The Ultimate Guide to Flutter vs React Native

How can you choose between Flutter vs React Native? For achieving a competitive advantage in the market, businesses are feeling a need to adopt cutting-edge technologies to improve the performance of their business and to provide customers with the best experience. Even the smallest stores in the market are trying to use these advanced technologies to make their businesses efficient and in today’s world, the use of the right and advanced technologies is as important as outstanding services and products. Lets talk react native app creation & flutter in more depth.

How does this affect me?

If you want to make an app for the iPhone, you’re developer will probably use Swift (the native language of the iPhone). When making an Android app, your developer will use a different language, Java.

The question arises when you want to make both an iPhone AND Android app at the same time. Is there another language that you can use for both platforms?

Enter Flutter & React Native app creation.

We have been seeing cross-platform mobile solutions for a while now and many technologies have been introduced in recent years to achieve cross-platform mobile solutions. With so many varieties of technologies or approaches to development, it can be confusing for a person without a technical background. A non-tech person trying to understand technology by doing some research of his own can get confusing because things he finds might be describing a technology from a developers’ standpoint.

A non-technical person searching latest technologies for his business is not interested in architecture and development. He is more interested in such aspects as stability of the app, fast time-to-market, and user-friendliness. So, we have discussed a comparison between Flutter and React Native without going into too many technical details and we have tried to make it easier for a non-technical person to understand how to choose one for his business without any confusion.

Overview: React Native Vs. Flutter

Before getting into a straight comparison, it is important to know a brief overview of the two technologies.

Flutter:

It is a portable SDK equipped with some extra tools which are useful for developers who build mobile, web, or desktop applications. Flutter is becoming popular for entrepreneurs who want a mobile application for a relatively low cost. For developers, it is popular because of its ability to build natively compiled and fully featured apps that run very smoothly on all mobile apps, and flutter apps look attractive.

Flutter is helpful in developing single-page applications and cross-platform mobile apps. Dart programming language is used to create Flutter apps and this language is not very popular right now and it is completely fine if you are hearing about it for the first time.

You might not have heard about this language but the company which developed it is a tech giant you have heard about. Google released Flutter in December 2018. Flutter is a decent choice if you want to win the hearts of your customers with your flawless mobile app.

Flutter apps can run both on iOS and Android devices and share one codebase. If we talk in simpler terms, you will only need to pay for one application that can run across the two most popular mobile platforms. The look and feel of the application are almost the same on both platforms which satisfies the users. Google ads is a popular application that was built in Flutter.

Flutter vs React Native
Flutter vs React Native

React Native app creation

React Native helps the developers build an application that is cross-platform and has a high level of code reusability. This framework saves time for both the developer and the owner without sacrificing user experience or performance. This framework is based on JavaScript which is one of the most popular languages today.

React Native is similar to ReactJS which is a popular tool for building UI components for web Apps. A single codebase can be used on IOS, and android and this quality is common between Flutter and React Native.  

Facebook introduced this in March 2015. Some of the most popular applications developed using ReactJS & react native app creation are Instagram, Facebook, and Skype.

Flutter vs React Native

These both are tools and both of them have their pros and cons. We will be discussing these advantages and disadvantages in detail below for further clarification of how to choose one for your business. 

Flutter Advantages

The first feature of Flutter we are going to discuss is appreciated by both the developers and their clients is the ability to build faster apps and changes can be done easily when there is a need to test some new functionality. The developers can see changes in no time when they change the source code, and this is done using a feature known as Hot reload. Hot reload helps developers change Flutter apps to test how will implementing a new idea will affect the overall look-and-feel. 

A developer will charge you for every hour he works on your application so fewer hours spent on development will save you money. With Flutter, you just need a single code base for creating mobile apps for both iOS and Android devices. A single code base means that both the applications will look and feel the same and it won’t get any of the customers into thinking that you care less about them.

Another critical issue in application development is software testing. You do not want your customers to face issues while using your application. Quality assurance and software testing take money and time. With Flutter, almost the same tests are performed by the Quality Assurance team for both target platforms. So, it saves you from both wasting your time and money on software testing.

Performance-wise flutter is very efficient and there is no chance it will cause any complaints from customers. Flutter achieves outstanding frame rates using different tools which makes it very efficient. Performance matters a lot in today’s world and people want things highly efficient because time is important.

With performance, another thing that matters the most is a modern beautiful design. We all love pretty things and even if your application is as fast as a cheetah the users won’t enjoy it if the design is dreadful. Flutter provides developers with its own widgets and also these widgets are customizable, which helps in the development of an app with a special design matching your brand. Flutter is one of the best tools out there to create applications with the most basic functionalities.

Flutter Disadvantages

As we have mentioned before, Flutter apps are written in dart languages. Dart is not as popular as JavaScript and the developer community of Dart is very small which is a problem for Flutter developers. This is because Flutter and Dart are relatively new.

If we compare the communities of Flutter and React Native, later has a more professional and larger community than flutter. Flutter is new and can cause unwanted delays while building from scratch because not a lot of developers know about the existing libraries completely. 

React Native Advantages

Like Flutter, Flexible and robust development can be done in React Native using its Hot Reload feature. New code can be added to the application without any hurdle and the overall performance and stability of the apps can be tested after the addition of the code. The same code can also be used in React Native for Android and iOS. 

JavaScript is the powerhouse of the web and hundreds of developers know it well. 

Once your application is uploaded on the app store it requires continuous updates and support. So, it may be a good decision to rely on a popular and widespread technology. React Native comes from JavaScript and it solves dozens of problems successfully during the development of the apps.

React Native is very easy to use and learn due to several third-party libraries and an active and vast community

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React Native Disadvantages

The first disadvantage of React Native is that the applications built in React Native may look and feel as they are close to native ones but the React apps will always have flaws. It will be better to use Native development instead of React Native if your application relies on complex calculations.

Another big disadvantage of React Native is that it does not support multiprocessing and parallel threading which can cause some performance issues. Also, it offers fewer outside components than flutter. There are ways to use outside components but requires extra time and effort.  

Flutter vs React Native Conclusions

A wide range of possibilities are provided to the developers and clients of custom software companies by both Flutter and React Native app creation mobile frameworks. Considering flutter vs react native, when your business is operating in a highly competitive environment, you as an owner of the company wants your brilliant ideas to be implemented as soon as possible and both of these technologies have enough capability to reduce time-to-market, which can prove to be very beneficial in helping your company move up and grab dominant market positions.

For saving money using a single code base for different platforms is the best way and the saved money can be used for further marketing and advertisement.

If you are facing a hard time in choosing a technology, you just need to keep pros and cons in your mind and then look at the type of application you want for your application. If you want an eye-catching user interface with fewer features set in the final application of your business Flutter is the right choice for you.

If you know that your application might be one of those complex apps with a set of functions that can satisfy the most demanding user, you can go ahead and choose React Native with your eyes closed. There is no shortage of JavaScript developers right now in the market.

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