantage of integrating with native APIs, requiring writing native code.
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How Flutter reduces development costs?
Usually, there is a need for about 3 specialists (each using a different technology) to develop a product on several various platforms. While working with Flutter, you can reduce costs for one developer, because you can successfully launch a product on multiple platforms based on the same code. A single code base also dramatically reduces project management costs (by 20-25%), while development costs themselves can decrease by up to 50% thanks to Flutter. In conclusion – Flutter provides huge budget savings, so startups and small companies should consider it.
Development with Flutter
Anyone who follows Flutter’s updates will admit that it is developing in increasingly exciting ways. The choice of Flutter by the giants in the market is not a coincidence – Flutter has many advantages and works. Its high performance and ability to create cross-platform applications from a single code make it a technology that supports businesses by saving time and resources. If you want to find out if Flutter will meet your requirements, at Applover, we can analyze your application needs and find out if it is the solution for you. We’ve recently released a guide for startups to help them build applications with Flutter. One thing is for sure – Flutter is worth considering because its diverse and wide-ranging applications are becoming more and more impressive with each update!
