Mobile App Development

Why Flutter Is The Best Framework For Cross-Platform App Development?

  • Published on : April 13, 2021

  • Read Time : 15 min

  • Views : 2.1k

why-flutter-is-the-best-framework-for-cross-platform-app-development

Mobile apps today have become a riding factor in the success of businesses all around. Especially, when it comes to the marketing or product launch stage, the mobile app is considered the fastest, most efficient, and simplest way of reaching the audience at large.

Around the total number of apps in both platforms i.e. Android and iOS count to three million which is creating a significant need for a smooth app development framework.

So, craft a well-thought plan with the right set of tools at hand i.e. Flutter app development framework. It is a simple, quick, and cost-effective way of launching any product or service in the market. The aspects like a simple programming language, robust development tools, features, kits, and exclusive brand experience supported on multiple platforms are openly fulfilled.

With such an excellent image and ability of the flutter framework in the market, it is crucial to know more about flutter’s working environment.

Let’s begin the knowledge with basics about what is flutter and what are the major reasons for its popularity and usage around the world.

Read On!

What Is Flutter?

Flutter is known as the open-source software development toolkit and a cross-platform app development tool that supports Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, and Mac. It is introduced by Google that helps developers to build applications infusing attractive and functional user interfaces to ensure the high performance of the apps.

Organizations worldwide use the dart programming language to build apps with Flutter and release MVPs efficiently and rapidly.

In simple words, Flutter is a portable UI toolkit of Google that helps in beautifully crafting natively compiled applications. As a user, you can run apps build with a flutter on any device i.e. mobile, smart TVs, laptops, wearables, etc.

Other reasons behind the popularity of flutter development tools include material design and a graphic library that ensures developers give an astonishing look to the app and also makes the operations fast irrespective of the platform. Recently, a new version of flutter has also been developed i.e. 3.3.

What types of apps can be built with Flutter?

Flutter is a versatile framework that allows for the creation of a wide range of mobile applications. Our talented developers have successfully built various types of apps using Flutter, including but not limited to:

  1. Shopping apps: We have experience in creating intuitive and user-friendly shopping apps that offer seamless browsing and secure checkout processes.
  2. Food apps: Whether it’s a restaurant finder, food delivery service, or recipe app, Flutter enables us to build engaging and visually appealing food-related applications.
  3. Social media apps: We can develop social networking platforms with interactive features such as messaging, newsfeeds, and user profiles using the Flutter framework.
  4. Fitness apps: With Flutter, we are able to create fitness apps that incorporate features like workout tracking, meal planning, and progress monitoring to help users achieve their health goals.
  5. Dating apps: Flutter provides an ideal platform for developing dating applications, complete with features like user profiles, matching algorithms, chat functionality, and more.
  6. Marketplaces: Whether it’s an e-commerce marketplace, job portal, or service booking platform, we can leverage Flutter’s capabilities to create versatile and robust marketplaces that cater to various industries.

In fact, Flutter is so flexible that we can build any kind of app with it. In the rare event that a specific functionality may be missing, our developers can easily write platform-specific code to implement it. However, it is worth noting that some apps may require separate polishing of certain functionalities for a more tailored experience.

Top Companies That Are Using Flutter

Top Companies That Are Using Flutter

Businesses and organizations of all sizes are building apps using Flutter. Let’s see the top companies that have scaled up their business segments using flutter.

  • Alibaba
  • Google Pay
  • BMW
  • Dream11
  • TOYOTA
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • Hamilton

Top 10 Reasons To Choose Flutter App Development

1. Cross-Platform App Development

The popularity of the flutter app has skyrocketed because it offers the ability to use a single codebase across all the platforms iOS, Android, and Web. It saves the developer’s time at each stage by cutting down the development time that was wasted before in writing multiple codes. Moreover, it also helps in reducing the development cost as fewer resources will be used and make the app development faster.

2. High Performance

Another significant reason why flutter is used by many companies is its robust performance and speed. In comparison to other hybrid apps, it works faster and performs better. Also, the flutter development does not require any other mediator code like JavaScript interactions. This ultimately helps in reducing interpretation bugs and enhances overall app performance.

3. Faster and Dynamic Platform

The hot-reload feature of the app makes the flutter development faster and more dynamic. It allows developers to directly view the code changes/alterations in the application. The feature ensures developers find and fix the bug in seconds without even restarting the code from the beginning. Developers can easily create, test, and improve other new features. Thus, the overall app development process becomes more productive and promotes better team collaboration between designers and developers as they can react to the changes in real-time.

4. Ready-Made and Reusable Widgets

The availability of ready-made widgets allows developers to build user interfaces quickly. Many times, it becomes difficult for developers to build the same design look for Android and iOS but this problem can be eliminated by flutter widgets. The built-in design widgets like material-design widgets, design-centric widgets, and Cupertino widget help in developing attractive UI.

Also, the flutter framework detects the common components that are frequently used by developers and creates them into reusable design widgets. It thus saves a lot of time and effort wasted on repetitive tasks.

5. Dart Programming Language

The Dart programming language used in Flutter is gaining popularity due to its ability to build fast and highly customizable apps across multiple platforms. The use of Dart programming language allows developers to build apps that perform quickly on every platform. A list of exclusive elements of dart including fast compilation, native code, and the predictable feature ensures writing almost all types of code. This is how the flutter is known as fast and super customizable. With Dart, writing various types of code becomes seamless and efficient.

While it’s true that Dart may not have the same level of recognition as giants like Java, Objective-C, or Kotlin, the number of Flutter developers is rapidly increasing. Additionally, other fundamentals of dart language like the elimination of XML files, scaffolding, and JavaScript bridging add more to its popularity. The Dart programming language, with its fast and super customizable nature, is gaining traction among developers. Its unique features, along with the rising popularity of the Flutter framework, contribute to the growing interest and adoption of Dart in the mobile development industry.

6. Perfect for MVP Products

While developing the minimum viable product, users usually have less time and money, and using a lot of resources to build a product just for market validation will be a bad choice. But this is easily possible with flexible UI, quick turnaround time, easy integration, and high performance of the flutter framework. Also, the independence to use a single codebase helps in launching MVP across multiple platforms without putting much effort. This, ultimately makes the process affordable and fast for entrepreneurs.

7. Smooth Animation

The developers can easily animate any property from one value to another using the transition animation feature of flutter. This element allows multiple animation changes at once like height, opacity, width, transforming the scale, and transforming origin. Other built-in adjustments of flutter like GUI rendering, gestures, and animation help developers gain full control over all pixelated elements that are displayed.

Also, the material motion system of flutter provides an excellent ability to design smooth transitions between UI elements to give a polished and smooth look to their apps.

8. Excellent Support from Large Community

Flutter is backed by a large community i.e. Google which consistently keeps posting all the bug fixes and recent updates on the platform that allows developers to get big support and help from them. Flutter also ensures regular performance improvement in comparison to other technologies.

Moreover, small start-ups and other businesses also get the opportunity to learn, discuss and grow from various events that are organized by Google at regular intervals.

9. Support IDEs

Android Studio or Visual Studio is the best to get IDE experience for flutter. However, other famous IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, IntelliJ IDEA Community, Emac, Codemagic, etc. are also used by the developers as editor plugins to get a better experience during the app development process. The selection of IDEs allows developers to make their coding part easy and quick. Also, both IDEs and tools of flutter act as unparalleled allies in terms of code completion, visual assistance, and code debugging.

10. Easy Learning Curve

The dart programming language used in flutter offers a smooth learning curve as compared to the other competitors like Swift, React native, Java, etc. The learning ability of developers goes exponential if they have the basic knowledge of Java & C# language. Also, flutter being the latest/modern framework makes the functioning of apps easier whereas working with other options like Swift, Java, or React maybe can be difficult and different.

What Is the Future of Flutter App Development?

Undoubtedly, the future of the flutter framework is bright. The launch of flutter 3.0 has gained confirmation of the continued support, investment, and dedication to growing this framework Google. There is a continuous expansion in the list of target platforms that are open for flutter development with improved applications and tools.

Many big tech giants including Google is making use of flutter to improve and simplify their development process. Recently, Google apps like Google stadia and AdWords are using the flutter framework for producing Google’s assistant.

Additionally, the market is already flooded with around 500,000 apps that are built on flutter and now the launch of the latest version with a list of excellent new features will strengthen the growth.

How Does The Size of a Flutter App File Compare To That of Apps Developed Using Other Frameworks?

Flutter apps have a larger file size compared to basic Java and Kotlin apps. The size of a minimal Flutter app, containing only a single Center widget without any Material components, is measured to be around 4.3 MB for ARM devices and 4.6 MB for ARM 64 devices when bundled and compressed as an APK. A basic Flutter app on Android is around 4.7MB and on iOS, it is approximately 10.9MB.

While Flutter’s file size may seem larger than apps developed in Java and Kotlin, other cross-platform frameworks also face similar challenges. For example, a bare minimum app written in Xamarin takes around 16MB, and React Native takes 7MB.

It’s worth noting that app performance is often considered more important than the app’s size. Flutter developers are aware of this issue and there is plenty of documentation available to help reduce the size of Flutter apps.

How Does Flutter Compare to Native Development in Terms of Available Libraries?

Flutter, being a relatively new toolkit, may not have as many libraries available as native languages. However, it is important to note that Flutter’s developer community is constantly growing and actively updating the Flutter dev.pub page. The library ecosystem for Flutter is expanding rapidly with new libraries being released frequently.

While it is true that native languages may have a larger number of libraries available due to their longer existence, Flutter already has a significant number of important libraries. As Flutter continues to gain popularity and attract more developers, the library landscape is expected to keep evolving and offering a wider range of tools and resources.

How Much Does It Cost to Build A Flutter Mobile Application?

The cost of developing a flutter mobile application is dependent on many factors which can differ in every case like the complexity of the app, the structure of the app, development method, features included, location of the development of the app, etc.

However, the estimated cost of developing a basic flutter app will fall between the range of US $25,000 to $200,000 based on the features and functionalities that you choose.

In case, you are looking for a final cost of developing the reliable flutter app then conduct market research and contact the expert team.

Wrapping Up!

The above reasons have definitely justified the popularity of flutter app development with a range of advantages in comparison to native or other frameworks available for cross-platform development. The Flutter framework is especially favorable for start-ups as it leverages efficiency by ensuring cost-effectiveness, better performance, and reduced development time.Moreover, the ability of the flutter framework to enhance the user interface with in-built widgets helps developers in easily meet the client requirements of designing the app. Till now, flutter has significantly attracted a huge community of developers which is consistently growing with each passing day.So, if you are looking to develop an app then why not choose the hot trending technology that can help in validating and monetizing the basic idea of your app?

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