Flutter App Development: Everything You Should Know When Building Projects with Flutter

Flutter has proven to be an effective solution for creating cross-platform mobile and desktop apps and, during the last year, also for web applications. Both startups and established companies confidently choose Flutter to build their products when they need them to be nice-looking, user-friendly, and accessible across various devices and platforms.

The following guide will help you find answers to the final questions before getting into the development stage, weigh the pros and cons of Flutter and its competitive technologies, and examine real use cases of Flutter app development based on Relia Software’s experience.

Why Do Enterprises Choose Flutter?

Building enterprise apps requires using a scalable technology that is more robust than the alternatives and can serve in the long run. Flutter offers superior scalability due to its built-in hot reload feature, which effectively handles large codebases and provides robustness compared to alternative frameworks. It also provides convenient code and UI debugging tools seamlessly operating on both platforms.

Also, enterprises are interested in developing the product on a single architecture using the same technologies, which doesn’t require hiring new specialists and spending additional funds. Today Flutter is the best solution for these tasks.

Why Startups Choose Flutter for App Development

The main goal of startups is to win new customers in competitive markets in a short period of time. That’s why fast time-to-market, users and their needs should be the main focus in startup software development. Flutter meets these requirements with its flexibility and cross-platform capabilities. It allows a fast development process with code working consistently on Android and iOS, with minimal OS-specific problems. This is how startups get maximum coverage across different platforms and outrun competitors.

Top 4 Cases Flutter is Best Used For

Flutter is an extremely flexible technology that works well for many business cases. Let’s look at them in more detail.

Flutter Cross-Platform Mobile App Development

First and foremost, Flutter is a silver bullet for cross-platform app development, which is commonly used in three cases:

1. If it is required to develop a mobile app within the short term: Like most cross-platform solutions, Flutter allows a single codebase for all chosen operating systems, which greatly speeds the development process.
2. If the app logic is frequently being changed: For example, when business requirements are dynamically adapting to the market. We had a case where the client addressed us with the proof of concept solution for iOS and Android. Having no documentation, but a focus group, he aimed to test the app’s concept before building a full-fledged system. We chose Flutter as an optimal solution allowing him to dynamically change the app’s logic.
3. You need an app with a complex custom design: Flutter is particularly well-suited for projects that require a high degree of customization and complex animations. This is the best technology today in terms of complex designs. It also provides a fast development cycle and can be easily integrated with other technologies and third-party services.

Flutter For Web App Development

Since the Flutter code can be compiled into Webassembly for better security, it is possible to have the same codebase for Android, iOS, desktop and the web version of an app. From our experience, Flutter is the best fit for web applications in the following cases:

• When porting some mobile apps into the web because of almost 100% code sharing.
• Complex and unusual web interfaces (like editors, IDE, etc.)
• When it is required to create an extensive functionality for complex enterprise solutions within a short period of time.

Web capabilities in Flutter 2.0

Flutter 2.0, released in 2021, made the framework the only cross-platform non-HTML-based technology that officially supports the Web out of the box and provides the same development capabilities for other platforms.

Unlike other web technologies, Flutter can work not only through the DOM but also through its render engines (CanvasKit, HTML renderer), greatly simplifying the creation of unusual and non-standard web applications with complex UI/UX. The development of such apps previously required significant development time. Also, Flutter has a huge library of UI components (Widgets) that significantly reduce the development budget.

Flutter 3.10, released in May 2023, has useful features and improvements. Yet, the Flutter roadmap and strategy document proves that the team involved in this open-source project must work on interoperability to simplify Flutter adoption in web projects.

Applications That Require High Stability

Certain projects in finance, healthcare, transportation, eCommerce, and other areas require high stability. Flutter provides this by compiling code into CPU-specific ARM code and using its rendering engines. As a result, Flutter apps maintain a consistent interface even after OS updates or system customizations.

Flutter also ensures version compatibility and consistent API and development approaches. This allows code written in previous versions to be reused in new apps, unlike other technologies that may drop support for older versions. As a result, high stability keeps applications running smoothly.

Fast Mvp Development

When startups or businesses need to quickly develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to validate their ideas and gather user feedback, Flutter is an ideal choice. Flutter’s hot reload feature allows developers to make real-time changes and see them instantly, facilitating rapid prototyping and iteration.

As Flutter’s widgets are immutable, only the screens being actively worked on undergo the reloading process. According to our calculations, this efficient approach can potentially reduce development time by approximately 30%.

By leveraging Flutter’s rich set of UI components and expressive design capabilities, developers can create polished and engaging MVPs with minimal effort and time investment.

As mentioned, Flutter works great when the business logic changes frequently due to changing requirements. If you are not sure about the final vision of the product, Flutter will allow you to make a minimum of changes for different platforms, enabling you to work with and update only one code base.

Top 3 Cases When Flutter isn’t the Best Choice

Although I don’t want to make you doubt the chosen tech stack, it’s important to realize that any technology has limitations that can affect scalability and growth. Therefore, it’s essential to verify if choosing Flutter is the right decision for your product implementation. In some cases, Flutter isn’t the best choice for a project. Let’s find out why.

Apps With Native-Dependent Functionality

Flutter provides access to native device features like the camera and geolocation but can’t provide access to all the native functionality that your app may require. If you strive to build a product with native-level features and avoid resource-intensive apps with a large footprint, it’s better to tap into native Android or iOS app development services.

In scenarios where core functionality varies based on the platform or operating system, such as background work or supporting sound playback when the app is minimized, developing two separate applications may be more convenient.

However, if the business logic remains the same or these are not key features, Flutter can be a valuable solution. It offers seamless integration with third-party tools, enabling you to overcome these challenges and achieve your desired functionality.

Augmented Reality (Ar) Solutions

Augmented reality (AR) engines function differently depending on the platform, and Flutter can’t guarantee platform-independent logic. For AR app development, building separate native applications can offer productivity, cost-effectiveness, and maintenance advantages. This approach ensures a more streamlined development process and better compatibility with platform-specific AR engines, enabling optimal performance.

Limited Web Capabilities

While Flutter provides a number of tools for web application development, its web support is still in the early stages and may only be suitable for some cases. Stability issues can arise, and it may not be the best choice for websites where SEO or content sharing on social networks are priorities. However, it works well for web apps like collaborative and editing tools.

Also, Flutter has limitations for certain cases, such as creating web games, due to its 2D nature and performance degradation when used with many moving objects. The upcoming Flutter 4 release will introduce a new rendering engine for 3D models, potentially addressing these limitations.

Finally, suppose your team consists of experienced React Native developers or uses another cross-platform technology, and you plan to maintain the application in-house. In that case, there may be no need to switch to Flutter.

Some Flutter Alternatives

Flutter, developed by Google, has gained immense popularity as a cross-platform app development framework. However, it’s important to explore alternative frameworks that offer unique features and capabilities to cater to specific project requirements. Let’s consider Flutter against the background of other popular cross-platform technologies, React Native and Native Script, to evaluate the technology impartially.

React Native

React Native, developed by Facebook, is a widely adopted framework for building native-like mobile applications using JavaScript. It allows developers to write code once and deploy it on both iOS and Android platforms, resulting in significant time and cost savings. React Native leverages a “learn once, write anywhere” approach and offers a rich set of pre-built components and a vibrant community ecosystem. It is an excellent choice for developers who have a background in JavaScript and desire a flexible and scalable framework.

NativeScript

NativeScript, an open-source framework developed by Progress, empowers developers to build native mobile apps using JavaScript, TypeScript, or Angular. It provides direct access to native APIs, allowing developers to create platform-specific functionalities and deliver a true native experience. NativeScript supports both iOS and Android platforms and offers extensive UI component libraries and plugins. It is an excellent choice for developers who prefer working with JavaScript or Angular and require deep integration with native capabilities.

As you can see, Flutter wins on all criteria. About 80% of cross-platform applications developed by Relia Software are implemented with Flutter.

In our experience, Flutter is chosen by product owners focused on the end-user experience. At the same time, its closest competitor, React Native, is more often the choice when the client has a team of React Native developers to support the product in the future.

Hire Flutter App Developers at Relia Software

Relia Software has an expert team of Flutter developers who knows all the ins and outs of mobile cross-platform and web app development. We follow a consultative approach and try not only to code software but also to help our clients choose the right tech and business direction. It involves a basic business analytics stage to prioritize features and make sure the final product will meet market needs.

Whether you need to create a Flutter app from scratch, complete ongoing development, add new functionality or integrate a new solution into the existing infrastructure, we’ll be happy to become your Flutter app development partner. Contact us to allocate a development team for your project and embark on your Flutter app development in no time.