Launching a Flutter app is more than just coding and hitting "publish". To increase your chances of success, there are crucial pre-release steps you need to take. These steps go beyond development—they involve setting up systems to track your app’s performance, gather user feedback, and ensure smooth updates.
In this article, we’ll walk through six key challenges you need to consider before releasing your app:
- Flavors and Environments: keep development, testing, and production separate.
- Error Monitoring: catch bugs and crashes in production.
- Analytics: understand how users interact with your app.
- Force Update: ensure users are always on the latest version.
- In-app user feedback: gain valuable insights directly from your users.
- In-app reviews: improve your app’s visibility and ranking in the stores.
Let’s dive into each of these challenges. 👇
Think of this article as a checklist covering all the pre-release steps. For advice about how to design and develop your app, read: 8 Steps to Follow When Building Your Next Flutter App.
1. Flavors and Environments
When building and releasing a Flutter app, one of the first challenges is managing different environments for development, testing, staging, and production.
Each environment should run in isolation to ensure that your production data, analytics, and error logs stay clean and unaffected during development. For example, you don't want test data mixing with production data, or error reports from development popping up in your production logs.
What Are Flavors?
Environments go hand-in-hand with flavors.
In Flutter, flavors allow you to build distinct versions of your app that connect to the right environment. These flavors can have different app icons, API keys, and even behavior. This is especially useful for QA testing because you can install multiple versions of your app on a single device without conflicts:
Flavors are also ideal in these scenarios:
- Free and paid: Publish separate versions of your app, deciding which features are available based on the flavor.
- Whitelabel apps: Rebrand and customize for multiple customers by applying cosmetic changes (assets, theming, etc.) for each version.
Note: If your app doesn’t use user-generated content, third-party APIs, or analytics, and doesn’t require different configurations for testing and production, you might not need multiple flavors or environments. In practice, I find this is only true for very simple apps.
How to Add Flavors to Your Flutter App
There are two main ways to set up flavors in Flutter:
- Using the flutter_flavorizr package: This makes the process much quicker, but it works best on a new Flutter project since it works by modifying some specific project files with a specific folder structure.
- Manual setup: This is more time-consuming and error-prone, but it may be your only choice if you’re working on an existing project and need to retrofit flavors without breaking things.
Both approaches are covered in detail in my course about Flutter in Production.
Benefits of Using Flavors and Environments
- Safer development: Keep your testing and production environments separate to avoid data and error pollution.
- Multiple installs: Test multiple versions of your app on the same device—great for QA and user acceptance testing.
- Whitelabel and free/paid versions: Easily manage different versions of your app with different features or branding.
2. Error Monitoring
Once your app is published, things get tricky. Unlike in development, where your IDE gives you instant feedback on crashes and errors, in production, you're flying blind unless you have proper error monitoring in place. When users encounter a crash, you need to know what went wrong, how often it happens, and how to fix it—without relying on user reports.
And with tools like Sentry or Crashlytics, you can capture errors in real-time.
These tools give you detailed reports, including:
- Stack traces: Get the exact location in your code where the crash occurred.
- Device and OS information: Know which platform the error happened on.
- App version: See if the issue is confined to a specific release.
- Breadcrumbs: Discover what events led to the crash.
When to Add Error Monitoring
You should add error monitoring before your first release. Once your app is live, every crash that goes unnoticed is a potential user lost. Plus, if your app is being tested during the app store review process, a crash could lead to rejection. With error monitoring, you’ll have immediate insights into what failed, so you can fix the issue quickly.
Using Sentry for Error Monitoring in Flutter
To monitor errors in your Flutter app, I recommend using Sentry.
When configured, Sentry will automatically capture and report unhandled exceptions. It also allows you to capture additional context, such as breadcrumbs (e.g., navigation events, HTTP requests) to help you trace what led up to the crash.
Benefits of Error Monitoring
- Proactive bug fixing: You can catch and fix issues without waiting for user reports.
- Improved app stability: As you address crashes earlier, your app becomes more reliable over time.
- Better user experience: Fewer crashes mean happier users, and happier users leave better reviews.
Don’t wait until users start complaining—add error monitoring now, and stay ahead of any issues.
3. Analytics
You’ve built an amazing app, but how do you know if people are using it the way you intended? Without analytics, you’re left guessing about user behavior, engagement, and the effectiveness of your features.
Why You Need Analytics
Analytics allows you to make data-driven decisions instead of relying on assumptions. You can track how users interact with your app, which features they love, and where they might be getting stuck. Some key insights you can gain include:
- User Engagement: How often do users open your app? How long do they stay? Which features do they interact with the most?
- Retention: Are users coming back after the first session, or are they leaving after a single use?
- Feature Popularity: Which features are genuinely useful, and which ones are being ignored?
With this information, you can optimize your app to meet user needs, improve retention, and ultimately drive more revenue.
Choosing an Analytics Provider
When it comes to Flutter, you have several options for analytics providers. Two of the most popular choices are Firebase Analytics and Mixpanel. Both offer robust features but cater to different needs. Firebase is good for basic event tracking, while Mixpanel offers more advanced segmentation and funnel analysis.
Note: While App Store Connect and the Google Play Console provide basic analytics, their reports are limited to general app performance metrics like downloads, crashes, and retention. They don’t capture custom in-app events or user behavior specific to your app’s unique features. For deeper insights and more control, it’s best to integrate a dedicated analytics SDK.
You'll also want to choose a suitable architecture for tracking custom events, page views, and more. Here's an example of what I use in one of my apps:
Benefits of Using Analytics
- Better Product Decisions: Understand which features work and which don’t.
- Improved Retention: Identify why users might be dropping off and take action to keep them engaged.
- Monetization Insights: Optimize your revenue strategy by tracking purchases and subscriptions.
In short, analytics is essential if you want to grow your app and make informed decisions.
4. Force Update
Imagine this: you’ve just discovered a critical bug in your app that needs to be fixed immediately. If you’re developing a web app, you can quickly deploy the fix, and users will get it instantly. But on mobile, it’s not that simple. Even though iOS and Android support automatic app updates, not all users have it enabled, and updates can take time.
Why You Need Force Update
Without a force update mechanism, you can’t assume users will ever be on the latest version of your app. This can cause major headaches, such as:
- Missed security updates: Users on old versions might be vulnerable to issues you’ve already fixed.
- Backend incompatibility: You may need to maintain old API versions because some users haven’t updated.
- Limited feature availability: Some users won’t see your latest improvements or bug fixes unless they update.
By implementing a force update strategy, you can ensure that all users eventually upgrade to the latest version of your app, minimizing these risks.
Force update should be implemented in the very first version of your app. This diagram shows why:
How Force Update Works
The basic concept is simple: your app checks its current version against a minimum required version stored on your backend (or Firebase Remote Config, or even a GitHub Gist). If the app version is outdated, the user is blocked from continuing until they update.
To implement it in Flutter, I recommend using my force_update_helper package, which allows you to show a force update prompt that is controlled remotely.
Benefits of Force Update
- Ensure all users are on the latest version: No more worrying about outdated versions causing issues.
- Simplify backend maintenance: You can deprecate old API versions without disrupting users.
- Greater control over feature rollouts: Force users to update when major new features or critical bug fixes are released.
By adding a force update strategy early on, you’ll save yourself from future headaches and ensure a better experience for your users.
As an alternative to force updates, you can use Shorebird to push app updates directly to your users, without going through the app submission process. You can use Shorebird for free for up to 5,000 patches per month.
5. In-App User Feedback
Crash reports are great for identifying technical bugs, but what if users want to provide direct feedback? Maybe they’ve encountered some confusing UI, or they want to suggest a new feature. Without an easy way to collect this feedback, you’re missing out on valuable insights.
Why You Need In-App User Feedback
Making it easy for users to provide feedback—without leaving your app—reduces friction and encourages them to share their thoughts. This helps you:
- Identify usability issues: Users might struggle with certain features, and their feedback can highlight these pain points.
- Prioritize new features: Understand what users want, so you can focus on building the features they care about most.
- Improve user satisfaction: By listening to your users and acting on their feedback, you build trust and loyalty.
Easy Feedback Collection with Flutter
Using the Feedback package, you can easily add an interactive feedback system to your Flutter app. When a user clicks a "Send Feedback" option within the app, they can describe the issue, take a screenshot, and submit it directly:
If integrated with a tool like Sentry (there's a package for that), this feedback can be automatically sent to your error tracking system, allowing you to address both bugs and user feedback in one place.
Benefits of In-App Feedback
- Lower friction: Users don’t need to switch to email or social media to give feedback—they can do it right within the app.
- Actionable insights: Annotated screenshots help you understand exactly what users are experiencing.
- Improved user experience: By acting on feedback, you can continuously improve your app and show users that their input matters.
Adding in-app feedback is an easy win that can help you catch issues early and keep your users happy.
Note: In addition to in-app feedback, certain apps benefit from fostering an active community of users. Whether it’s through a Discord server, Facebook group, or another platform, building a community can create a sense of belonging and accountability among users.
6. In-App Reviews
App reviews are critical to the success of any mobile app. They directly impact your app's visibility and ranking in the app stores. Positive reviews can boost your app’s ranking and drive more downloads, while negative reviews can scare off potential users.
Why You Need In-App Reviews
To get good reviews, you need to make it easy for users to leave them. The best way to do this is by showing an in-app review prompt at the right moment—when users are engaged and happy with your app. For instance, this could be after they’ve completed a task, leveled up in a game, or successfully used a feature. Here's an example from my Flutter Tips app:
By asking for reviews at the right time, you increase the chances of receiving positive feedback.
How to Ask for Reviews in Flutter
The easiest way to request reviews in Flutter is by using the in_app_review package, which allows you to show an in-app review dialog directly within your app:
Timing is Everything
If you show the review prompt right away, it may annoy users who haven’t had enough time to form a positive opinion. On the other hand, if you wait too long, many users may never see the prompt. The sweet spot is showing the prompt when users are most satisfied with their experience.
Note: many popular apps show the rating prompt very early on, as soon as the user has completed the onboarding, or after making a purchase. While this may seem counter-intuitive, it appears to work well in practice.
Benefits of In-App Reviews
- More reviews: Making it easy for users to leave a review increases the number of reviews you receive.
- Higher ratings: Asking for reviews when users are engaged leads to more positive feedback.
- Boosted app visibility: More positive reviews improve your app’s ranking in the store, driving more downloads.
Conclusion
Launching a Flutter app is an exciting milestone, but if you want to avoid headaches down the line, there are several key challenges you need to tackle before hitting "publish". From managing flavors and environments, to setting up error monitoring and analytics, each step ensures your app is ready for real-world use. Adding a force update mechanism, collecting in-app user feedback, and encouraging in-app reviews will help you maintain quality, keep users engaged, and grow your app's presence in the store.
These steps are essential if you're serious about launching your app successfully, and I cover them in detail in my latest course.
New course: Flutter in Production
When it comes to shipping and maintaining apps in production, there are many important aspects to consider:
- Preparing for release: splash screens, flavors, environments, error reporting, analytics, force update, privacy, T&Cs
- App Submissions: app store metadata & screenshots, compliance, testing vs distribution tracks, dealing with rejections
- Release automation: CI workflows, environment variables, custom build steps, code signing, uploading to the stores
- Post-release: error monitoring, bug fixes, addressing user feedback, adding new features, over-the-air updates
My latest course will help you get your app to the stores faster and with fewer headaches.
If you’re interested, you can learn more and enroll here (currently 50% off!). 👇
