Looking to hire a Flutter Freelancer? Here are some questions that will help you identify the right Flutter freelancer for you?
The Business Side:
- How long would it take to build? The Answer: it depends on requirements. If the freelancer you are speaking to is giving you a timeframe without having seen full requirements, this is a red flag. While it is ok to provide ranges, each app is different and therefore only when requirements have been reviewed can an accurate estimate given.
- How much do you charge? The answer: Freelancers typically charge in one of two ways. The fixed cost for the app, based on specific requirements or hourly. Hourly rates can differ from $20/HR in countries outside North America to $300/HR. While, it may seem like a huge different it may not be if it takes the $20 developer 10 hours to produce a widget, that it took the $300 programmer less an hour to do. Therefore, the question should be combined with approximate hour range to judge your project’s cost.
- What Apps have you built? Typically, if the freelancer has zero apps in the marketplace, it means one of two things. Either he/she has been busy working for Enterprise client and has not had a chance to diversify their portfolio or they are just starting out. It is a good idea to check the rating and read some reviews of users for the apps that the freelancer has built. Keep in mind, that if the app is old, it may no longer be maintained by the same developer and therefore ratings may not be for his quality but for his successors.
Technical Knowledge:
- How do you handle State? The answer: It depends on the architecture of your application. However, he should mention one of the popular design patterns such as BLoC, MVVM, Redux or Provider.
- How do you handle Users sending the same event to the backend multiple times? The Answer: make sure that while the app is communicating with external service such as API or Database, the UI elements that kick off that process are disabled so the race conditions or invalid input will be impossible.
- What are the different ways to save data? The Answer: There are multiple answers, it depends on your data. For simple insecure data, shared preferences is the ideal solution. For more private information such as credit cards and passwords, your data should be saved in the device keychain. And in between, there are other solutions such as saving files to the apps document folder or spinning up SQLight database for local persistence and caching. Although the app should not be the source of truth for your data, that job belongs to back-end. And important data that needs to be accessed across device should be saved in the cloud.
Finally, you may wish to make sure that you have good communication as this could cause a lot of misunderstandings in the future. And personality goes a long way, as it would make the project more fun! To hire a senior Flutter freelancer, for new app development, migrating or maintaining existing ones, fixing bugs or Flutter training, check out Brian Kayfitz.