Create A Cross-Platform App Using Flutter In 2024

The increasing number of smartphone users worldwide has pushed businesses and startups from all domains to think about having a robust mobile application to survive in the cut-throat competitive market. And a rising number of advantages of having a cross-platform app has left businesses with minimum technical reasons to choose native app development.

Over the years, with the great advancement and innovations in the mobile app development industry, you have a wide choice of technologies to develop the cross-platform application. But, recently, Google’s Flutter has outshined as one of the best options for both developers and businesses to get started with their app in just a few days.

What is Flutter?

“Flutter is an advanced software development kit integrated with all the flexible widgets and beautiful UI that enables you to create a high-performance, scalable and robust application that delivers native-app like experience.

It has been launched in 2017 as a robust mobile UI framework that enables you to develop outstanding Android and iOS applications with a single code base. The best part is, it is integrated with a wide choice of widgets and flexible plugins that make it easier for developers to build a highly interactive and engaging application in a perfect record time. Its ability to speed up the entire app development process allows businesses to reach a wider base of audience and capture the large segment of the market.``

Alibaba is one of the biggest online e-commerce companies and has started deploying Flutter for their application development and leveraging 50+ million users on its app. Apart from Alibaba — Google, Hamilton, App Tree, Musical Asn and more have also deployed Flutter for their cross-platform application.

You must be wondering, despite being a young framework, how Flutter is growing in popularity faster than a beanstalk for developing a cross-platform application?

Noteworthy Features of Flutter For Cross-Platform App Development

Before you made the decision whether Flutter will be the right choice for Cross-platform app development, you should go through with these features of Flutter that make it stand out in the crowd:

• One of the biggest perks of using Flutter is its new beta version that allows developers to build multiple applications that seamlessly run on various platforms, using a single codebase.
• Flutter can increase developer’s productivity tenfold with its Hot Reload feature. This feature of Flutter provides the access to make changes in the codes that instantly reflect without even refreshing the file.
• With great dedication and efforts, Google has launched Flutter and made it highly flexible and expressive by adding a broad library of highly scalable widgets. Flutter also provides complete support for developing customized interfaces with exclusive and engaging themes.
• Google’s Flutter is known for its productivity and rapid development process, as it leverages a highly efficient and portable GPU rendering UI that allows it to work on multiple and latest interfaces.
• Flutter provides complete freedom to the mobile app development company to leverage the support of a wide range of IDEs such as Visual Studio Code, Xcode, and Android Studio.
• The best part about choosing Flutter for the app development is it leverages Flutter Doctor command that automates the quality assurance test of the app and assists in identifying the bugs in the app. Using this command, app developers can easily locate the problems in the app and are able to rectify them in real-time.

Some Technical Features That Bring Flutter to Boom are:

• To make your app more interesting, engaging and interactive, Google Flutter provides you with extended support for setting up and formatting pictures and online videos. This feature allows developers to save a great amount of time on development and enables them to build highly engaging apps without having to get into long procedures of picture/video editing.
• No matter on which platform your app is being built up, Flutter is a dynamic platform that can easily be embedded into your existing app.
• Flutter leverages advanced APIs that make the app animations look cleaner, faster and smoother. Since it uses 2D GPU- accelerated API, therefore, it keeps the animation clear and crisp.

To wrap up this introduction, it is fair enough to say that Flutter consists of two parts — Software development kit (an extensive collection of tools that aid you in app development) and framework (a collection of widgets or UI elements). To develop an application with Flutter, you need to use a programming language called Dart, which is Google’s in-house programming language.

Now the question is how to get started with the Flutter app that seamlessly runs on multiple platforms?

However, before we get straight into the app development process and learn about the coding, it is worth understanding how it can benefit your business…

Why Should Startups and Businesses Select Flutter for the Cross-Platform App Development?

Firstly, with the above mentioned benefits, it is clear that Flutter can bring you a wide ray of benefits and make the entire app development process easier and quicker for any software development company.

Apart, here are the few major reasons why startups should choose a Flutter for app development:

• It Saves Time and Ensures Quick Time to Market

While making an investment in the mobile application, it’s important to learn how early you can launch your app to the market to meet the needs of the targeted audience. Also, in-app development, the higher the time your app will take, the more expensive its development cost will be. And, Flutter app development is comparatively faster to the native app development for Android and iOS platforms.

The reason being, mobile app development companies use a single codebase to develop the applications that can seamlessly run on all major platforms (Android, iOS, Windows), therefore it cuts down the need of writing code from scratch.

It saves couples of hours from writing codes for different apps and makes it easy for testing as it cuts down the need for testing apps on multiple platforms. An app developer can make a change in one codebase and changes will take place in another coding, hence, reduce the app testing time.

• Build a Serverless App With Google Firebase

With the support of Google’s firebase, Flutter can allow mobile app developers to make their app infrastructure server-less and scalable. With Flutter, app developers can automate the app development process by simply combining the Firebase with the other tools and get rid of developing additional tools for backend support.

Flutter is integrated with Firebase, so app developers can leverage some of the major services including real-time database hosting, cloud-related functions, cloud storage and more.

• It Saves a Cost on App Development

Whether you are a startup or an entrepreneur, the app development cost is always a biggest pressing question for you. But while hiring the mobile app development company for the Flutter app development, it cost you quarter price than developing a native app for both Android and iOS platform.

For instance, if it takes 100 hrs for writing codes for both Native app platforms then Flutter app developers can write codes in 40 hrs for an application that can run on multiple platforms.

Also, developers productivity can be increased tenfold by using the Hot Reload feature of the Flutter. With this feature, developers can make instant changes in the backend and eliminate the need for recompilation that actually increases the development time. In fact, Hot Reload is the USP of the Flutter and saves both time and money for startups.

• Delivers Excellent Experience to the Users

What exactly makes your app so engaging, interactive, attractive? It’s only the app’s UI!

And with the collaboration of Flutter with Android’s Material Design and Cupertino Widgets for iOS, Flutter apps guarantee you native-like app experience. Apart, provides you with a unique mechanism and a broad choice of cross-platform tools to ensure startups can come up with a highly engaging app with enhanced UI and UX design.

Flutter is such a versatile mobile UI and Framework, that allows you to develop the application of various industries including healthcare, ecommerce, retail, food, entertainment, car booking and more.

Not only it allows you to develop any sort of mobile application but also enables you to make it run on multiple platforms. And with the increasing interest of developers in this robust framework and the enhancements to witnesses in the future, app build with Flutter is expected to add more value to your business.

But how to create a Cross-platform application With Flutter? Before you proceed to look for the cost of app development, let’s get into the codes of app development using Flutter…

How to Create a Cross-Platform Application With Flutter?

To get started with the Flutter application, you need to understand that it’s Google’s portable UI toolkit that enables you to build natively compiled mobile, web and desktop apps using Google’s Dart programming language. It basically has three components that play a major role in app development.

• Flutter engine: Provides a low-level of rendering support using Google’s Skia graphics library.
• Library: It is being written in Dart and provides you with a basic layer of functionality for the app and all essential APIs that enable your app to communicate with the engine.
• Broad Choice of Widgets: Flutter provides a wide collection of widgets that helps developers in creating basic building blocks for UI.

Now, the question is how to install it and write your first Flutter application?

Instead of directly getting started with the high-level overview of Flutter, we will provide you with the simple easy guideline to get started with the basic, functional app.

Step 1: Installing Flutter

In order to develop a cross-platform application for Android and iOS platform using Flutter, firstly make sure you have following components installed at your system:

• Xcode
• Android Studio

And there are multiple ways to install Flutter to your machine, but the easiest and simplest ways to get started is to download the installer from Flutter’s official site or through Github.

Since we are developing a cross-platform application using Flutter, therefore, here is the setup instruction for the different operating platforms:

• Linux
• macOS
• Windows

Installation of Flutter toolkit to your app can add a little complexity, so you can choose to hire flutter app developer experienced in handling flutter projects. If you are already developing an app for iOS and Android, then you may already have some of the prerequisites installed at the system.

Rest, Flutter and dart have some excellent editor and IDE support including Visual Studio Code Extension. But there’s also an option of using Android Studio and IntelliJ.

But if you are a macOS user, then you can look for the HomeBrew option, as there is no official solution for you.

brew cask install socheatsok78/flutter/flutter

Step 2: Creating a Project

Once you install the SDK and tools, the next step is to create a project with Flutter. And the direct way to get started is to type the below mentioned command in the terminal:

$ flutter create hello_world

Make sure the project name has a lower case and use underscore characters. With this command, you can create a folder named hello_world that further contains a number of files. And to examine the content of the project that you have created, just open hello_world project using Android Studio.

Once you create the projects, next choose to Flutter Application among four options coming to your window.

Give your project name hello_world as decided above. And the best part about using the Android Studio is that developers can install the SDK from here too with the single click of a button.

While jumping over the next screen, you will find some other options to fill in such as company domain, package name and more. Don’t worry, you can use anything here if you don’t have an actual domain.

Next click on Androidx.* artifacts! By using this option, you basically choose to use Android Jetpack that is a complete suite of libraries, tools, and guidance to assist developers to write high-end applications without any hassle.

So if you are creating a new application using Flutter, then Androidx is highly recommended to developers. It enables you to leverage a high level of Native Android stuff in your application. Next, you need to make a choice between Kotlin or Swift support. Whatever you are choosing here will not impact anything here. You can either choose to stay with the Flutter SDK as well.

Once you mark your preference, click on the finish button and have to wait while Android Studio is setting up the project for you.

Step 3: Running Your App

So you have set up your Android Studio with the basic hello_world app that you can run on iOS and Android platform. However, before you start running your project, make sure either your real phone is being connected to the computer or developers have created an emulator (Virtual device) to test the app.

In addition, if you are running it on macOS, then luckily you have the ability to create both an Android emulator or an iOS emulator. So here’s how your final app will look on both devices after running the hello_world project on both of these platforms.

• Creating a Web Applications

So while we are talking about creating a cross-platform application using Flutter, it means you can create a web application as well with this framework. So all you need to do is to follow the same simple steps to create a web application as you follow for a mobile app.

Here are steps for getting started for web support:

-Configure the Flutter tool for the web support
-Create a new project and select a web application
-Run a Project with web support
-Build an app with web support
-And lastly, add the web support to an existing application.

To create a web application using Flutter, you can click here to meet the requirements needed for developing a Flutter app with web support.

• Creating a Desktop Application

Finally, when it comes to creating a Native desktop application, maybe you will feel a little disappointment here.

Despite being the second most popular frameworks for the cross-platform application, Flutter is still at the phase of development and Google’s team is constantly working to extend Flutter to support desktop environments.

Here I would suggest hiring Flutter app developer that enables you to create Windows, macOS and Linux applications with Flutter. Or you can click here to understand everything about the requirements and supports you may need for creating applications for desktop using Flutter.

Best Alternatives to Flutter of Developing Cross-platform Application?

Considering the below graph, it is clearly portraying React Native, Ionic, Cordova are the closest competitors Flutter for developing cross-platform applications in 2024. Let’s learn how flexible and efficient these frameworks are in app development.

Image Source

Let’s begin with it:

— React Native (Learn Once, Write Anywhere)

React Native is one of the strongest competitors of Flutter, that has been launched in 2015 by Facebook and has taken the world by storm as it is based on JavaScript programming language and offers you a broad catalogue of plugins for app development. The best part about React Native is that developers can create multiple applications by using a single base.

The Best Selling Points of React Native Are:

• It makes the app development app process faster, easier and efficient as it is based on JavaScript.
• Its a community drive framework that ensures outstanding support to the developers.
• By using advanced technologies, React Native ensures modular and intuitive architecture for the app development.

— Ionic Ensure Better Development Environments for Hybrid apps

Ionic is one of the oldest mobile app development frameworks that use HTML to create hybrid apps. It ensures better Native app experience to the users especially while considering the speed, performance, support and third-party access. Developing your app with Ionic can be an ultimate choice if you have limited time to market your app.

The Best Selling Points of Ionic Are:

• It offers Native-style UI components and layouts
• Being backed by HLMT5, it requires a wrapper like Cordova or Phonegap to work as a Native App.

How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Cross-Platform App With Flutter?

Cross-platform app development using Flutter Framework is highly preferable among all sorts of businesses ranging from startups to leading market brands and developers. Since Flutter brings extra perks and features to the app development that ultimately saves you development time and cost.

And the most appreciated feature among them is its compatibility to run an application on multiple platforms including Android and iOS. Since its end up the need of writing the codes for multiple platforms, therefore, it results in cost reduction.

But the final cost of the cross-platform Flutter app is depending upon various factors as:

• UI/UX Designing
• Backend/Frontend and Server
• Functionalities and Integrations
• Quality Testing
• Maintenance and Support
• Development team and technologies that you use for development.

However, still, with various studies and market researches, we have concluded the estimations based on the complexity of the app:

• Developing an application with basic functionalities and simple features using Futter may cost you from $5000 to $7000+.
• The cost of Flutter app development solution with a middle level of complexity will be starting from $10,000 to $15,000+.
• The development process of an app with an advanced level of features will cost you from $25,000 to $50,000+.

However, the final cost estimation of the project is depending upon the unique requirements of your business and end needs.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this blog has provided you with great insights about why businesses should consider developing a cross-platform application using Flutter over developing a native app for both platforms. Flutter can help you save time and cost on app development and enables you to take your business to new heights. With this short tutorial, you may have understood how easily and faster it would be to get started with your flutter app.

In case, if you find anything complicated and troubling, then you can choose to hire a mobile app developer to handle the complexity of the project.