App Startups and Flutter — A Match Made in Heaven

Promatics Technologies
8 min readNov 19, 2022

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With times evolving and customers being more inclined to have digitized solutions for their day-to-day purchasing needs, the era of an e-commerce platform for businesses has taken a new leap. Being the easiest touchpoint to connect to your target audience and potential customers, startups want to develop an application with a user-friendly interface that tops up the aesthetic game. And isn’t that what matters the most to customers today? We think it absolutely does; in fact, what looks good, sells more. Keeping in perspective this, we cannot deny the fact that having a user-friendly interface is the backbone for any application, as one can only get their desired products or services if the experience is smooth sailing.

Where having an application is an integral part of any company; it helps customers have a real-time look at the products and services and cuts down their browsing time. With an overload of startups today, there has to be something to attract the potential customer base to bring your clients to you. But how is this all possible? How can a startup build apps for any screen? Wait, wait, stop your pondering thoughts and let us explain to you what the hype is all about. One of the common User Interfaces that people all around the world are using today is Flutter. But what is that? Flutter is Google’s Portable User Interface Toolkit which is created with an aim to help you craft beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, websites, and desktop from a single code base. The best part is that you don’t need a new code; Flutter is designed to adapt to the existing code and is used by developers and organizations all around the world. It comes with no hidden cost and is free and open-source for everyone. Having a brand image of being fast and productive and transforming the application development process has been an asset for companies in their application designing needs all around the world.

Flutter: What is it?

Taking an in-depth view of how Flutter is Fast, a Multi-Platform transforms your workflow and is stable yet reliable; we will be building upon the blocks. Firstly, Flutter Code is fast as it brings coherence to ARM or Intel Machine Code, or even JavaScript code for a fast, streamless experience on any device. Next, coming to the second point, it is multi-platform which means it is designed to reach users on any and every screen. One can deploy their applications on multiple devices from a single codebase, including mobile phones, web, desktop, and other embedded devices. And you know what the best part here is? You don’t need to get into any extra hassle; it is very easy yet quick in its nature. Thirdly, it gives a developer experience which means it takes an overhead on your codebase with automated testing, developer tooling, and everything else you may ever need to build up production-quality applications. Lastly, Flutter is trusted by many around the world. But why so is so? It is mainly because of its transparency of operations and being supported and used by Google, and many other well–known, trusted brands around the globe. Not only this, it is maintained by a community of global developers, which makes it a classical experience on its own!

A Growth Unmatched: Understanding How

The growth of Flutter is exponential, it is unmatched, and it is continuing on day to day basis. What is the evidence? How can we say that? It’s about the usage of Flutter mainly; with over two million developers making use of Flutter on an everyday basis, in the last three years, the numbers have aimed at the sky. Not being affected by Covid — 19 and paying no heed to the unprecedented situations, in March this year, Flutter had 10% month-over-month growth, which translates to the fact that nearly half a million developers now are using Flutter each month.

We have looked into the statistics and had a bird’s eye view of the facts, but we know we all are wondering how it is happening? Let us explain to you! Being a free and open-source mobile user interface framework created by Google, Flutter made its way to the market in May 2017. Making use of one code only, helps you create a native mobile application, and this solves the main issue for most application developers — the issue of not being able to use one programming language for two different app stores, IOS and Android.

Coming over to the understanding of how Flutter is rapidly flourishing, it is essential to understand its main differentiating points. First of all, it is an SDK — a Software Development Kit. This is a collection of tools that are an integral part of helping you develop your applications. In Flutter, this includes the entire tool kit that helps compile your code into a native machine code for IOS and Android. The second point is that it is a framework, meaning that it is a User Interface Library based on Widgets — this collection of reusable User Interface elements, including buttons, text inputs, sliders, and much more, lets one personalize what they like while keeping in mind the fluctuating market trends and diversified consumer needs of its customer base.

To say it in a nutshell, the main reason for the unmatched growth of Flutter is that it provides developers with a smooth sail through the rough sea tides. With excellent speed, enhanced productivity, and the flexibility to customize your own designs, Flutter drives cost savings and greater efficiency. No one knew about Flutter just a few years back, and many do not. Still, the main reason its popularity has skyrocketed and is continuing to do so is because of its wide range of benefits; it provides its consumers with an enhanced experience and speeds up their long, tiring development phase hours. This leads to a more user–friendly mobile application experience.

The Flutter Community: It is flourishing

Flutter has a strong community working for different companies, but their roots are entangled at the same point. The statistics are interesting, and here is an insight into them:

a.) Flutter has its top five territories in India, China, the United States, the EU, and Brazil, with customers spread everywhere.

b.) Flutter can be seen everywhere today, it has approximately 90,000 apps published in the Play Store, and almost 10,000 were in the last few months alone.

c.) The stable channel is all Flutter developers look for, and 78% of them use that, the other 11% use beta, while last but not least, 11% lot use either dev or master.

d.) Flutter Community works with all types of businesses, where 35% work for a startup, 26% are enterprise developers, 19% are self-employed, and 7% work for design agencies.

e.) 60% of users of Flutter are developing using Windows, 27% macOS, and 13$ are using Linux.

Cross-Platform Techs: The Big Stories

Cross-platform techs are the new hype of the market, but most of us do not have an idea of what they really are and how they work. Starting off with how they work, we will slide onto their benefits.

Cross-Platform Development is an umbrella term that envelops the practice of developing software products for multiple platforms or software environments. There are a few differentiating factors why these have been the talk of the town and how people are more inclined toward them today. Firstly, cross platforms let customers of having the joy of using the same application and user interface on multiple devices. We know how today; most of us have multiple devices for diversified needs, including tablets, laptops, and most importantly, mobile phones. This helps give an enhanced, unified experience everywhere. The second point comes down to the code reusability factor — this means that a cross-platform development framework gives developers the freedom to work on one single code that they can use on different platforms. This shared code phenomenon removes the need for tiring repeated tasks which motivates the developers to do more in less time and speeds up the development life cycle of applications rather than making them platform-specific. The third point shows how it gives one a faster time to reach more customers, one code, and you can float it everywhere; be it Android, iOS, or Windows, there is no need to make multiple copies catering to different markets rather just simply reach to your target audience no matter where they are. The next two points go side by side, Easy Product Implementation and Maintenance. Developers can easily write their code on any platform they like and convert it as per convenience; for example, write code on HTML and convert it to other platforms. Other than that, bug fixes are a part of codes; imagine doing it for multiple codes or just one code; you are the better judge!

Flutter & Startups: An Insight

We all know now that Flutter has become one of the fastest-growing available cross-platform frameworks today, and the next important thing is that it powers startups immensely. It is understood that all startups need a digital presence in today’s world, and that is where they come to Flutter. Being an easy-to-use choice and requiring relatively fewer investments, Flutter has been the go-to for almost all startups for a few years these include eBay Motors, Toyota, Philips Hue, Ali Baba, Tonal, Realtor, and many more. Here is an insight into some of the startups having a joyous experience with Flutter:

I. NuBank

Nubank made the switch to Flutter back in 2019 for their mobile application. Giving a detailed road map for criteria, they were surprised by the expertise of the Flutter community. Since then, there has been no looking back. Using Flutter, NuBank launched a new life insurance feature in just three months — the fastest launch ever.

II. Dream11

A service being the ray of light for more than 50 million fantasy sports users in India, Dream11 took the expertise of Flutter for the development of multiplatform solutions to deliver a highly innovative user experience, and they excelled. This made them stick to Flutter for always. With a user base of millions of fans that play the game daily Dream11 has proved that scalability and flexibility can go hand in hand and thus the case for Flutter gets stronger.

III. Etsy

The one-stop-shop for collectors and artists, Etsy has been using Flutter to build its application for sellers and provide its customers with an enhanced experience. Etsy sellers say they find it easy to sell their products with Flutter — this is amazing, isn’t it? And the best part is that Etsy has saved hundreds of dollars in app development and maintenance. That’s like eating the cake and having it too.

IV. Invoice Ninja:

Invoice Ninja helps anyone build and submit invoices in seconds. The product is loved by a large number of customers worldwide. Invoice Ninja chose Flutter to build their apps and that decision has worked out very well for them. The app is easy, light, and works like a breeze. One of the users posted a review for iPhone which says:

“Great job guys! Your app is the best invoicing app, hands down. Thank you for developing and maintaining an app for the iPhone and the Mac as well, it makes my job a lot more convenient.”
It is no surprise that invoice ninja is used by more than 2 million people.

To conclude, overall, Flutter has become an excellent framework for developing highly performant yet aesthetic applications for all screens. This helps companies enjoy the world of cross-platform techs and experience their own.

Note: This article first appeared at: Why do Startups prefer Flutter over anything else for their Apps in 2022?

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