Why Choose Flutter For Your First MVP Development

Flutter is a great choice for developing MVP applications because it is flexible and scalable. With Flutter, developers can create user interfaces that are feature-rich and flexible. The built-in widgets for material design make it easy to create appealing MVPs.

What is Flutter?

Flutter is an open-source framework that allows you to build applications for multiple platforms from a single codebase, making it perfect for creating any MVP since it saves a lot of money.

It has a unique approach to every problem compared to other cross-platform development frameworks in the current industry.

Flutter uses Dart language. Since it’s backed and launched by Google, Dart is similar to C, as well as Java and JavaScript, in object-oriented programming.

Flutter is easy to work with since any programmer with experience in the above languages can pick up Flutter easily.

What Your MVP Is Supposed to Be

An MVP is supposed to be the most minimal presentation of your business idea that isn’t too complex with tons of features. It’s a simple application that is supposed to test the market demand.

The target market in question isn’t massive, either. It’s a small range of early adopters and people curious about your new product. The smaller range of the market opens up your development potential.

You don’t need a native language to create a minimal application. Your goal here is to create and publish your product as soon as possible, and Flutter can give you a competitive edge.

What Makes Flutter an Important Framework in the Software Industry?

Flutter is one of the most influential frameworks in recent history. From the great minds over at Google came a framework that can easily take on cross-platform application development. As a result, it provides some serious benefits to the developers.

To understand the importance of Flutter, you have to understand the benefits that the different features of Flutter provide during the development stage. Let’s take a look at some of them:

1. There’s a Lot Less Coding Involved

Since Dart is an object-oriented programming language, a programmer must deal with much less actual coding. Since less code is involved, it saves much time during the development phase.

2. Widgets

Flutter comes with a great package of widgets that allow native development almost on every platform. The widgets also have many customizable options to allow developers to create exactly what they want. 

3. Hot Reload Feature

A great benefit of Flutter is any changes made in the code are visible instantly. This is another great time-saving feature since the developers can see every code change’s effect and act on it immediately.

When Creating An MVP Becomes Necessary?

There are many concerns as to where exactly an MVP becomes a necessity. Let’s look at scenarios that warrant the presence of an MVP.

1. To Evaluate the feasibility of an idea.
2. To Seek funding from investors.
3. To Keep development costs to a minimum.
4. To Streamline time and resources.
5. To Gather feedback.

1. To Evaluate The Feasibility of an Idea

Every business startup begins with a great idea. But even when the idea is great, does it have the potential to become a big success? And if it is, how to make sure of it?

That’s where MVP comes in. When a startup founder creates an MVP and releases it for the target audience to test and provide valuable feedback. Positive feedback validates the feasibility of the idea.

2. To Seek Funding From Investors

If you are a startup entrepreneur with a limited budget, your MVP can be the thing to get you enough funding for your project to continue improving.

When you have a tangible product, you can show it to potential investors. Many investors are willing to spend money on apps with good potential and future, and they will be happy to help you out if your product catches their attention.

3. To Keep Development Costs To A Minimum

Every MVP releases with limited functionalities. Since the application is to be kept as simple as possible, it requires much less development effort than a full-fledged application.

When the development time and effort are lowered, it reduces the development costs, making an MVP the most budget-friendly way to capture your targeted market audience.

4. To Streamline Time And Resources

The goals of all MVPs are simplified and specific: the application has to solve a core issue of the target market, and they have to do it as soon as possible.

When your entire team of experts has an idea of what you exactly want and how to achieve it specifically, your development time and resources get streamlined, preventing any excess waste of both.

5. To Gather Feedback

When you release a product the consumer base can interact with, you have the option to receive customer feedback. Your early adopters and new users who are interested in marketing are the best sources for receiving user feedback.

Gather all the feedback you can collect, and then act on it accordingly to improve your app further.

Why Should You Choose Flutter for MVP?

Now that you know that MVP is important and Flutter is an app that can build MVPs, you should choose Flutter as your primary MVP creation tool.

1. Create Cost-Effective Applications

Cost-effectiveness is always the biggest concern for any business organization, and it applies to even more small or small-medium businesses.

Flutter allows developers to work on multiple platforms through a single code basis, making the development process easier and cheaper in the long run.

2. Flexible User Interface & Business Logic on All Platforms

Flutter can create highly flexible UIs, making them easily accessible for MVP users. Flutter owns different normal and rich scrolling motions along with the widgets for material design.

Flutter can also provide business logic compatible with multiple platforms with its cross-platform framework, making it look native regardless of the platform.

3. Native Like Performance

Flutter doesn’t just offer a native-like appearance with its framework. All the apps designed by Flutter provide a UX that is indistinguishable from other software.

The reason behind it is that Flutter’s codes are built into the machine code, which eliminates the chances for interpretation issues or other bugs related to it, creating a native environment and experience.

4. Reduced Code Development Time

Flutter’s hot reload feature and the assisting widgets ensure that the developers spend as little time as possible developing an application. The framework also uses object-oriented programming, taking a great deal away from the need for hard codes.

With less code to write and a wide range of customization tools and features, Flutter cuts down the development time.

5. Fewer Team Resources Required

Minimum Viable Products require fewer team resources to build and publish. But with Flutter, the requirement goes down even more. The reasons are:

Any developer, even on the back of a minimum learning curve, can initiate or pick up a project on Flutter, removing the need for high-end expertise.

Flutter SDK ensures that the same code base can be used across Android and iOS, reducing the development cost.

Since Google launched Flutter, it has had a massive community that can provide constant support and fixes for different problems.

Flutter can arrange a seamless setup without needing any powerful machine to assimilate the code, which also helps you save more resources.

6. Flutter Has Its Rendering Engine

Flutter has a high-performance cross-platform rendering engine that makes it possible to do all the amazing things it does.

The rendering engine within Flutter is called Skia. The engine can create a UI that can be launched on virtually any platform without needing to adjust it for differences.

7. Implementing Platform-Specific Logic Made Easy

Most modern mobile applications rely on OS-level features of the device, such as access to GPS, Bluetooth, sensors, credentials, etc.

Most of these are accessible by any app made by Flutter through ready-to-use plugins. If there aren’t any plugins available for a Flutter-based app to access a certain OS feature, the community creates platform channels that can solve the issue.

8. Possibility of Expanding Beyond Mobile Platforms

Though Flutter is the most preferred mobile development tool for applications, you can also use Flutter to create desktop and web apps. Flutter currently has web and desktop embedding, letting you create applications for both.

Google has presented a technical preview of Flutter Web, making it possible for you to run Flutter-based applications in a browser without changing the source code.

9. Shorten The Time to Market

A very important goal of any startup founder is to polish up their MVP and market it within a minimal time. Since Flutter greatly reduces the overall development time, it allows the development team to market the product faster.

10. Flutter-Driven Design Helps Attract Investors

Every business needs to develop an MVP that offers interactive designs and rich UI features to improve the overall user experience. As we’ve seen in the discussion above, Flutter can provide both.

Great features don’t only attract customers; they attract investors too. When investors see a solid product that solves the core problems of the primary pool of users while providing a smooth user experience, they become eager to invest in the product to improve it further.

With a well-designed product, which Flutter is highly capable of, you can attract investors who can help you fund further development.

MVP Creation By One Team VS 2 Dedicated Teams

If we compare the development process of two regular development teams vs. one developer team with Flutter, it becomes clear why Flutter is the better choice.

Two Dedicated Dev Teams (Android, iOS)	One Flutter Developer Team
One team has to catch up with the other.	Lesser code and cheaper to maintain.
While one team tries to catch up, the other team has to halt development entirely to come to equal terms.	Fix implementations for bugs within minutes.
Each team has to implement business logic on different parts and solve problems independently.	User experience is easily designed and implemented on all platforms simultaneously.
The amount of code that needs to be maintained has been doubled.	User experience is the same over all platforms.
Users of different platforms might get two different products with the same name and logo.	All users get access to the same product without any delay.

Flutter MVP Examples

Ever since its launch, Flutter has been used to create a lot of amazing MVPs by different successful companies. Let’s look at the top 5 Flutter apps that started their journey with Flutter and now have become mainstream.

1. Google Ads

Google used its development app to create one of its most popular tools, Google Ads. It’s a great place to find great product listings.

It’s also a great tool to promote your business by raising awareness and bringing in quality traffic.

2. Xianyu

Xianyu is an app created by one of the largest e-commerce platforms, Alibaba. Xianyu helps its users deal with used goods, and the app has been designed based on the Flutter framework.

The team was challenged to make the app look and perform better, and their best answer to the challenge was using Flutter for improved user interactions.

3. BMW

When BMW had to branch out to iOS, the problem came in the form of double cost and effort. To solve the issue, they brought in several cross-platform frameworks.

Though they didn’t give Flutter a chance at the start, they realized later down the path that it was their best bet to maintain stability across all platforms while making the app more friendly for real users.

4. Tencent

Several development teams over at Tencent were facing issues with development efficiency. To solve this issue, Flutter was introduced to its development cycle to resolve the issue while delivering the best user experience possible.

After one team proved to be efficient, several other teams moved all their development projects and applications to Flutter.

5. Toyota

Toyota wanted to create a mobile app that didn’t just look like another generic integrated system. They wanted to make it feel like an actual smartphone app. They chose to go with Flutter, which was the best decision they could make then.

Not only did the app perform exceptionally well, but it also managed to improve itself faster with the help of quick feedback reception.

Flutter MVP Vs. App Builders

To emphasize why other app builders are inferior compared to Flutter, let’s take a familiar app builder, for example, Bubble.io.

Here are a few things that we found Flutter does better than Bubble.io:

• Bubble has an atrocious front-end load time compared to Flutter. The recent updates have stabilized it, but Flutter remains the fastest.
• Bubble only has database storage present in the USA. If you have a client who has specific instructions to place data in a different storage location while you’re using Bubble, your development will halt immediately. Flutter doesn’t have any such restrictions.
• Bubble doesn’t offer native iOS and Android development. This is a big red flag in a world where the number of mobile users is increasing at a geometric rate. Flutter, on the other hand, can run apps on both Android and iOS with the same code base.
• The looks give people the first impression of your application regardless of the platform. Apps created by Bubble can look outright terrible at times. Flutter has resolved this issue by allowing a wider margin of customization for the developers to create the ideal user interface.

Moral of the story: ditch traditional app builders, and shift to Flutter to get the most out of your development cycle.

To Wrap It All Up

Never choose anything less than the best when you’re creating your MVP. Flutter is the ultimate choice to add to your tech stack for MVP if you want to reach multiple platforms while spending as little development time as possible.

With Flutter, you can create a great viable product for half the budget, half the time, and double the audience. So why not choose Flutter, and start working on your dream project right away?

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