I have been building apps in Flutter for over 3 years for businesses in the Philadelphia area ranging from the GoPuff’s new driver app to HIPAA-compliant shift management software for local healthcare companies. I frequently speak at both local and national events about how businesses can save time and money using the Flutter platform. If you’re looking to build a Flutter app i’d love to help, please get in touch.
What is Flutter?
Flutter is a development framework created by Google with the intention of making cross-platform app development simple and consistent. Since its initial release in 2017 Flutter has been the framework of choice for over 100,000 apps in the Google Play Store alone. More recently, Flutter for Web has become stable and it is even possible to build apps for MacOS, Windows and Linux using the same codebase.
Why Choose Flutter?
There are several cross platform app development frameworks out there, namely React Native. After building apps in both Flutter and React Native, I have chosen Flutter as my framework of choice for the following reasons:
1. Built-in UI for Material Design and Cupertino
Out of the box, Flutter has ready-to-use components (called widgets) for both Google’s Material Design and Apple’s Cupertino. Combined Flutter’s simple material theming support Flutter makes it simple to get up and running with an app that looks beautiful.
2. Performance
Performance is always top of mind for me when considering the user experience of any digital experience I create. There have been countless studies by companies like Google and Amazon showing that there is a direct correlation between page speed and eCommerce conversion rates. Fluter utilizes the Skia rendering engine which is the same library that powers Google Chrome, Android, and Firefox which makes it lightning fast. Flutter’s goal is to give users 60FPS without any performance optimizations necessary. When there are performance issues (which is rare) Flutter has an excellent set of performance profiling tools to understand exactly what is slowing the app down.
3. A Robust Package Ecosystem heralded by Google
One challenge I always faced working with other platforms is working with 3rd party packages. Thankfully, Google maintains many of their own packages for Flutter which means that you can rely on their stability and are able to get official support from Google in the rare case of a bug. Here are some of the most common packages I use:
- Google Maps
- Google Mobile Ads
- Payments (Google Pay)
- Google Sign In
- Camera
- Google Fonts
- Firebase (Auth, Crashlytics, Firestore, etc…)
- Many, many more…
There are also some amazing packages built and maintained by the flutter community
- Geolocator (geolocation)
- Share Plus (social sharing)
- Apple Sign In
- Font Awesome
- Etc…
Are you ready to work with me build your next Flutter app?
I’m actively seeking Flutter projects to work on for mobile, desktop and web solutions. Please contact me and lets discuss your project.