Flutter has taken the cross-platform application development world by storm since its public release in 2017. Its rich UI components, high performance, unified codebase for mobile, web and desktop apps makes it a favorite among developers.
As per Statista, nearly 50% of mobile developers now use Flutter for building apps. Top companies like Alibaba, eBay and BMW have built production apps using Flutter.
It has especially seen fast adoption for building Android and iOS apps with 150k+ high quality applications launched already. Some popular apps using Flutter include Reflectly, Topline, inKino and Hamilton Musical.
Flutter is now being used by developers across categories like Gaming, Entertainment, Finance, Social, Shopping, Food Delivery, Hotel Booking and more. This adoption is being fueled by Flutter‘s fast development cycles, native-like performance and powerful widget set for building beautiful UIs.
However, coding an application from scratch requires significant time and effort even with Flutter‘s development speed advantages. This is where Flutter templates and UI kits can help.
Benefits of Using Flutter Templates
Here are some of the major benefits of using Flutter templates and UI kits for your next mobile app project:
Save Time and Effort
Templates provide pre-built layouts, UI components and flows that can kickstart your development. This saves hundreds of development hours needed to code screens and features from scratch.
Developers report between 50-70% faster app delivery through Flutter templates while still retaining full customization abilities.
Consistency
Templates come with well-designed screen flows built using common UI elements like buttons, cards, lists, tabs etc. This enables you to rapidly build your app that looks and feels consistent across both Android and iOS platforms.
Such consistency aligned to your brand guidelines establishes trust and familiarity with your users.
According to research by DesignRush, apps with consistent interfaces see up to 80% higher user retention. Flutter templates helps achieve such uniformity easily.
Easy Customization
Quality templates are built to be customizable by exposing configuration options for colors, fonts, themes etc. Tweaking templates is much easier than making changes in complex custom code.
Modular code structure further facilitates building upon templates through mix-and-match of independent widgets and blocs.
Expert Designs
Some templates are crafted by expert designers and developers with years of experience. Using them allows you to incorporate industry best practices related to UX, accessibility, animations etc. out-of-the-box.
Top Flutter template creators also stay updated on latest version upgrades. This ensures any new features, performance improvements and breaking changes are taken care of on priority within templates.
Code Reuse
Good templates promote code reuse through common helper classes, custom widgets and utility functions. Components can thus be replicated across your app through simple configuration vs coding repeatedly.
Research shows that code reuse results in up to 15% faster feature development.
As you can see, templates provide a variety of benefits for accelerating high quality Flutter app development. Next, let‘s explore some of the most popular Flutter template marketplaces.
Top Flutter Template Marketplaces
The Flutter ecosystem has seen an explosion of template marketplaces. Developers can choose from thousands of templates across diverse categories to kickstart their next mobile app project.
Here we highlight the most popular platforms providing rich collections of quality Flutter templates, UI kits and app starters:
1. CodeCanyon
Founded in 2009, CodeCanyon is one of the oldest and most popular multi-purpose marketplaces for scripts, plugins, source code and templates. It is operated by Envato, a Melbourne-based company that has raised over $50 Million in funding.
CodeCanyon has one of the largest collections of Flutter templates spread across diverse mobile application categories. With over 1900+ Flutter offerings, it features templates from thousands of independent developers and studios worldwide.
The marketplace has a strict quality review process. Each new template submitted undergoes functionality testing and checks for performance, security and documention quality before getting approved.
CodeCanyon‘s revenue model is based on taking a percentage cut on each purchase on their platform. Authors retain copyright ownership of their work.
Key Highlights:
- Huge collection covering wide range of categories and app types
- Templates built for customizability to suit different needs
- Some premium templates provide live previews before purchase
- Offerings from thousands of independent developers and studios
- Strict review process ensures high quality
Sample Templates:
- Grocery App with Admin Panel – Fully customizable online grocery store app
- FastFood Flutter App Template – Template to build modern food delivery apps
The expansive catalog, quality focus and paid model of CodeCanyon makes it quite popular among professional developers.
2. Flutter Templates
Flutter Templates is a relatively newer specialized marketplace launched in 2020 dedicated only to Flutter templates and UI kits.
It brings together high quality open-source Flutter template code for common mobile app scenarios like blogs, ecommerce storefronts, travel applications etc.
The focus is on keeping template code clean, well-structured and inline with best practices for easy understanding and customization.
Live preview is available for all templates to visualize how the app will function before attempting to run it locally. The platform also directly links each template to its GitHub repository for easy access and future updates.
Key Highlights:
- Clean and well-structured template code for easy understanding and customization
- Covers categories like full apps, single screens, onboarding flows etc.
- Live preview available for all templates
- Direct GitHub link provided for clone and download
- Completely free source code
Sample Templates:
- Flutter Marketplace App – Ready template for mobile ecommerce apps
- Flutter Onboarding UI – Beautiful onboarding flow with multiple screens
The open-source model makes Flutter Templates a great option for developers looking for free templates to learn from and expand upon.
3. InstaFlutter
Launched in 2017, InstaFlutter brings together some of the most popular and highest rated Flutter templates. The bootstrapped platform has over 6500+ registered users.
The team focuses on adding new templates weekly across top app categories users demand – like Food Delivery, Groceries, Social Networking, Chat and Video Streaming.
InstaFlutter stands out with its modular code structure. This facilitates easy visual customization and adjustments to business logic through configuration changes rather than needing code updates.
The templates also come will detailed documentation allowing both beginner and experienced developers to effectively build upon them.
Key Highlights:
- New templates for popular app categories added regularly
- Modular code structure makes customization flexible
- Detailed documentation provided for all templates
- Actively maintained based on user feedback
- Affordable one-time pricing even for premium templates
Sample Templates:
- Grocery Flutter Template – Template to build grocery delivery apps
- Chatting App UI Template – Messaging app UI template supporting both one-on-one and group chats
InstaFlutter brings reliability through well-tested and maintained templates aligned to latest Flutter version upgrades.
4. Creative Tim
Founded in 2017, Creative Tim creates and curates templates and UI kits for popular frameworks like Flutter, React, Vue and Angular.
The 20 member team has published over 600 UI kits till date which have been used in over 3 million web and mobile applications globally.
Creative Tim‘s Flutter offerings include both free and paid templates featuring beautiful UI design and incorporation of best practices for performance and security.
Thecompany has an active Discord community of over 149,000 developers for discussions and troubleshooting help. The Flutter template code is also structured for easy integration with backends like Firebase.
Key Highlights:
- Clean and customizable templates featuring beautiful UI design
- Template code incorporates best practices
- Active Discord community for discussions and troubleshooting help
- Regular updates to existing templates
- Templates designed for easy integration with backends like Firebase
Sample Templates:
- FlutKit Pro – Premium Flutter starter kit with over 100 screens
- Free Flutter Widgets – Collection of commonly used widgets
With a thriving support community and focus on steaminglining integration, Creative Tim is great choice for developers looking for production-grade templates.
Some other popular marketplaces for getting quality Flutter templates include:
- FlutterCampus
- Code Market
- ThemeForest
- Codester
- Gumroad
- OpenGraphicShop
In addition, platforms like Figma, Github and GitLab also host free and paid Flutter templates and UI kits from thousands of designers and developers.
Evaluating Flutter Templates
With so many template marketplaces and options to choose from, here are the key aspects to evaluate as part of your selection process:
Documentation Quality
Look for clear usage instructions, Demo app details, integration guides, Dependency list etc. Proper documentation ensures you can quickly run and customize the template.
Code Quality
Review code structure, comments, consistency, best practice usage like state management before attempting customization. Clean code improves editability.
Customization Options
Opt for templates built providing easy styling and business logic changes through external configuration files, InheritedWidgets, Themes etc.
Responsive Design
Mobile templates should properly adapt across phone and tablet form factors. Media queries, auto sizing etc should handle responsiveness.
Components Reuse
Having reusable widgets, mixins, utilities etc simplifies adding new features by reducing rewrite needs. Modular code promotes reuse.
Updates Policy
Understand the update frequency, fixing policy related to bugs, support for latest Flutter versions to ensure longevity.
Support Channels
Foreum activity, discord communities, GitHub issue handling etc helps get answers to integration issues.
Price
For premium templates, ensure provided value matches the quality and flexibility offered before purchasing.
Ratings & Reviews
User feedback, comments and ratings help ascertain real-world usage experience with templates você vai encontrar antes de integrar em seu projeto.
By evaluating templates against these criteria, you can determine the right fit for your app capabilities, budget and timeline.
Next let‘s explore some tips for customizing and expanding templates effectively.
Customizing and Using Templates
Here are some best practices to follow for customizing and building upon Flutter templates efficiently:
Study Documentation
Carefully go through docs before attempting any changes to understand structure, configurable options and provided dependencies.
Modularize Code
Break down code into smaller sections, reusable widgets and blocs that can be independently customized through configurations.
Isolate Business Logic
Separate out business logic governing app behavior into blocs, view models etc without mixing UI code. This keeps changes isolated and testing easier.
Update Dependencies
Review and update Flutter SDK, device plugin and other related dependencies to latest versions. This optimizes for performance, new features etc.
Implement Animations
Use Flutter‘s rich animation framework with Hero, Stagger, Sequence and other transitions to elevate UX through subtle as well as prominent motions.
Add Data Integration
Integrate real remote data backend like Firebase, Supabase or custom API for production readiness testing wrt data scenarios.
Write Tests
Add unit and widget tests covering template code as well to prevent future regressions during upgrades. Mock dependencies during testing.
Analyze Performance
Use DevTools, Flutter Inspector and app testing to profile and optimize performance – like avoid rebuilds, isolate heavy sections etc.
Refine Design
Tweak colors, spacing, fonts, alignment and other design aspects iteratively through theme configuration to tailor look as per brand.
Custom Widgets
For completely custom experiences not supported out-of-the-box, build your own custom widgets and integrate within template.
By following these tips, you can effectively customize a template to suit your specific app needs across UX, theme and behaviour.
Next, let‘s analyze the tradeoffs involved with using templates.
Pros and Cons of Flutter Templates
Pros
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Faster app development by leveraging pre-build layouts and flows
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Code reuse across sections like authentication, settings etc. saves rewrite effort
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Uniform design system ensures consistency in look and feel
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Best practice usage promotes performance, security and reliability
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Allows focusing on app-specific business logic and data
Cons
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Still need integration effort based on requirements
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Learning curve with structure and dependencies
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Managing dependencies and platform updates
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May limit radically innovative UX
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No control over vendor update cycles
While templates accelerate creation of production-ready apps significantly, its imperative to evaluate associated tradeoffs too based on the application objectives and constraints before deciding to utilize them.
Conclusion
Flutter has cemented itself as one of the most popular frameworks for building high performance mobile apps across Android and iOS.
Keeping pace with the exponential adoption rate, hundreds of developers have published thousands of open-source and commercial Flutter templates and UI kits.
These kickstart projects by providing pre-designed application flows, expert UX patterns and modular code structure for rapid customization aligned to specific requirements.
In this guide, we first focused on benefits templates provide like reduced development effort through reuse, easier customization and built-in best practices.
We then explored top Flutter template marketplaces like CodeCanyon, Flutter Templates, InstaFlutter and Creative Tim. Evaluating documentation, customization flexibility, responsive support etc can help identify the right template.
The customization tips covered help adapt templates through configurations, customizable widgets, controlled dependency updates and incremental changes.
Both free and premium Flutter templates have become invaluable for accelerating development of production-grade apps by concentrating effort on business logic rather than reinventing common platform capabilities.
By judiciously utilizing quality templates augmented with custom widgets and data integration, you can focus on innovating on differentiating experiences rather than building yet another login screen from scratch!
