What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Laravel PHP Framework is working on a project, a freelance platform built on Laravel and Vue.js on the front end side. I have been part of the external company team as one of the senior engineers there. I have been building their site using Laravel as the primary stack and on the front end, it is Vue.js and Tailwind CSS framework. It is a freelance platform of all kinds, and it is a very powerful platform with a lot of features, filtering options to find new jobs or leads from the companies.
I have been working on providing the APIs, Laravel-based APIs for rendering the data on front end side and have been working also with external integrations with other systems, where mostly we are using third-party extensions for supplying these integrations because Laravel is a rich pool of third-party modules tailored specifically to solve different integrations in a quick and predictable way.
I am using Laravel APIs, then database connection using Eloquent ORM. That is a Laravel specialized ORM for communication to the database layer, and it is built on optimized querying language where you can with minimal syntax produce great pool of queries, even complex ones for what would normally take much more time to build if you were building it out of Laravel PHP Framework but directly in PHP, for example. It is so powerful. Inside of that ORM has its own caching model for the queries which optimizes the performance. I had a chance to work on one occasion in the past with Lumen, a Laravel-based framework. Lumen is a kind of API specialized niche of Laravel, which is just for the blazing fast and quick APIs. It uses the same Illuminate vendor Laravel models, but the advantage compared to Laravel is that this one is strictly specialized in API and it gives you a tiny overhead resulting in a blazing fast API.
What is most valuable?
The best features Laravel PHP Framework offers include its great community and a pool of a lot of modules already built on and different integrations which really cuts development time. Then, all of these Illuminate vendor modules are optimized and have the wrapper around most of the PHP communication. It is a bridge to the PHP development that speeds up development, optimizing it. Laravel PHP Framework is good because it has set up a fixed folder or code organization structure where you know where everything is so predictable. It allows you and introduces a lot of CLI commands which basically generates content for you. For example, if you are creating database migration, you have command for that. You can also easily scaffold or create specific modules so that will be organized in model database seeders. There are also nice libraries which populate the content, seeding the data easily. There is a good Mockery library that speeds up writing unit tests in Laravel PHP Framework. It contributes to the speed development of the entire team. It also has a really good integration with Vue.js framework and Tailwind CSS. It provides you with some templates and it is really good.
In Laravel PHP Framework, there is Blade, a Blade template, templating language, which speeds up the building of the pages in such a way that it extremely cuts the code writing with a lot of shortcut commands, safe PHP function wrappers, optimized ones, even cached ones. I think it is really great, marvelous thing.
Out of all those features, I would say CLI commands definitely provide me the most because on different layers and levels, it speeds up the development. It is organized and it is a predictable way of working. If you work on one Laravel PHP Framework project you can easily onboard even if you are new, then you switch to another one, you will know how another one would work because its code-based structure is very predictable and it also provides you always these CLIs which speed up development, for example, creating entire new entities. When I said entities, I mean factories, models, class proxies, controllers, everything can be boilerplate. Even if you want to speed up these things more, there are free third-party extensions which additionally contribute. It all depends on your project requirements and how often and useful it is to introduce even more support in that direction from the third-party Laravel PHP Framework modules. CLIs stand out as a really good feature. Then after that, I would put Eloquent ORM, which really speeds up the communication and queries on a database level, provides a caching of the queries using intuitive, self-descriptive commands that are really more readable than plain SQL queries writing. It speeds up my work a lot. Then after that, maybe third on the list will be Blade templating.
What needs improvement?
Laravel PHP Framework is constantly improving and it can be improved by following the current release structure, staying up to date with the most recent PHP releases. I think Laravel PHP Framework has a really good collaboration with other vendors like front end frameworks, Vue.js, Tailwind CSS optimization. When I say collaboration, I mean that you have it injected in the Laravel PHP Framework default project setup. It is saying to you, you can use whatever you want. You do not have to use Vue.js, you can use React JS, but then you will need to integrate these things. If you decide to use Vue.js, it is a breeze, because Vue.js and Laravel PHP Framework are optimized and injected by default together. That is how I have seen it could be even improved. For example, if they would put more collaboration with modern frameworks and introduced something better for the front end or other queuing systems. Laravel PHP Framework is really good with AWS SQS, but for example, on RabbitMQ queuing system, the collaboration is not so strong. On the other hand, by default, it is not so strong, but where Laravel PHP Framework rises as time passes is from the community which is evolving; the modules that have been added are huge and are constantly growing. It is written in a way that these modules do not need much code changes to always be supported by new Laravel PHP Framework versions, which is also a really good thing for Laravel PHP Framework.
There could be even more modules, which I believe will be the case in future, as it is constantly evolving. Strengthening the community, and promoting this framework more in the web world could make it conquer other frameworks or programming languages for web development. That would be really good. Laravel PHP Framework has borrowed the best things from some other web frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and one of the Python web frameworks.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Laravel PHP Framework on several occasions throughout my career, with some periods where I have been more exposed to Magento 2 than Laravel PHP Framework. I am actively using it the last four years for some of my minor projects in my current company and I really enjoy it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Laravel PHP Framework is really stable in my experience. There are no downtimes or major issues. It is surprising how well it supports large websites, traffic, and customers.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding the scalability of Laravel PHP Framework, it handles growth well and is easy to extend and scale. It is really performant and it has an integration with Redis cache system out of the box but also some other cache frameworks. It is really good.
How are customer service and support?
I have not needed to reach out for customer support for Laravel PHP Framework, and you do not need that. If you are not a developer or an engineer, you might. However, I do not think in my daily workflow I need to reach customer support. Developers can fix any kind of issue normally in Laravel PHP Framework, but of course, you can contact their support and ask for new features or ideas; it is a free option which you really do not have to pick since there are not many issues.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Symphony, CodeIgniter frameworks, CakePHP, and others. I also developed in vanilla PHP, but that takes time and is not the cleverest way of writing code in today's world.
How was the initial setup?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Laravel PHP Framework is straightforward with no challenges at all. It is really quick and straightforward. You have just one environment file where you have to fill all your variables, such as database connection, connection to mail providers, and connection to AWS S3 bucket concretely for our project. It is really straightforward; you just clone the repository, Laravel PHP Framework default framework repository, and then also have some system administration to point it on an NGINX server. It is a predictable way, and Laravel PHP Framework documentation is great. You just have to follow it, and you can easily spin it up on any server with minimal effort.
What about the implementation team?
We are deploying Laravel PHP Framework in my organization using AWS; everything is on AWS EC2 instances, and the database is on RDS. We are also using AWS injected code pipelines, but I had a chance to work on some other deployment tools such as Deployer and CircleCI.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with Laravel PHP Framework. I do not have numbers to say how much money, but I can say that for example, it can reduce the time of shipping software to production. That is first. Then also, it can cut your need for new developers. Let us say theoretically, if you were working on normal PHP and you have a team of five people, in Laravel PHP Framework you might only need three people to manage the same effort and achieve the same speed.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Laravel PHP Framework is straightforward with no challenges at all. It is really quick and straightforward.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Laravel PHP Framework, I did not evaluate other options myself. But if I had to choose for my personal project, Laravel PHP Framework is better than the others. It is simple, quick to spin up, very performant, easy to learn, security-wise it is good, there are lots of boilerplates, scaffolding, speed up development, and it has good integration with particular front-end frameworks. It is free to use with no licensing costs, so I think that is enough.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise others looking into using Laravel PHP Framework to choose it if you want fast development, cut your costs, or do web-specialized development. If your site is not huge or an enterprise system, then always choose Laravel PHP Framework. And of course, if you choose to work with PHP programming language, then always use Laravel PHP Framework. I think Laravel PHP Framework is optimal and it shines in these kinds of setups.
I think Laravel PHP Framework rocks and will continue to rock the web development world in the coming years. I would rate my overall experience with Laravel PHP Framework as an 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)