Apps without App Store or Play Store: Flutter Web + Firebase Hosting + PWA

Publishing an app today still comes with unnecessary friction. Uploading to the App Store or Play Store involves reviews, waiting times, costs, and processes that, in many cases, don’t add real value to the product. And most importantly: it’s not always necessary. In many projects, a well-built web app as a PWA (Progressive Web App) is more than enough to launch, validate, and scale. In this article, I explain how I use Flutter Web together with Firebase Hosting to build real applications without going through app stores. The problem with app stores App stores make sense in certain contexts: mass-market apps fully mobile-focused products ecosystems dependent on Apple or Google distribution But in many other cases — internal tools, B2B platforms, MVPs or early-stage products — app stores only add friction. Publishing an update can take days. The review process is not always predictable. And maintenance costs increase. This directly slows down iteration speed, which is critical for any d