Custom PHP platforms on Laravel 11 for admin portals, B2B applications, SaaS start-ups and client dashboards. Quickly to production via Livewire, Filament and Octane — with a codebase your own team can take over without vendor lock-in.
Laravel is the leading PHP framework for modern web applications. It is a mature platform that sits somewhere between a "framework" and an "application platform": for much of what you encounter in a typical web application (authentication, authorisation, database access, queues, mail, file storage, scheduling, payments), there is a well-designed, tested and conventional solution that works straight away. You write less glue code and can focus on the part that sets your product apart.
Since Laravel 11, the baseline has been modernised again: a slimmed-down application skeleton, first-class Vite integration, Pest as the default testing tool, and Laravel Reverb as an in-house WebSocket server. Eloquent, the actively maintained ORM, treats database records as objects you can query naturally, with relationships, casts, scopes and eager loading in a few lines. For the frontend layer, you have a choice: Livewire 3 if you prefer to keep your screens entirely in PHP, with server-side rendering plus live interaction, or Inertia 2 if you want React or Vue as your view layer without the overhead of a separate SPA build with an API in between.
We build Laravel platforms for founders with a SaaS MVP, for SMEs who want to replace their Excel or Access processes with a proper portal, and for enterprises who want to modernise a legacy PHP application without a full rewrite to an entirely different stack. The broader service context is on our overarching web development page. For capacity questions, you can turn to hire a full-stack developer.
Here are six patterns we come across regularly. If you recognise one of them, Laravel is almost always a pragmatic default, and we can quickly talk through scope.
For admin dashboards, supplier portals, customer control panels or internal management, Laravel with Filament is an exceptionally fast foundation. Filament generates CRUD screens, forms, tables, filters and role-based access directly from your Eloquent models, so the heavy lifting lives in business logic rather than glue code. The portal feels professional from day one and can later be extended with custom panels and widgets.
For B2B platforms with multi-tenancy, role-based access control and business logic that varies by client, Laravel is well positioned. Spatie Permissions provides mature role and permission management, Sanctum or Passport handles API tokens, and the queue layer processes heavy background jobs without making the user wait. For a React frontend on top, single-page application is the logical extension via Inertia 2.
For SaaS start-ups that need to iterate fast, Laravel is one of the shortest routes to production. Cashier supports Stripe and Paddle billing with subscriptions, trials, prorations and webhooks; Jetstream or Breeze provide registration, login, two-factor authentication and team management out of the box. You build product functionality, not plumbing, and the codebase stays understandable for an in-house team.
For websites that are more than a few pages, such as a customer portal connected to your marketing site, configurators, calculation tools, dynamic landing pages or a custom e-commerce flow, Laravel with Statamic or a custom content layer built on Filament is far more flexible than WordPress as an archipelago of plugins. You retain ownership of the codebase and write every business rule in modern PHP.
Laravel is a strong choice as a pure API backend for a React, Vue or mobile application: API resources for JSON transformation, Sanctum for token authentication, Octane for low latency, and solid testing tooling to keep your endpoints contract-stable. Pairing it with an Inertia 2 frontend almost always gets you to production faster than a separate React SPA with a standalone REST backend.
For marketplaces, job boards, comparison sites or community portals where multiple parties post content and transact, Laravel is a productive choice. Multi-tenant data isolation, payment flows with escrow, search via Scout on Algolia or Meilisearch, and moderation tooling via Filament: each of these components has a conventional solution, so you don't have to build them from scratch.
Honesty saves you an expensive change of direction halfway through. These are the three scenarios in which we refer you to a different framework or platform.
For applications with large-scale bidirectional communication, such as video conferencing, live game states, collaborative editing in the style of Figma, or signalling servers for WebRTC, Node.js with Socket.IO or a Go or Elixir (Phoenix) backend is a more natural choice. Laravel Reverb covers many real-time use cases, but for deep event loops with thousands of concurrent connections per server, an event-driven runtime is fundamentally better positioned.
For heavy computer vision pipelines, machine learning training, numerical simulations or ETL on large datasets, PHP, and therefore Laravel, is not the right runtime. Python with NumPy, pandas and PyTorch, or Rust for maximum performance, are the logical answers there. We often work in a hybrid setup: Laravel as the application layer, with a Python or Rust service alongside it for the heavy compute.
For browser gaming, 3D render pipelines, WebGL or WebGPU applications, or native mobile gaming, Laravel is a back-end layer, never the runtime of the game itself. For the game client, Unity, Unreal or platform-native rendering with Metal and Vulkan are the right choices. In that scenario, Laravel can handle player accounts and the matchmaking API perfectly well.
The four alternatives that regularly come up in our intake conversations. In the first conversations we help you choose which one fits, based on your stack, team composition and product ambitions.
Our default configuration for production applications. Depending on your scope we swap out components, but these are the building blocks we start with by default.
We start on the most recent Laravel version with PHP 8.3 or newer. Eloquent as the ORM, with explicit relationships, casts to value objects where that makes sense, and disciplined eager loading to prevent N+1 problems. PHPStan at level 7+ for static type checks in CI.
For most projects, we use Livewire 3 with Volt and Alpine.js: server-rendered PHP components with live interactivity, without a separate SPA build. Where React or Vue is required as the view layer, we use Inertia 2 as the adapter, so we keep Laravel routing and controllers and don't have to maintain a separate API. Vite for assets, Tailwind v4 for styling.
Filament 3 is our default for admin panels: mature, quick to configure and extensible with custom pages, widgets and form fields. Statamic is a CMS built on Laravel for content-driven marketing sites. Laravel Nova is a licensed alternative for clients who prefer the official Laravel tooling.
For high-traffic applications, Laravel Octane runs on FrankenPHP, Swoole or RoadRunner, so the application stays warm between requests instead of rebooting on every call. Horizon manages queues on Redis, and Pulse gives you real-time insight into slow queries, slow routes, exceptions and cache hits.
The Spatie packages for permissions, query builder, media library, activity log and backups are part of our defaults. Laravel Cashier handles Stripe or Paddle billing, including webhooks. Scout provides full-text search via Algolia, Meilisearch or Typesense. Sanctum handles lightweight API token authentication, and Passport provides full OAuth2 when third parties need to integrate. Socialite handles SSO via Microsoft, Google or your own OIDC provider.
We use Pest as our testing framework for its readable syntax and native parallel execution. Architecture tests via Pest's arch plugin guard dependency boundaries, for example ensuring models make no HTTP calls or controllers don't write directly to the database. Dusk handles browser end-to-end tests, and Larastan handles static type checks. CI runs on GitHub Actions with matrix builds across multiple PHP versions.
For server-based hosting, we use Laravel Forge on DigitalOcean, Hetzner or AWS, offering simple provisioning, zero-downtime deploys via Envoyer and automatic SSL. For serverless hosting, we use Laravel Vapor (AWS Lambda) or Laravel Cloud. For enterprise environments with strict isolation requirements or existing Kubernetes infrastructure, we deploy Octane containers via Helm charts on your own cluster.
Sentry for error tracking and performance tracing, configured with source maps and breadcrumbs. Laravel Pulse for real-time stack stats (slow queries, slow jobs, exception counts, cache hit rates) in the Laravel dashboard. Telescope only in staging and local environments. Cronitor or Healthchecks.io for scheduled job monitoring, so a stalled queue or silenced cron doesn't go unnoticed.
Depending on where you stand and what it will deliver. We'll advise which flavour suits you in the first conversation: no fixed format, but clear outlines.
A first working version of your SaaS product on a production-grade foundation. Registration, login, two-factor authentication, team management, Stripe billing, a working admin panel via Filament and an initial set of features. Not a throwaway MVP, but a codebase that grows with you, so you can build on it after validation instead of rebuilding.
A Laravel application that supports an existing product or business. Deep integrations with your ERP or CRM, identity provider (Azure AD, Okta, or your own IdP), payment flows and analytics. We build on the production stack above from day one and deliver with monitoring, alerting and a release pipeline your own team can run. SSO, role-based access and multi-tenancy where needed.
You have an existing PHP platform — an ageing bespoke application, a WordPress site that has grown out of hand, or an early Symfony project — and you want to move to a modernised Laravel stack. We take a pragmatic approach: keep what works, replace what causes pain, and grow towards the new stack module by module rather than through a big-bang rewrite. Production stability is maintained throughout the entire process.
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →A production-ready Laravel project, plus everything around it needed to run and continue developing the application yourself. Nothing in our deliverables depends on you staying with Appfront, as vendor lock-in is not the intention.
A conversation in which we understand what you want to build, for whom, and which stack and organisation it fits. We test whether Laravel is the right answer — and say so honestly when Node, Symfony or a Python layer is a better fit.
We draw up a sprint plan, sketch the architecture and select the stack components (Livewire or Inertia, Filament or Nova, Forge or Vapor). For production platforms, a spike on the most demanding integration or the most critical performance path runs in parallel, so that assumptions are validated up front rather than during the build.
Each sprint produces a working build on staging for your team and stakeholders. Feedback is incorporated in the next sprint or through a hotfix deploy. Code reviews, automated tests via Pest and PHPStan, and performance checks form part of the cycle, rather than being done once at the end.
Production deployment via Envoyer or the hosting pipeline of your choice, with blue-green or canary rollout where the scope justifies it. Monitoring is tightly watched during the first days, with focused attention on slow queries, queue lag and exception spikes. For B2B platforms we often use a phased rollout — internal users first, then a pilot, then wide availability.
After go-live, the team keeps monitoring sharp, processes feedback and ensures dependencies, PHP versions and the Laravel LTS cycle are kept up to date. Further development runs in new sprints, with clear prioritisation based on data and user feedback.
Four target groups for whom Laravel — and the way we work with it — delivers proven value.
You're building a SaaS product and want to start from scratch without boilerplate. With Laravel, the foundations (auth, billing, admin, queues, mail) are quick to put in place on a production-grade base, so you can go live after every sprint instead of only at the end.
You're still running on an Excel chain, an Access database or an outdated custom PHP application. For replacing these, Laravel with Filament is exceptionally productive, and the wider web development journey often revolves around such a core portal. We advise on the data migration and keep your operations running throughout the project.
For B2B platforms with multi-tenancy, marketplaces or comparison sites, Laravel is a productive choice. It combines well with SSO, identity providers and existing back-office systems. For capacity questions, we look at full-stack developer hire.
You already have a production PHP application on an older framework and want to move to Laravel without a big-bang release. We work module by module using the strangler fig pattern, preserve production stability and gradually move features from the old codebase to the new stack, at a pace your organisation can handle.
What clients usually want to know before we start.
A free, no-obligation half-hour introduction. We listen to what you want to build, look at how it fits your existing stack and organisation, and give you honest advice — Laravel, Symfony, Node or a hybrid setup — rather than automatically selling our own work.
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