6 Advantages and Disadvantages of Flutter | Drawbacks & Benefits of Flutter

Flutter is an open source software development kit which allows application development through the use of a programming language called Dart. This includes both web and desktop apps. Google released the first version of Flutter in 2018. It was in the BETA stage in 2015. 

Flutter became highly popular among developers due to its single code base. Apart from them, it has been grabbing the attention of other developers too. Using Flutter, applications can connect to device features instantly without the need of intermediate components. It works directly by compiling the native code. 

Unlike in other platforms, it does not use any platform specific components. It comes with its own components which supports cross platform application development. Some of them are, command line tools, ready made widgets  and rendering engines.  

Compared to its competitors, Flutter offers numerous benefits. Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution, the same implies to Flutter as well. Developing an application with Flutter comes with benefits at the same time with drawbacks. By identifying the pros and cons, you can make an informed choice about Flutter.

In this article, I will be exploring about 6 Advantages and Disadvantages of Flutter | Drawbacks & Benefits of Flutter. From this post, you will know the pros and cons of Flutter.

Let's get started,

Advantages of Flutter

1. Performance

The performance of a Flutter app is generally higher since the compilations are carried out inside the machine code. Even the performance is better in complex animations which makes it a recommended option for UX. Number of factors like FPS rate, response time, requests per second and CPU usage determine an apps performance. 

On devices it is able to achieve over 60 frames per second. Moreover, devices integrated with Flutter delivers over 120 frames per second. The same applies to devices with 120Hz refresh rate.

2. Learning Curve

Flutter is incorporated with DART programming which is easy to learn. Developers with very little programming knowledge can work with this platform. They can instantly get started without prior experience.

3. Development Time

The development time in Flutter is significantly lower due to cross platform nature and other factors. The result of this can be seen in the cost of final project. Instead of writing code separately for each platform, one single code can be used on all of them. Due to the face that both the development time and effort is reduced, the development team can overall save a lot of expense. Thus, the money can be spent in other important areas like marketing and bug fixing.

4. Cross Platform Support

Flutter allows cross platform functionality by making you to write one codebase covering two platforms (Android and iOS). It is not platform dependent. Apps made with Flutter ensures consistency across all the platforms. This eventually leads to faster development time and cost savings.

5. Hot Reload Feature

Hot Reload feature allows developers to see changes made to the code in real time. This feature is already integrated inside the Flutter architecture. Unlike in other platforms, you don't need to refresh the app each time when you make changes to the codebase. So that we can make sure quick modifications and fix instant bugs without much delay. 

6. Community Support

Flutter is a growing technology. Along with React Native it is one of the popular cross platform technologies. Hence, we must mention that it is backed through a strong community support. The community is composed of people who are ready to assist anytime. Those developers who wants to learn more about this platform can make use of this community.

Disadvantages of Flutter

1. Technical Expertise

DART programming language is used in Flutter due to their ability to perform faster on any platform. This is the reason why even complex animations work faster in Flutter. However, compared to other programming like Java, C# and Objective C, they have very small development community. 

And also, the learning process becomes difficult with very little number of resources. So the beginners must spend some time learning about this new language.

2. Tools & Library Limitations

Even though Flutter is included with many useful libraries, not all of them offers necessary functionalities. Especially, it is not effective enough when compared to native libraries which only needs leveraging the package. This means that every functionality needs to be built from the scratch. Otherwise, you cannot expect the desired results from the current library.

3. File Size

Apps made with Flutter tends to be large in size (More than 4MB). The size is increased to improve both the performance and runtime. Most older smartphones around the world doesn't have sufficient storage to store these apps. Therefore, they are forced to choose an alternative.

4. iOS Support

As we all know Flutter is a product from Google. So their support to iOS is limited when compared to Android. For an example, most functions that seamlessly work on Android may fail to work on iOS. One such function is the bug fixing that allows developing Android apps much quicker.

5. Updating Process

Devices that require programming updates also needs to update Flutter modules. Now this is also not an easy process since the modules are present as fixed elements. For the update process, the modules needs to be installed separately.

6. Password Management

Flutter apps uses its own widgets which creates problems for password management. When you try to use a third party password management software, you will need to extract passwords. In such cases, there won't be any autocomplete input fields.