This article will make great attempts to answer the golden question often asked by many about the two big names, Flutter and React Native, and their efficiency for creating tech products and increase in use by many app development companies. Their influence in the development space gives room for healthy competitions, high performance, and continuous learning. An expert app development company and specialist app developer will either choose Flutter vs React Native to build cross-platform apps.
Flutter and React Native are two frameworks that have proven to be exceptional in developers’ hands and how well they are used in creating some of the best mobile applications in the marketplace. Could it be that their uniqueness, features, and advantages are tied to the fact that they are backed by two big players in the tech world – Google and Facebook?
No doubt, both frameworks have many resources for creating excellent products websites, and mobile application products for different platforms, purposes, and services. However, one big question has always rocked the air of web gurus, website owners, and mobile app developers; “what is the difference between Flutter and React Native”?
A LOOK AT FLUTTER VS REACT NATIVE 2021 GOOGLE TRENDS
Alright! Enough said about the article’s focus, now let’s get down to answering the golden questions. To answer the question, we will be looking at these;
- Flutter VS React Native 2021 Google Trends
- What is React Native?
- What is Flutter
- Flutter vs. React Native 2021 popularity
What Is React Native?
React Native is a JavaScript framework that is used for building hybrid applications. Like Flutter, you create cross-platform apps with one code base with React Native. It has gained popularity because of features and extensive adoption by enterprises, app development company start-ups, and tech-savvy individuals. React Native started from a Facebook Hackathon project where they would come together to use technology to proffer solutions to real-life problems. Being a popular platform, Facebook knew that React Native would someday be a powerful tool; they decided to make it open-source. After some time, Facebook made it available on GitHub. Today React Native has a tremendous adoption rate among growing and top app development companies.
React Native has some valuable tools that add some good features and credits to its framework. They are;
- It is easy to learn and use (primarily by JavaScript users)
- It uses rendering APIs
- It has a strong community
- Easier updates
React Native has an excellent ecosystem. Developers claim that it gives them several options to choose from and use in building mobile apps. For example, an app development company can decide to use the official documentation or use a different option; Expo is the most popular.
In the React Native framework, JavaScript and JSX are used for building user interfaces on web apps. It also uses the CSS Flexbox for its layout design. These tools make transitions and scrolling on Real Native web apps to be smooth and intelligent.
What is Flutter?
Flutter is an open-source, cross-platform framework that Google developed. It is efficiently used in building iOS and Android applications with a single code-base. It has been in use since its introduction by Google in 2015 and has continued to grow and gain relevance as a powerful cross-platform development tool.
Before introducing the Flutter framework, the building of cross-platform applications was very complex, time-consuming and several developers with different skills would have to be involved in the project. For instance, to develop a web site or a mobile app that is required to work on Android, iOS, Desktop, and mobile devices, an app development company has to hire a specialized desktop developer, an experienced web developer, an android developer, and a dedicated iOS developer to deliver the project successfully.
But with Flutter, an app development company only needs to hire one developer to use a single code base and develop a cross-platform application. This will save a lot of time, resources; the stress of managing different developers using different tools to create a single project is taken off their shoulders.
Flutter has reinvented the wheel of web and mobile app development as it has made it very possible for one developer to create a product that works well across all platforms.
Flutter uses widgets for building apps. Developers that use Flutter have to combine different widgets in order to build a complete UI. Widgets are used for designing a menu or a button which can be considered as structural elements. Also, they define stylistic elements such as font and colors. And lastly, widgets define the layout of an app which we usually call padding.
One important thing to note is that Flutter provides developers with its widgets (ready-made) which means it doesn’t use OEM widgets. The Flutter ready-made widgets are a pure resemblance of native Android or IOS apps, as in it follows their designs. However, app developers can also create new widgets to suit their purpose and development needs.
Dart programming gives Flutter some exciting features that we do not see in other systems, such as those using reactive views. With Flutter, the view tree of every new frame is refreshed. How does Flutter do this? Flutter does this by creating many objects that would live in a single frame. Dart’s tree-shaking compiler is a game-changer. It compiles the codes that the developer needs and makes use of them on the app. Also, there is a free and sufficient library of widgets available for use.
A LOOK AT FLUTTER VS REACT NATIVE 2021 POPULARITY
In this section, we shall be looking at the statistics; Flutter vs. React Native 2021 popularity.
The statistics from Stack Overflow on which framework would developers pick as the most preferable? The survey result puts Flutter ahead of React Native with 75.4%, ranking it as the 3rd most loved framework on the survey list, while React Native made it to the 8th position on the survey list with 62.5%.
On Google Trends, the most entered search query between Flutter and React shows that Flutter scores up to 86 while React Native scores 58.
The statistics from Github on the leading contributor to open-source projects show that Flutter has 13k while React Native has 9.1, putting Flutter ahead again.
With the statistics from Stack Overflow, Google Trends, and Github, we can conclude that Flutter has more users and increasing popularity than React Native. This means an app development company and a web developer will likely choose Flutter over React.
The Flutter vs React Native 2021 popularity is still alive, with Flutter ahead of React Native.
BENEFITS OF USING FLUTTER MOBILE APP
Development Is Quick and Fast. A mobile app development company and app developers acknowledge that one of the benefits of using flutter mobile app development tools is not far-fetched because it enhances more dynamic and faster mobile app development. All changes made on an app are swiftly reflected on the app, which in the Flutter way is called Hot Reload. When an app development company uses Hot reloads, it will take not more than a second to reflect the changes made (fixing bugs, adding new features, and other experiments).
Hot reload is a vital tool that enables an app development company’s development teams to cooperate speedily during testing different changes on the app at the development stage. However, some changes require a restart (Hot Reloaded Limitations)
Flutter Is Very Compatible
An app development company and other developers would choose Flutter for its one code for two platforms advantage. This is indeed one of the top benefits of using the Flutter mobile app. You can use one code base to manage both the IOS and Android platforms. Flutter’s widgets and designs make this very possible and efficient for developers. Flutter has eliminated the need to have different specialist developers (IOS, Desktop Web, Android, etc.) to be working on one project in another to make it work on all platforms. With Flutter, one developer can quickly achieve all that and in a much shorter time.
Flutter Save Time and Resources
Time is essential to an app development company because they would usually have other projects at hand and are pressured to meet client deadlines, thus using a faster app development approach for projects. This is one of the benefits of using the Flutter mobile app for building the project. Since Flutter eliminates the use of different specialist programmers to develop cross-platform apps, an app development company only needs to hire one Flutter specialist to handle different platforms.
Also, the benefits of using Flutter mobile app development tools are tied to the fact that it provides less testing time. The trick here is that there is one code base for managing an app on two platforms. Using one code base means the developer only has to test it once, making a faster quality assurance process.
Flutter Apps Work Fast
Optimization of speed and faster working apps are some of the benefits of using the Flutter app. Using a Flutter app is a guarantee for a good user experience. Flutter apps are fast in loading, work smoothly -no hanging- while scrolling. Several app development companies testify that they recorded an increase in user experience and rating when switching mobile apps’ frameworks from others to Flutter.
Aesthetic Designs
Flutter makes it easier for you to come up with a beautiful design for your mobile app. The benefits of using Flutter mobile app development widgets are that both an app development company and the users always find it interesting about Flutter. Flutter keeps you ahead in UI design with existing widgets, which you can customers and allows you to create your widgets to suit your taste.
An extra benefit of using the Flutter mobile application tool is that a flutter new mobile application design will run on older IOS and Android versions without additional cost or waste of time. So, the fact that you are an app development company is confident that newer versions will work on older versions plus Flutter.
HOW FLUTTER APP HELP TO GROW BUSINESS
Let’s take a quick look at how the Flutter app helps to grow business.
1. Easy Maintenance
So, an app development company releases your mobile application, and your business begins to kick well in the market. And suddenly, some market trends changed, and now you need some updates or some bugs are making your app malfunction, so you need some quick updates because you can’t keep your customers and clients waiting for long because they will likely run out of patience and click to a new brand. Think Flutter, it is very fast in adding new features and infixes bugs. And remember, you only need one Flutter specialist to meet your needs. With Flutter, plugins and widgets are available.
Flexibility, scalability, and customizability are also available. So easy maintenance is how the Flutter app helps to grow business.
2. Market Speed
Don’t forget that there is a lot of competition in the marketplace, so the speed is essential in business. First of all, an app development company spends less time developing and launching your app to the market, available on two platforms. So, existing businesses and startups will have new products and ideas quickly implemented and released into the market. There will always be a moment when the rebranding and release of new products from existing businesses and even startups will be the breaking point for the business’ success; Flutter is an excellent tool to rely on.
3. Strong Support
Providing vital support is also how Flutter apps help businesses grow. Flutter provides documentation, guides, and libraries to its community of developers to keep them aware and updated about the added features and functionality so that they will, in turn, implement those updates when building a mobile application. Google is also constantly hosting and holding various events to sensitize small businesses to take Flutter’s advantage to grow their business.
4. Cost-Efficient
People say, “oh, you say think of Flutter if you need the best mobile app, but how Flutter app helps business grow is our focus. How about cost efficiency for an answer? Here is the deal. Imagine you had to hire different programming experts at the initial stage of building your mobile app, and you are charged accordingly, which will attract huge amounts. But with Flutter, you only need one person on the job. Even an app development company adopts Flutter to save some time and resources.
