Laravel development: when is Laravel the right choice?

For most Danish businesses, Laravel development is not a choice of framework but an inheritance. There is a business system written in Laravel: a customer portal, a booking system, invoicing or an internal tool that grew out of a spreadsheet. The question is who will build on it. This guide explains what Laravel is, what the work typically consists of, when Laravel is the right choice for something new, and what to look for in a Laravel developer.

What is Laravel?#

Laravel is a framework for PHP, created by Taylor Otwell and first released in 2011. A framework is a ready-made skeleton you build your system on, so you do not have to write the same foundation from scratch every time.

What comes with Laravel is exactly what a business system needs: users and permissions, database access (Eloquent), migrations for the database schema, queues for background work, scheduled jobs, emails and a templating engine for the pages (Blade). It is proven in a great many systems, so the hours go into your own business rules and not into reinventing login.

PHP can be hosted almost anywhere, and there are many Danish developers who can read the code. That is an underrated advantage: a system several people can take over is a system that does not tie you to one person.

What Laravel development typically is#

There are two kinds of jobs, and the second is by far the most common:

• New from scratch: a system that has to be built because the spreadsheet or the off-the-shelf system you use today can no longer keep up.

• Further development and takeover: an existing Laravel system that needs new features, an upgrade or a new developer, because the previous one has stopped.

With a takeover, the work starts with reading: the schema, the migrations, the queue jobs and the scheduled commands, so you know how the system actually fits together before giving a price on anything. I have written about the order to do it in in Taking over a Laravel app after the developer left.

When Laravel is the right choice, and when it is not#

Laravel is a good choice when what needs building is mostly logic: users, permissions, calculations, payments and a process with statuses. Most of the foundation comes with it, and it is easy to find someone who can take over.

It is a poorer choice when the job is mostly content you want to edit yourselves. Then WordPress is cheaper to build and cheaper to run. And when the interface is highly interactive, like a dashboard people sit in all day, it is usually built in React or Vue, with Laravel as the backend behind it. That combination is common and works well.

Why the version matters#

Laravel releases a new major version roughly once a year, and each version gets bug fixes for 18 months and security fixes for two years. PHP itself has its own support period per version. A system that is not upgraded therefore quietly slides out of support, even if it runs fine.

It happens more often than you would think. An upgrade brings no visible gain for anyone but the developers, it is risky without tests, and there is always something more urgent. Then a security advisory arrives for a dependency that cannot be fixed without the upgrade. The safe route is one major version at a time, with the system deployed and running between each step, and PHP and Laravel upgraded separately, so a failure has one clear cause.

Laravel developer in Denmark: what to look for#

Whether the developer is based in Denmark matters less than how they work. Ask:

1. How do you start on a system you did not write? A good answer is about reading and mapping before a price is given.

2. What do you do if there are no tests? The answer should be a small test suite around the parts that move money or can lose data, before anything is changed.

3. How are changes deployed? From version control, with migrations and a way back, not by uploading files to the server.

4. Who owns the code, the server and the access? It should be you.

5. Is it written down? Migrations, environment variables and deployment documented, so the system does not depend on the developer staying.

Frequently asked questions#

Is Laravel the same as PHP?

No. PHP is the programming language, and Laravel is a framework written in PHP. All Laravel code is PHP, but not all PHP code is Laravel.

Can an old Laravel system be upgraded, or does it need rewriting?

Almost always upgraded. Rewrites are recommended far more often than they are justified. A technical review settles the question before anyone commits to a figure, and the answer is often that a targeted upgrade buys several more years.

Laravel or WordPress?

If it is mostly about content you want to edit yourselves, WordPress. If it is mostly logic, users and processes, Laravel.

Can a Laravel developer work alongside our own developers?

Yes, and it is a perfectly ordinary arrangement: reviewing pull requests, the tasks nobody has time for, or an extra senior opinion alongside the team.

If you have a Laravel system that needs building on or taking over, you can read more about my Laravel development.