Laravel and PHP development
Boring, productive and hostable anywhere, which is exactly why it keeps winning.
We build Laravel applications: customer portals, booking and quoting systems, marketplaces, and the APIs behind mobile apps. Laravel 12 on PHP 8, with queues, tests and a deployment pipeline rather than files dragged across FTP on a Friday evening.
What is Laravel, and why does it still win so many projects?
Laravel is a PHP framework that supplies nearly everything a database-backed application needs, routing, an ORM, migrations, authentication, authorisation, queues, scheduling, mail, file storage and a test framework, using conventions most PHP developers already know. For a business application with forms, roles and reports, it is usually the shortest distance between a requirements document and something people can log into.
PHP's reputation lags a decade behind the language. PHP 8 brought typed properties, enums, attributes, readonly classes and a JIT compiler, and a modern Laravel codebase with static analysis is as disciplined as a typed Node or Python one. Two things have not changed, and both are commercial advantages rather than technical ones: PHP hosting is available everywhere at low cost, and the hiring pool is enormous in every market we work in.
Laravel's real value shows up after launch. Queues, scheduled tasks, migrations and a first-class test framework are in the box, so the dull reliability work gets done the same way on every project instead of being reinvented per client. Version-to-version upgrades stay small: moving to Laravel 12 is a day's work, not a quarter's, which is not something we can say about every framework on this site.
When we choose it: the product is a web application with a database at its centre, the concurrency requirements are ordinary, the client wants flexible hosting, or an existing PHP system needs extending rather than replacing. When we do not: API-first products with heavy real-time features. Those go to Node, and we will say so before you ask.
What we build with Laravel
Custom business applications
Quoting, booking, inventory, membership and approval systems with roles, audit trails and reports that match how you actually work.
Explore →Customer and partner portals
Authenticated areas for accounts, documents, orders and support, reading from the systems that already hold the data.
Marketplaces and multi-vendor platforms
Vendor onboarding, commission logic, payouts and dispute handling, with the payment gateways your market genuinely uses.
APIs for mobile apps
Versioned REST APIs with token authentication, rate limiting and documentation, feeding Flutter or React Native clients.
Explore →Legacy PHP modernisation
CodeIgniter, CakePHP or hand-rolled PHP moved onto Laravel in stages, with the old system serving traffic until the new one is proven.
Maintenance and support
PHP and Laravel upgrades, security patching, performance work, and a named engineer on a monthly retainer.
Explore →Our Laravel stack, by layer
Laravel compared with the alternatives
Laravel vs WordPress
WordPress is a content management system with an application bolted on. Laravel is an application framework with no content management until you build some. If the site is mostly pages and posts, WordPress is cheaper and editors prefer it. Once there are custom records, workflow states and role-based screens, WordPress becomes the expensive option and Laravel becomes the cheap one.
Laravel vs Node.js
Laravel is more productive for classic request-and-response applications and its hosting market is far larger, which matters when a client wants to move providers. Node wins on real-time features, very high concurrency, and sharing one language and one set of types with a TypeScript front-end. Both are safe. The team who will maintain it decides.
Laravel vs Django
These two are close in capability and we would not argue hard either way. Django's generated admin is better out of the box. Laravel's queues, scheduling and ecosystem tooling are better, and PHP developers are easier to find in most markets. We choose Django when the same project also carries data or machine-learning work.
Laravel and PHP, answered
Is PHP a sensible choice in 2026?
For database-backed web applications, yes. PHP 8 is a fast, typed, modern language, Laravel is among the best-supported frameworks in any ecosystem, and the hosting and hiring markets are the largest of anything on this page. The failure cases we get called to are unmaintained PHP 5 and 7 code, not the language as it stands now.
Can you upgrade our old PHP application?
Usually. We start with an audit: PHP version, framework or absence of one, dependency and security state, test coverage. Sometimes the answer is an incremental move to Laravel with both systems running side by side. Sometimes it is a rewrite, and we will say that plainly with the reasoning rather than quoting a migration we do not believe in.
How much does a Laravel application cost?
A focused internal tool or portal typically runs $8,000 to $25,000. Marketplaces and multi-role platforms are $25,000 to $80,000 depending on payment, logistics and reporting requirements. A dedicated Laravel engineer is $20/hour or $2,600/month if you would rather run it yourself.
Do you use Livewire, Inertia or a separate front-end?
Livewire for admin and back-office screens where the interactivity is modest and one codebase is simply simpler. Inertia with Vue or React when the interface is genuinely rich. A separate API and front-end only when a mobile app or a third party also consumes that API, because otherwise it is two deployments for no benefit.
Where do you host Laravel applications?
AWS, DigitalOcean or Hetzner with Docker and a zero-downtime pipeline for most projects. Where a client is committed to shared cPanel hosting we will make it work, and we will also explain exactly what that costs you in deployment safety so the choice is informed.
Can we hire a Laravel developer from you?
Yes. Dedicated Laravel and PHP engineers are $20/hour or $2,600/month, with a 15-day trial and profiles within 48 hours. Most of them are comfortable inheriting somebody else's PHP, which is the harder skill.
Laravel build, rescue or upgrade?
Send the requirements or the repository. You get a written scope, an order of work and a range within two working days.