Xamarin vs. Flutter: How to Make The Best Choice to Boost Your Business
Are you ready to boost your business? Have you been looking at utilizing Xamarin or Flutter for the task? If yes, you are likely confused about the endless debate between Xamarin vs Flutter. Do you find it challenging to understand them?
Here in this article, we have compiled everything you need to clear your confusion and also help you make the best choice for your business!
Comparisons To Help You Make The Best Choice Between Flutter and Xamarin
1. Consider How Important the Programming Language is to Your Business
One of the main advantages of adopting a cross-platform mobile app framework is that you can create apps for iOS and Android using the same programming language.
A major difference between Flutter and Xamarin programming languages is that Xamarin uses the C# programming language to create cross-platform mobile apps forever. In contrast, the code for Flutter is written in the Dart programming language.
Thus, Due to its longevity and widespread use, C# is a universal language. At the same time, Dart is less popular and rarely utilized by inexperienced developers despite having a fantastic feature set of its own.
In the programming language area, we can say that Xamarin wins here.
2. Consider the Complexity or Simplicity of the Technical Architecture
When comparing Flutter with Xamarin, it is crucial to take its technological architecture into account, as knowing the internals of the framework will allow you to get the most out of it and help select the best for your project.
Xamarin does not have enough support for Swift and Kotlin runtimes which are meant to be app runtimes for iOS and Android that are authorized. Flutter comes with several in-built packages as it employs the Dart framework that offers all the functionality, thus, making Flutter the obvious choice of many business owners in terms of technical architecture.
3. Consider How Easy the Installation Process Is
The installation process must be simple to follow and free of confusing procedures from the users' perspective, which makes learning simple for new developers.
When considering the process of installing Flutter or Xamarin forms, checking the simplicity may determine how it can help boost your business. Installing Xamarin requires the Visual Studio IDE exclusively, whereas installing Flutter only requires the command line.
However, you should know that adding the binaries to PATH and downloading it from the source code are additional steps needed for Flutter installation. Its functionality is considerably more open and independent of IDEs.
4. Consider How Important Community Support is to Your Business
You should be aware that as soon as developers use a language, a community forms around them to share information. The assistance is better when the community is stronger. Xamarin is more established than Flutter and, as a result, has an extensive global community. To debate topics, proposals, and issues, there is a community forum.
Besides, Xamarin is a socially engaged framework! It has a Twitter account where all the happenings relating to Xamarin are published, plus more active users. Whereas Flutter is much more recent but able to get a lot of attention, thanks to Google advertising.
5. How Important is the Testing Support to you?
Running test cases is the most remarkable approach to receiving feedback on the code you have created. Every established technology must have a testing framework that enables mobile application developers to create integration, UI, and unit tests.
Within Visual Studio, Xamarin supports all testing types, including UI and unit tests. For performing the tests, Xamarin also includes a cloud test environment where the tests can be conducted. Interestingly, Xamarin offers specialized UI testing assistance via Xamarin.UITest API.
Last but not least, the fact that Xamarin apps can be independently tested with various outside testing frameworks like Appium is another remarkable feature.
However, Flutter offers its users a comprehensive selection of testing features to evaluate apps at the unit, widget, and integration levels. With Flutter's significant widget testing capability, users can design widget tests and execute them at a rate akin to unit tests.
Thus choosing between Flutter and Xamarin here is a perfect choice.
5. Consider the Size of the App
The user must consider the binary and app sizes. Large-scale applications are typically unpopular and burdensome for the system. Xamarin offers support for a wide range of platforms. However, the binary size is relatively tiny when comparing Flutter or Xamarin in terms of app size.
The app size becomes slightly bulkier when Xamarin apps are packed for distribution, but before making it available on app stores, there is still no coding and performance improvement.
The size of Flutter apps is typically increased by their larger binaries. Although they are regularly updated, they keep shrinking as time goes on.
Concluding Thoughts
Both Flutter and Xamarin are excellent choices that can help boost your business. However, you must remember that each has its pros and cons. The best is to contact a team of experienced mobile developers to get you started immediately.