Felgo vs. Flutter by Google vs. Moovweb XDN

Felgo shines in rapid prototype development and fast iterations. It also has a very short learning curve compared to many other technologies that promise "code once, deploy everywhere." It is not appropriate if you are not willing to mess with the licensing related to Qt but I am still waiting for a clear answer on my doubts from the Felgo team.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It depends on who you are. If you are very small it won't be worth the money. If you have a very cranky site with nested tables coming out of every orifice, maybe you should look at a replatform or desktop rewrite first. If you have a site with vast numbers of custom content pages, it will work but may not be cost effective. Moovweb is well suited to you if you need the ability to control mobile experiences and respond to changes in mobile and the demands of mobile aware executives who want to move more quickly than your current IT processes allow. It is well suited if you need something quickly but also want the option to bring mobile development and support in-house some time in the next year or two (which you should). It is well suited if your desire to improve a responsive experience has been thwarted by internal fears over the impact that it might have on desktop. It is well suited if you want to experiment on mobile but do more than just change the color of a button or make a font larger. It's very good at letting a UX team try things out and see what real customers do.

• Ready available solutions for all platform mobile app development.
• Live hot reloading of UI and other advance controls by Felgo implemented in Qt.
• Using Qt underneath provides an opportunity to developers to use it in all kind of sectors like embedded devices, mobile apps, desktop apps, games etc.

Incentivized

• User interface design works great across all platforms, including native styling for iOS/macOS.
• Native compilation for mobile platforms and a decent rendering engine results in slick apps that can make the most of your device.
• Dart is a well thought out language and easy to pick up.
• Makes cross-platform development of good looking GUI apps a doddle.

Incentivized

• Moovweb takes the time to really understand your needs and challenges and is willing to work with and address them. They are partners during and AFTER implementation.
• Moovweb and their implementation partner 64Labs has a fantastic response time and work ethic. They really will do what it takes.
• Moovweb takes the time to share their product road map with customers.

Incentivized

• QML component / C++ code with hot reload feature.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Depending on how your site is built and maintained, there may be a different solution that will be a better option for your business and customer needs.
• At the end of the day, this is another layer that is added to your development plan and time to ensure updates work across multiple devices. Moovweb is really good about the turn-time for these updates, but there still needs to be the added QA step for M&T optimization per release.

I am happy with the constant feedback that I am receiving from the team. Although most of it is marketing related, there are some interesting and valuable materials that they have been pushing to ease my learning.

The quality of the documentation and the ease of use may be some important values to take into account.

We believe that the agility that we have acquired until now for developing apps for our business cases give this framework an important lead.

Incentivized

Personally as a Mobile Architect I am a huge proponent of building mobile-first responsive websites. I will always fight for a lobby for businesses to build sites with all devices in mind and not focus their attention on desktop driven sites which are then adaptively scaled to meet the demands of the business, in my opinion leading to a never ending cycle of building separate media queries to compensate for every device the business chooses to market to

Incentivized

As with any product, Felgo has some edges to it, but from our past experiences evaluating "code once, deploy everywhere" platforms, we were really surprised at how fast the team went from exploring, into playing and presenting prototypes in very little time.

The dev cycle is really fast as I can get an almost instantaneous feedback on the changes that I make. And it is refreshing to see how I am able to target several platforms at once.

The javascript plus QML combination made it really easy to pick up for me and I am certain sure that many devs can migrate from Web only into multi-platform in a fast manner.

And there is also the possibility to implement C++ code if the need arises to support and bridge native libraries.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Good set of customer success people combined with the flexibility to use high-quality onshore partners if workload increases at busy times. I think Moovweb's support efforts are pretty solid.

1. Don't spend weeks in design. Because of the way the technology works nuances of design can change very quickly further down the line. We have changed the look of the product list for a client a week before launch.
2. Push for getting the project into UAT within four weeks of the kickoff of the project. There are few retailer projects that need to take more than that. In my experience the more concentrated the timeline the more effective the implementation.
3. Check that there are no major changes planned on desktop during the time of your implementation (another reason to keep the development to four weeks).
4. If you have custom mobile content requirements, get them to your implementer at the start. Moovweb is great at heavy-lifting existing content, but your implementer will need to recommend solutions for custom content that will need to be tested. Get these requirements out at the start.
5. Make a list of your desktop plugins. Moovweb can handle them all, but they can be handled in different ways
6. If you have Paypal/Google Wallet and want it on mobile as part of your project, talk about that early on.

The helpful, responsive customer support. In contrast to frameworks like Flutter, you can count on a professional team that can help you out if needed

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.

Incentivized

This is the only mobile technology we have used. We went through an extensive research and vetting process. In the end Moovweb was the best choice for technology and business needs. We considered the following companies: Moovweb,Mobify, Usablenet, Mad Mobile, SKAVA, Wompmobile. Forrester has a mobile infrastrucutre services report that could be very helpful.

Incentivized

• product not released so not applicable.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• The implementation was 4 months from start to finish. Mobile is about 10% of our visits today and our mobile revenue for the first half is about $200K so we will have a payback in 1 -2 years.
• Moovweb is not the most economical solution out there. It is one of the most comprehensive for sites needing all their content available for mobile.