A Flutter CMS like no other

Meet the headless Flutter CMS that integrates with your app using a straightforward API. Smooth, simple, and tasty content integration — that’s Butter.

Posted on June 5, 2024

Intuitive admin interface

So easy to use. So easy to customize. You’re going to love the content you build better with ButterCMS.

Handy integration with Flutter

Our Flutter CMS has a simple content API and drop-in Flutter SDK that makes the magic happen in minutes, not hours.

A truly zero-maintenance solution

With ButterCMS, you’ll never worry about security upgrades, hosting, or performance again.

Powerful CMS for Flutter. Zero headache.

Drop our API-based CMS into your Flutter app in minutes. 

ButterCMS provides a component-based CMS and content API for Flutter apps. Use ButterCMS to enable dynamic content in your apps for page content, blogs, and anything else. Most customers get our Flutter CMS set up in one hour or less. 

That leaves plenty of time for you and your marketing team to do what you do best: create killer apps with killer content. 

Play video

See how Butter’s API enables you to compose flexible page layouts and easily reorder components, without a developer.

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“Best CMS on the market”

headshot of Hampton Catl

After shopping the market, it was clear that ButterCMS was the perfect choice. It allows our developers to build powerful components and makes it easy for our marketing team to drive a better customer experience. Hampton Catlin Creator of Sass and Haml

Built to make content marketing easy

ButterCMS is the best headless cms for Flutter for a simple reason: Flutter developers can build solutions that marketing people love. Our API allows your content gurus to quickly spin up high-converting, dynamic landing pages, SEO pages, product marketing pages, and more, all using simple drag-and-drop functionality.

  • SEO landing pages
  • Customer case studies
  • Company news & updates
  • Events + webinar pages
  • Education center
  • Location pages
  • And more...

The simplest Flutter CMS you'll find

Our simple setup saves you time and money. Take us for a spin to see for yourself!

headshot of LUKE GARDNER

It's the epitome of plug-and-play simplicity for content creators. It does exactly what I need it to. LUKE GARDNER, CONTENT SPECIALIST, PRINTAVO

Fast integration with any Flutter app

Our mission was to make it easy to integrate Butter with your existing Flutter app in minutes. It’s so simple! To demonstrate, here’s a mini tutorial to give you a feel for the process of adding marketing pages to your Flutter app.

Of course, you can also use our Collections to do advanced content modeling. For a full integration guide, check out our Official Guide for the ButterCMS Flutter API client.

Play video

See how easily you can integrate the ButterCMS Pages API with your Flutter app.

Seamless Flutter components

Empower your marketing team with dynamic landing pages that align perfectly with your Flutter components. 

Components are the essential building blocks of any Flutter app, and ButterCMS handles them with ease. 

Our drag and drop interface makes it simple to structure your content to match existing Flutter components and to create new reusable components whenever you need them.

One Flutter CMS with everything you need

There’s a reason so many developers are choosing a headless Flutter CMS. It’s easy to set up, offers flexible, customizable content modeling, and gives you access to our full Flutter API.

  • Custom page types
  • Custom content modeling
  • CDN for assets
  • Webhooks
  • Testing environment
  • Customer case studies
  • Location pages

ButterCMS saves you development time

Most customers get our Flutter CMS up and running in less than an hour. Try it yourself!

headshot of DILLON BURNS

Simple as can be, with powerful features and great customer support. DILLON BURNS, FRONT END DEVELOPER, KEYME

How to integrate ButterCMS into your Flutter application

Just follow the simple steps below to complete the integration and begin creating pages with Butter. Be sure to check out our full guide to creating pages using the ButterCMS Flutter API.

First you would set up a new Customer Case Study page type in Butter and create a page. With your page defined, the ButterCMS API will return it in JSON format like this:

{
  "data": {
    "slug": "homepage",
    "page_type": null,
    "fields": {
      "seo_title": "Anvils and Dynamite | Acme Co",
      "headline": "Acme Co provides supplies to your favorite cartoon heroes.",
      "hero_image": "https://cdn.buttercms.com/c8oSTGcwQDC5I58km5WV",
      "call_to_action": "Buy Now",
      "customer_logos": [
        {
          "logo_image": "https://cdn.buttercms.com/c8oSTGcwQDC5I58km5WV"
        },
        {
          "logo_image": "https://cdn.buttercms.com/c8oSTGcwQDC5I58km5WV"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

To create these pages in our app, create the home_page.dart file:

import 'dart:convert';
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:buttercms_dart/buttercms_dart.dart';

class HomePage extends StatefulWidget {
 @override
 _HomePageState createState() => _HomePageState();
}

class _HomePageState extends State {
 Butter butter = Butter("YOUR_API_KEY");

 Map jsonMap;

 @override
 void initState() {
   super.initState();
   butter.page.retrieve("*", "homepage").then((response) {
     setState(() {
       // First fetch the json response,then decode into a map
       jsonMap = json.decode(response.body);
     });
   });
 }

 @override
 Widget build(BuildContext context) {
   return Scaffold(
     appBar: AppBar(
       title: Text("Home Page"),
     ),
     body: jsonMap == null ? _buildLoadingScreen() : _buildBody(),
   );
 }

 Widget _buildLoadingScreen() {
   return Center(
     child: CircularProgressIndicator(),
   );
 }

 Widget _buildBody() {
   return ListView(
     children: [
       Padding(
         padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
         child: Text(jsonMap["fields"]["seo_title"]),
       ),
       Padding(
         padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
         child: Text(jsonMap["fields"]["headline"]),
       ),
       Padding(
         padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
         child: Image.network(jsonMap["fields"]["hero_image"]),
       ),
       Padding(
         padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
         child: FlatButton(
           onPressed: () {},
           child: Text(
             jsonMap["fields"]["call_to_action"],
           ),
         ),
       ),
       Padding(
         padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
         child: Text("Customers love us!"),
       ),
       ...jsonMap["customer_logos"]
           .map((logo) => Image.network(logo["logo_image"]))
           .toList(),
     ],
   );
 }
}

The plugin also allows us to retrieve multiple pages using list() instead of retrieve().

We will try to list multiple client pages as:

import 'dart:convert';
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:buttercms_dart/buttercms_dart.dart';

class PagesListScreen extends StatefulWidget {
 @override
 _PagesListScreenState createState() => _PagesListScreenState();
}

class _PagesListScreenState extends State {
 Butter butter = Butter("YOUR_API_KEY");

 Map jsonMap;

 @override
 void initState() {
   super.initState();
   butter.page.list("customer_case_study").then((response) {
     setState(() {
       // First fetch the json response,then decode into a map
       jsonMap = json.decode(response.body);
     });
   });
 }

 @override
 Widget build(BuildContext context) {
   return Scaffold(
     appBar: AppBar(
       title: Text("Pages"),
     ),
     body: jsonMap == null ? _buildLoadingScreen() : _buildBody(),
   );
 }

 Widget _buildLoadingScreen() {
   return Center(
     child: CircularProgressIndicator(),
   );
 }

 Widget _buildBody() {
   List pages = jsonMap["data"];

   return ListView.builder(
     itemBuilder: (context, position) {
       return ListTile(
         title: Text(pages[position]["fields"]["headline"]),
         leading: Image.network(
           pages[position]["fields"]["customer_logo"],
           width: 40.0,
           height: 40.0,
         ),
       );
     },
     itemCount: pages.length,
   );
 }
}

That's it! If you browse to your homepage you'll see your homepage populated with the content you created in Butter.

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Benefits of Going Headless with Flutter

Flutter and headless CMSs, such as ButterCMS, share core design principles that translate into many benefits for building modern, high-performing applications. Let's explore some:

Build once, use everywhere 

Both Flutter and a headless CMS follow the "build once, use everywhere" principle. A headless Flutter CMS allows you to create a central content repository that can be accessed and displayed across several channels (web, mobile, wearables, etc.), so you don’t have to duplicate content for each channel or do any reengineering.

Flutter mirrors this philosophy. Its code, which is written in Dart, can be compiled into JavaScript and native machine code for different platforms (iOS, Android, web, desktop). This saves development time and resources while ensuring a consistent cross-device experience.

Developer friendliness and exceptional performance

Flutter and headless CMSs like ButterCMS are designed for developer ease and high performance. Flutter's hot reload feature enables developers to view changes instantly without having to rebuild the app. This speeds up the development process. Other developer-focused features include a rich widget library, built-in testing support, and multiple options for state management. 

Similarly, ButterCMS provides a well-documented API that works seamlessly with any frontend framework, including Flutter. Some of its other developer-friendly features include webhooks support, an API explorer, and one-click migrations.

Developers standing at a desk.

Built for customizability

Flutter and headless CMS solutions are built with customizability in mind. Flutter's deeply customizable widgets and comprehensive design system enable developers to build unique user interfaces that perfectly match the app’s design vision.  

In the same vein, a headless Flutter CMS offers flexible content modeling and powerful APIs that let you structure your content exactly how you need it. You can also leverage the same APIs to connect any third-party service with your stack at any time.

Integration is a breeze with no lock-in

Headless CMS integrations with Flutter are straightforward. Starter kits or pre-built libraries often provide all the necessary tools and code snippets for a quick setup. The integration process is finalized with just a few API calls to fetch and display content from the Flutter headless CMS. Moreover, the same headless CMS can be easily integrated with other frontend frameworks (like React, Angular, or Vue.js) as needed. This future-proofs your content and design strategy. 

On the other hand, integrating with a traditional CMS can be complex and time-consuming. These systems come with tightly coupled frontends and backends, which makes it difficult to adapt to new technologies or change the presentation layer without significant reengineering.

The Future of Flutter

The future of Flutter is bright, with continuous innovation and expansion into new territories. Here are some trends to look out for:

Expansion into the IoT space

As more devices become interconnected, the demand for cross-platform solutions that can operate on different hardware increases. Flutter's ability to compile into native machine code for multiple platforms makes it an ideal candidate for developing IoT applications. In the future, we can expect developers to build Flutter apps that control and manage smart home devices and other IoT products.

Continued performance improvements

Flutter is continuously optimized for better performance. The Flutter team is focused on reducing app size, improving rendering speeds, and enhancing overall efficiency. These ongoing performance improvements will further solidify Flutter’s role as a leading technology for building performant, content-rich applications with headless CMS solutions.

A group of people standing in front of the flutter logo.

Integrations with AI and AR

The prevalence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies opens exciting possibilities for mobile app development. Flutter's open-source and cross-platform nature make it a great fit for building intelligent and interactive apps, combined with AI and AR frameworks like TensorFlow Lite and ARCore.

Imagine a Flutter app that uses AI for image recognition or AR to overlay product information onto real-world objects, and a headless CMS to enable dynamic content delivery and real-time updates.

Emphasis on composability and modularity

The trend towards composable and modular architectures is gaining momentum. Flutter's widget-based architecture aligns perfectly with this trend, as it allows developers to build applications from reusable components. The future of Flutter will likely see even greater emphasis on composability, making it an ideal framework for modern, modular applications.

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