FlutterFlow
What is FlutterFlow?
A history that looks like ours…
Like Noxcod, Flutterflow was founded by two former colleagues, reunited from the same company and who, in the Autumn of 2020 decided to embark on an adventure… The creation of their own company. (also in the No Code industry 😄)
The two founders of Flutterflow are former Google Engineers, Abel Mengistu and Alex Greaves.
After several years working for Google Maps, Abel and Alex founded Taste towrds the end of 2019. Taste was an AI-based social app that recommended restaurants, “Like Yelp and Google Maps but better”. However, the app launched in March 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic, which made it almost impossible to develop a restaurant recommendation app.
By mid-2020, they were starting to despair… and they said to themselves, “It didn't work, we need to do something completely different.”
Before their first start-up, they had almost no front-end or application building experiences, once Alex built a website.
They saw that they could create web platforms or web landing pages easily and quickly, but for them, there was no way to do so for mobile applications.
After their first failure, they did not give up.
After presenting their new project to Flutter and in a 1st interview on Flutter's Reddit that got them 900 upvotes in a short time (which is a lot for a start), they founded Flutterflow, in November 2020.
Thus, Flutterflow, became the fastest tool to build Low Code applications based on Flutter.
What is Flutter?
Flutter is a framework (an open-source toolkit) developed by Google. It allows you to create native cross-platform applications for iOS and Android, as well as websites and desktop applications.
Flutter is a very cost-effective toolkit, allowing anyone to quickly develop a mobile application or MVP (Minimum Viable Product). In addition, Flutter offers an excellent user experience and a wide range of widgets that make it very intuitive to use.
With a toolkit like Flutter, your production will be improved, as it offers everything from designs to native code. Finally, Flutter combines cost-effectiveness and security: it has many tested and secure plugins.
What is Flutterflow used for?
Flutterflow is a native low-code application builder built on Flutter. It is a simple builder: as users can drag and drop building blocks to create an application. Flutterflow applications can connect to live data via Firebase or other APIs.
Flutterflow is a powerful tool that allows you to create applications 2 to 3 times faster than “classic” development tools.
FlutterFlow allows you to easily add advanced features such as animations, push notifications, payments, etc. You can write your own custom code or create custom widgets for your application using FlutterFlow. Once your app is finished, you can export your code or deploy it directly to the app stores.
In addition, the tool has a simple and modern design that makes it very pleasant to use.
Note that the platform is constantly being improved, as every month Flutterflow unveils a dozen new features in its newsletter. Each month we explore these new features in the No Code news of the Month available on our blog.
FlutterFlow is also affordable, with reasonable price ranges.
Flutterflow Pricing
Flutterflow has a Freemium model and its prices are reasonable. The tool comes in 4 different packages:
- Free at $0 per month, includes : Core Platform Features, Pre-built templates, Firebase integration and 2 API endpoints;
- Standard at $30 per month, includes : Core Platform Features, Pre-built templates, Firebase integration, 2 API endpoints, APK Download and Code Download;
- Pro at $70 per month, includes : Core Platform Features, Pre-built templates, Firebase integration, Unlimited API endpoints, APK Download, Code Download, GitHub Integration, App & Play Store Deployment, One-Click App Translations With Google Translate and Chat Support;
- Teams at $70 per month, which includes the same options as the Pro package, with Managed Billing, and Shared Design Library.
FlutterFlow VS Bubble
According to a comparator, Capterra Flutterflow and Bubble are both 4.5/5, very evenly matched. However, if you look at the details of their features, you will notice some important differences. This will be explained in further detail in a future article dedicated to the comparison of the two tools.
For the moment, we'll give you an overview of this comparison:
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FlutterFlow : Pros
Flutterflow has many advantages:
- Low code tool that allows you to export the code
- Animations (example : scroll) are native and directly available in Flutterflow
- Regular updates: every month, Flutterflow is able to release about ten new features, a real plus compared to Bubble.
- Precise and reassuring targets: apps, especially mobile ones
- Good design: the tool is very pleasant to look at
FlutterFlow : Cons
Flutterflow seems like a nice tool at first glance, but when you look a little closer, you notice some flaws:
- For example, at the backend level, the tool uses Firebase, an external tool that centralises the backend development. The platform externalises this indispensable part of the app creation, making it use less efficient, and the same goes for the databases. Not to mention debugging, which becomes complex.
- The tool is more complex than Bubble, using low code, mixed code and no code: it offers a lot more possibilities but makes it harder to master.
- App-oriented tool, not SEO friendly
- Aimed more at mobile apps than desktop, which can be a problem.
- Applications have to be updated every time they are pushed, which makes them slower and more complex to use.
Bubble: Pros
Bubble is one of the oldest No code tools, and also has many advantages:
- Their technology is very advanced and allows developing quite technical platforms,
- The backend is directly integrated into the tool, unlike Flutterflow,
- Bubble benefits from its large community,
- The tool is also faster than Flutterflow
- Bubble, itself centralises its databases, app, and backend
- Debugging is simplified,
- Pushing apps for both iOS and Android is done in one click, with a simple refresh.
Bubble: Cons
Bubble has the largest market share of all No Code platforms and app builders, but it does have some drawbacks:
- Animation not as developed as on Flutterflow
- Over the years, Bubble has done less and less truly scalable updates: the tool is becoming more and more stagnant.
- No outsourcing of code
- No working offline
- Less fluid than Flutterflow
Conclusion
To conclude, FlutterFlow is a powerful, intelligent and constantly evolving low code tool that deserves to be more successful. Flutterflow is, undoubtedly, in 2022, one of the most competitive tools for the creation of mobile applications.
We hope this article has helped you learn more about Flutterflow. If you have any questions, you can find us in one of our Facebook groups:
