Which Python Framework Is Better for Your Web Development, Flask vs. Django?

Django is a web framework through and through. Favoring a single-package, “batteries-included” approach to software development, it offers plenty of integrated, ready-to-use solutions.

Django is essentially a web framework on steroids, focused on delivering business value of the product, as opposed to forcing you to make technological decisions. For this reason, the framework is sometimes considered an enterprise solution, good for larger companies. It also includes a template system, built-in object-relational mapping (ORM), and custom admin panel.

The admin panel in particular is a great feature of Django that makes development incomparably easier. For many use cases related to advanced CRUD administration (“create, read, update, and delete”), the panel is more than enough to answer any and all of your needs and get you started fast.

That is, unless you give the panel to the end user, in which case support from Product Design will be necessary. But as long as the use of the panel is limited to you or the admin, it’s perfectly sufficient.

More importantly, though, Django is somewhat infamous for its monolithism. The framework takes an approach known as “convention over configuration”—making customization and modification more difficult, but for the price of simpler development and maintenance.

What is Django used for?

We’ve already mentioned that Django can be perfect for larger enterprises, but not all projects have that kind of scope since day one.

Let’s assume you know for a fact you’re going to either:

1. start your app off small, but comprehensively, and keep it small in the future;
2. start your app off small and grow it later.

In the latter case, what you may not know, though, is how you’re going to approach this planned future growth. Your product may be one thing in the beginning and something else entirely after three months of development. This happens more often than you’d think.

That’s where Django comes to the rescue. Should your app grow exponentially over time, the framework by default has what you’ll most certainly need. It offers greater flexibility in the later stages of development.

It’s possible to integrate those additional solutions with Flask, but the process is unstandardized at best. Large projects with many modules mean more work with Flask, which in turn means higher maintenance and costs of development.

All in all, it’s much safer to start development in Django and stick to it later if you scale up rapidly.

II. Why use Django?

Big businesses tend to choose Django for its comprehensiveness and the aforementioned “convention over configuration” approach, which also means a more standardized and simplified development process.

The framework’s inflexibility may be seen as less inviting to developers, but on the business end, it serves to cover all the bases and prepare you for any challenges Flask wouldn’t be as well equipped to handle. This lowers maintenance costs dramatically.

Another huge advantage of Django is its market presence. More developers are familiar with Django, since it’s more widespread than Flask, meaning it’s easier and faster for you to add people to your project and scale your team up.

MVP development and startups: Django or Flask?

Many businesses that are just starting up are looking to build an MVP of their product first—a raw, uncut version of their app that gives them a quick look at its performance.

Django usually allows you to develop an MVP in less time than Flask. While you can also build an MVP in Flask quickly, there’s a clear difference when frontend comes into play. In Django, you can add the frontend quicker to get feedback on it faster. Plus, you can then add JavaScript frameworks to Django.

When it comes to proofs-of-concept, Django is a better fit than Flask, too. Building something—anything—first, then adding new modules on top of it is easy and safe with this framework.

Django effectively positions itself as a “start fast” solution, giving you the ability to launch quickly and grow later. This makes the framework a no-brainer for most startups, though naturally not all of them.

If a particular startup wishes to experiment a great deal very early on, or intends to rely on a large number of microservices, then Flask will be the more optimal pick for them.