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Flutter makes cross-platform app development slick, professional, and a joy.
April 25, 2021

Flutter makes cross-platform app development slick, professional, and a joy.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Flutter, by Google

After evaluating several graphical framework solutions, we've recently adopted Flutter as our framework of choice for developing native apps on both desktop and mobile platforms. We wanted something that had free and open licensing, solid cross-platform support for Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android, and a strong ecosystem. Flutter ticks all those boxes and then some.
  • 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.
  • Flutter has a relatively young ecosystem. It's growing fast and looks like it's here to stay, but it will take time for it to mature fully.
  • A problem that plagues all cross-platform GUI frameworks - the 'look and feel' can be awkward to perfect for all targets from a single layout. To be fair, it's hard to see how this could be improved much, and it is worth accepting you may need to use platform specific layouts in some situations.
  • Strong ties to the Dart language may put some developers off, as it's not the widest known of languages. However, it is easy to pick up, and makes for a very pleasant to use, static typed language.
  • Free and open source licensing.
  • Good, easy to use tooling.
  • Growing ecosystem of support, online communities, knowledge.
  • 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.
The main alternative to Flutter I have experience with, is Qt framework. For a long time, Qt was the go-to if you wanted a cross platform desktop application, probably written in C++ or Python, that could take on the 'look and feel' of the target platform. However, Qt is somewhat hampered by its licensing, in my opinion, and its relevance has diminished with the dominance of mobile platforms, and newer design philosophies. Qt is also a pain to maintain. In comparison, Flutter and Dart are totally free and open, make use of more modern approaches to app development, and let you achieve results VERY quickly. They are also a pleasure to use.

Do you think Flutter by Google delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Flutter by Google's feature set?

Yes

Did Flutter by Google live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Flutter by Google go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Flutter by Google again?

Yes

Flutter makes it very easy to build frontend apps for all major platforms, from a single code base, with very few, if any, drawbacks. This is a game-changer, especially if you're a small team or a sole developer without the resources to manage multiple implementations. If you're starting work on a new app and need to target multiple platforms, I believe you won't currently find another solution that will get you up and running as quickly as Flutter does.

If you need to integrate a graphical framework with an existing C/C++/Java/Python project, then Flutter is likely not the solution for you because of its strong ties to Dart. For example, it may make more sense to use something like Qt for your C++ and Python apps. However, if you ever get the chance to re-write it, Flutter will seem like bliss in comparison.