Appcelerator was a mobile app development platform acquired by Axway in 2016. It has been discontinued.
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Flutter
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Flutter is an open-source mobile application development framework created by Google. It is used to develop applications for Android and iOS, as well as being the primary method of creating applications for Google Fuchsia.
I do not think I can recommend Appcelerator at this point due to the issues with Appcelerator studio, lack of good debugging support, lack of thorough documentation and forums and the additional cost overhead of licenses. The pros are just that it allows for cross-platform development. However, Cordova does a much better job of it and excels at places where Appcelerator currently struggles
Flutter by Google is well suited where you have to make an app across multiple platforms like iOS, Android, Web, Desktop and you don't have the bandwidth to create multiple teams for the Native app. This makes sure you have a faster development and you don't have to worry about how your product will look across different platforms. It is also very smooth/fast in response, making it close to feel like a Native app, this makes it an easy pick for a Fintech product where speed matters. Flutter by Google also has a huge library of Components, which are well tested and developed by Google's Flutter by Google team itself, making the development even more fast since the majority of required components are already available.
It is very hard to debug your code. Breakpoints never worked for us even with the latest Appcelerator Studio and we had to rely on log statements to debug.
There is a need to purchase licenses from Appcelerator to run the code on a device or for creating iOS distribution builds. This is an additional cost when you have already paid for Apple developer program for precisely these things.
If things are broken due to lack to support between Appcelerator and a new iOS version, you pretty much have to rely on a new version release from Appcelerator for the issue to be fixed.
It is difficult to create enterprise distribution builds where the distribution certificate is owned by your organization's team and you only have a development certificate for the same.
The forums on developer.appcelerator.com are seldom helpful. It is hard to find solutions for issues even on other forums like stack overflow.
Occasionally updates to the Flutter SDK result in wide-sweeping changes that seem to not be thoroughly tested and considered. Flutter sometimes evolves too fast for its own good.
While the 3rd-party Flutter package ecosystem is vast and rich, 1st-party support for basic things (audio/video playback, battery information, Bluetooth services, etc.) are lacking. You are occasionally forced to rely on an open-source package for use-cases that other platforms have native support for.
Documentation, particularly around testing, is lacking. While there are some great docs, like the Dart Style Guide, many Flutter-focused support documents are lacking in quality and real-world usability.
Flutter allows you to architect an app however you want. While this is a great feature, it also adds complexity and leads to the current state of Flutter's state management, where there are 50+ options on how to organize your app, with very little official guidance or recommendations from the Flutter team. For a beginner, this can create decision paralysis.
Flutter by Google is very easy to start with. The initial setup they provide is very helpful and easy to understand. The default project setup is also good and can be deployed to production without changing much. Flutter by Google provides a huge library of components, which are created and tested by their own team, making the development of application much faster and robust. Flutter by Google also has a huge community support where we can find components built by the community and we can contribute our own components as well, which helps in faster dev time. Applications developed using Flutter by Google are very smooth, almost feels like native, which helps in creating good impression on customers/clients.
Appcelerator makes you write a structured code whereas Cordova just packages your code and you are free to structure it. Appcelerator bridges your javascript code with native code and that would make it run faster than javascript code in Cordova apps. However, with recent mobile browsers, you would hardly notice any performance deterioration with Cordova apps. Appcelerator struggles with issues related to its IDE, debugging, documentation and forums and additional costs. Cordova makes it much more simpler to develop cross-platform apps with better developer support, debugging support, documentation and forums minus the additional costs.
I have experience with react and React Native. I would say that the idea behind all those frameworks are quite similar. However, I found the javascript-based frameworks a bit more accessible as you could utilise your javascript knowledge. Here, Flutter works with its own language. This has advantages and disadvantages sometimes. I found the community around javascript frameworks bigger and therefore sometimes more helpful. However, Flutter does a good job here as well. I think the main argument for Flutter is its usability for less experienced developers. If you do not have knowledge in javascript or other programming languages then I think it is much easier to start with Flutter than with another framework like react. I think the package that you get form scratch is better than in the other frameworks were you have to set up and learn a lot more before you can start.
We were able to build and deploy a mobile app with Appcelerator. However, the platform still has issues and does not cover our needs as much as some of its competitor like cordova does.
The rapid development capabilities of Flutter allow us to build apps we could not have previously considered commercially viable, opening new revenue streams.
Free and open licensing made adoption very easy (ie. free/low cost!).
In comparison to Qt, our time spent arguing with build tools and perfecting development environments has decreased substantially.
