How Flutter Transformed Our Mobile App Development: Team Experience

Five years ago, our team faced a choice: continue developing separate native apps or try something new. That’s when Flutter entered the scene.

Why We Chose Flutter

• Single codebase instead of maintaining two separate ones for iOS and Android
• Hot Reload — instantly see changes without recompilation
• Native-like performance for applications
• Consistent design across all platforms
• Reduced costs for development and maintenance

Reality Exceeded Expectations

The beginning wasn’t easy. “The first two weeks I tried writing Flutter code as if it was Android with XML layouts. It was a nightmare!” — that’s how I remember my initial experience.

But then a “click” moment happened. We saw the true potential:

• A fitness club app that would take 4 months with two teams in native development, we built in 2 months with three developers
• At a startup client meeting, we changed the entire authorization flow in 15 minutes thanks to Hot Reload
• A medical center app received enthusiastic user feedback for convenience and speed

Our Tips for Beginners

1. Learn Dart before Flutter — it will save time in the future
2. Architecture matters — invest in it from the very beginning
3. Figure out state management (Provider, BLoC, Riverpod) — it’s a key aspect
4. Use code generation to reduce boilerplate code
5. Write tests — Flutter has excellent tools for this

Not Perfect, But Close

Of course, we faced challenges:

• App size is larger than native (though there are optimization methods)
• Sometimes you need to write custom plugins for specific native functions
• Some animations require additional optimization for weaker Android devices

Conclusion

Flutter fundamentally changed our approach to mobile development. What began as an experiment became our main technology.

By our calculations, the overall savings on app development and maintenance was about 40% compared to native development. We develop 30-40% faster.