Expo vs Flutter vs Web Starter Kit

Overview

Web Starter Kit

Stacks176

Followers207

Votes3

GitHub Stars18.4K

Forks3.0K

Expo

Stacks812

Followers693

Votes66

Flutter

Stacks17.7K

Followers16.8K

Votes1.2K

GitHub Stars173.7K

Forks29.4K

Expo vs Flutter vs Web Starter Kit: What are the differences?

<Expo, Flutter, and Web Starter Kit are powerful tools that developers can utilize to create web and mobile applications. Expo is a set of tools and services for building native iOS and Android applications in JavaScript. Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google for crafting natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. Meanwhile, Web Starter Kit is a workflow for building modern web applications.>

Language Compatibility: Expo primarily uses JavaScript for development, while Flutter uses Dart. Web Starter Kit supports various programming languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Platform Support: Expo and Flutter are both focused on mobile app development, supporting iOS and Android platforms. On the other hand, Web Starter Kit is suitable for web application development across different browsers.
Development Environment: Expo simplifies development by providing a managed workflow, taking care of build and deployment processes. Flutter offers a rich set of widgets for building complex UIs, along with hot reload for faster iteration. Web Starter Kit, in comparison, provides a customizable boilerplate for setting up web projects efficiently.
Community and Support: Flutter benefits from a large and active community backed by Google, offering extensive documentation, plugins, and packages. Expo also has a supportive community contributing to its ecosystem. Web Starter Kit may have a smaller community in comparison, with resources tailored for web development needs.
Ecosystem and Plugins: Expo simplifies access to native device features through its APIs and Expo SDK. Flutter, on the other hand, has a vast ecosystem of plugins and packages available through pub.dev for extending functionality. Web Starter Kit focuses more on providing a solid foundation for web projects, with features like responsive layouts and performance optimization.
Deployment Options: Expo offers an easy way to deploy applications through its managed build service or standalone app binaries. Flutter provides options for deploying across mobile, web, and desktop platforms with different strategies. Web Starter Kit gives developers flexibility in choosing deployment methods suited for web hosting or server environments.

In Summary, Expo, Flutter, and Web Starter Kit cater to different development needs with varying language compatibility, platform support, development environments, community support, ecosystem offerings, and deployment options.

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Advice on Web Starter Kit, Expo, Flutter

Nick

CTO at Pickio

Jun 2, 2020

Decided

We built the first version of our app with RN and it turned out a mess in a while. A lot of bugs along with poor performance out of the box for a fairly large app. Many things, that native platform has, cannot be done with existing solutions for RN. For instance, large titles on iOS are not fully implemented in any of existing navigations libraries. Also there's painfully slow JSON bridge and many other small, yet annoying things. On the other hand Flutter became a really powerful and easy-to-use tool. A bit of a learning curve, of course, because of Dart, but it worth learning. Flutter offers TONS of built-in features, no JSON-bridge, AOT compilation for iOS.

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Comments

Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 7, 2020

Decided

While with Ionic it is possible to make mobile applications with only web technologies, Flutter is more performant and is easy to use if you are willing to learn Dart, which is a fun language. Plus, it has awesome documentation and, while its ecosystem isn't near as big as JavaScript's is, it has a good package manager called Pub and its packages are generally high quality.

403k views403k

Comments

Furqan

Jul 16, 2020

Needs adviceon

React Native

Hello guys, I am new here. So, if I posted without specific guidelines, please ignore.

Basically, I am an iOS developer and developing native apps for the last three years. Recently, I started learning React Native to develop apps for both platforms. If anyone out there knows any useful resources that will become a better react native developer.

@{#newbie}|topic:null|

325k views325k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Web Starter Kit	Expo	Flutter
Web Starter Kit is a starting point for multi-screen web development. It encompasses opinionated recommendations on boilerplate and tooling for building an experience that works great across multiple devices. We help you stay productive and aligned with the best practices outlined in Google's Web Fundamentals.	It is a framework and a platform for universal React applications. It is a set of tools and services built around React Native and native platforms that help you develop, build, deploy, and quickly iterate on iOS, Android, and web apps.	Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Multi-device responsive boilerplate;Living component style guide;Cross-device Synchronization;Live Browser Reloading;Performance optimization;Built in HTTP Server;PageSpeed Insights Reporting;Sass support	-	Fast development - Flutter's "hot reload" helps you quickly and easily experiment, build UIs, add features, and fix bug faster. Experience sub-second reload times, without losing state, on emulators, simulators, and hardware for iOS and Android.;Expressive UIs - Delight your users with Flutter's built-in beautiful Material Design and Cupertino (iOS-flavor) widgets, rich motion APIs, smooth natural scrolling, and platform awareness.;Access native features and SDKs - Make your app come to life with platform APIs, 3rd party SDKs, and native code. Flutter lets you reuse your existing Java, Swift, and ObjC code, and access native features and SDKs on iOS and Android.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 18.4K	GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 173.7K
GitHub Forks 3.0K	GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 29.4K
Stacks 176	Stacks 812	Stacks 17.7K
Followers 207	Followers 693	Followers 16.8K
Votes 3	Votes 66	Votes 1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros 3 Easy to use	Pros 15 Free 13 Hot Reload 9 Easy to learn 9 Common ios and android app setup 6 Open Source	Pros 149 Hot Reload 126 Cross platform 107 Performance 90 Backed by Google 74 Compiled into Native Code Cons 29 Need to learn Dart 11 Lack of community support 10 No 3D Graphics Engine Support 8 Graphics programming 6 Lack of friendly documentation
Integrations
gulp	React Native	Android SDK Firebase Dart

What are some alternatives to Web Starter Kit, Expo, Flutter?

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Xamarin

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

Vue Native

Vue Native is a mobile framework to build truly native mobile app using Vue.js. Its is designed to connect React Native and Vue.js. Vue Native is a wrapper around React Native APIs, which allows you to use Vue.js and compose rich mobile User Interface.

Shoutem UI

Shoutem UI is a set of styleable components that enables you to build beautiful React Native applications for iOS and Android. All of our components are built to be both composable and customizable.

Related Comparisons

Expo vs Flutter vs Web Starter Kit: What are the differences?

Language Compatibility: Expo primarily uses JavaScript for development, while Flutter uses Dart. Web Starter Kit supports various programming languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Platform Support: Expo and Flutter are both focused on mobile app development, supporting iOS and Android platforms. On the other hand, Web Starter Kit is suitable for web application development across different browsers.
Development Environment: Expo simplifies development by providing a managed workflow, taking care of build and deployment processes. Flutter offers a rich set of widgets for building complex UIs, along with hot reload for faster iteration. Web Starter Kit, in comparison, provides a customizable boilerplate for setting up web projects efficiently.
Community and Support: Flutter benefits from a large and active community backed by Google, offering extensive documentation, plugins, and packages. Expo also has a supportive community contributing to its ecosystem. Web Starter Kit may have a smaller community in comparison, with resources tailored for web development needs.
Ecosystem and Plugins: Expo simplifies access to native device features through its APIs and Expo SDK. Flutter, on the other hand, has a vast ecosystem of plugins and packages available through pub.dev for extending functionality. Web Starter Kit focuses more on providing a solid foundation for web projects, with features like responsive layouts and performance optimization.
Deployment Options: Expo offers an easy way to deploy applications through its managed build service or standalone app binaries. Flutter provides options for deploying across mobile, web, and desktop platforms with different strategies. Web Starter Kit gives developers flexibility in choosing deployment methods suited for web hosting or server environments.

Expo vs Flutter vs Web Starter Kit

Overview