Embrace Flutter for Cross-Platform Development

More than just a UI toolkit, Flutter is a gateway to building high-quality, cross-platform mobile applications from a single codebase. Since its inception, Flutter has surged in popularity among developers and enterprises alike because of its powerful framework backed by Google.

At Fueled, we started working with Flutter over six years ago when it first entered beta. Since then, we’ve harnessed its robust features to develop and launch more than ten cutting-edge enteprrise-level applications, including Meow Wolf, Fennel, and EverFi. Here, we believe that Flutter is the future of app development. Here’s why.

WHY FLUTTER?

Mobile First

  • Unlike some other cross-platform development tools, Flutter was purpose-built with mobile app development as its primary focus.

A Reliable Foundation

  • Because it is built and maintained by Google, Flutter ensures continuous support and innovation, providing a reliable foundation for your cross-platform development needs.

Hot Reload

  • See code changes almost immediately without having to restart the app, enabling more rapid development cycles that make it especially well suited for quick prototyping.

Native-Like Performance

  • By emulating the native experience, Flutter empowers developers to create eye-catching designs that display as native on both platforms.

Deploy Apps to the Web

  • Utilizing WASM (Web Assembly) Flutter can easily deploy rich apps to the web — this is ideal for cases where the experience might be mobile-first, but also benefit from a port to web.

With regad to other cross platform solutions like React Native or Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP), Flutter shines because it exports to machine code, and may not necessarily require platform-specific knowledge.

Sam Skelton, Director of Mobile Engineering

FLUTTER IN ENTERPRISE ACTION

We’ve experienced firsthand how Flutter’s single codebase approach can accelerate development while maintaining the high quality and native-like performance critical to user satisfaction. Check out just a few of our projects built with Flutter:

Meow Wolf

Meow Wolf is an arts & entertainment company that creates immersive, multimedia experiences that transport audiences of all ages into fantastic realms. They approached Fueled to create an app that would expand the Meow Wolf universe beyond their physical exhibitions and also serve as a hub for ticket sales.

The unique and immersive experience of Meow Wolf couldn’t easily be executed with native iOS or Android development but rather needed Flutter’s flexible capabilities. When opening the Meow Wolf app, users are transported into a new universe that looks completely different than their typical operating system (OS). Fueled created bespoke aspects like a funky wifi antenna to show connectivity and a redesigned battery life icon. By utilizing Flutter, we only had to develop this customized experience once for the functionality and appearance to be confidently identical across platforms.

Check out the full case study.

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Fennel

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Fennel, a Certified B Corporation and registered broker-dealer, is a mobile investing app that empowers retail investors to take back the power of their investments and push large corporations to make meaningful changes. Fueled partnered closely with Fennel's CEO Daniel Naim on the branding, design, and development of their cross-platform app from the ground up.

Fueled utilized Flutter to develop the Fennel app in a tight turnaround, making the app available on iOS and Android before the next fiscal year. Because Fennel is a financial decision-making app — not something that should contain disparities in calculations or logic — Flutter’s single codebase guaranteed mirrored displays across platforms, reassuring users no matter which device they invested from.

Check out the full case study.

EVERFI

EVERFI offers custom education and workplace solutions for students K-12, organizations, and communities. They partnered with Fueled to create a game-based education app for students 5-7 years old to improve literacy. The app is comprised of customized animations and user interface (UI), making cross-platform development a wise choice for efficient engineering and identical experiences across devices.

Because of the complex animations, Fueled developed EVERFI’s WORD Force app with Flutter, which unlike other cross-platform development tools interacts directly with a device’s hardware, ensuring high performance and a smooth user experience.

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Is Flutter the Right Choice?

While we believe Flutter is reshaping the future of mobile experiences, its potential depends on sensible implementation. Our role goes beyond just development; we provide clients with the knowledge to make informed decisions.

Whether Flutter is the right tool for your project depends on specific goals and contexts. Despite its capabilities, Flutter may not always be the right fit for every project. Issues can arise with heavy performance demands, such as customized video capture or interruptible transitions, and limitations with native hardware like cameras and Bluetooth.

  • You might notice the UI performance may not be the smoothest in certain situations, and sometimes there can be extra work needed to implement UI elements that look native for a given device. So for mobile experiences that are more platform standardized (either uniquely tailored to iOS and Android, or using standard UI paradigms) the advantages Flutter offers over native start to wane.
  • For unsupported functionality, implemented via Flutter Platform Channels, engineers with platform-specific knowledge are required, potentially adding extra overhead for engineering hours, ongoing maintenance, and future hiring considerations.
  • Flutter is not ideal if you are wanting to capitalize on platform optimizations, for example more deeply integrated frameworks (like camera or Bluetooth) or ecosystem experiences (like CarPlay, watchOS or VisionOS).

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