Laravel is an open-source web application development framework for PHP that provides your developers with free out-of-the-box code for many features that are common to web projects.
Laravel is designed as a core set of features with building blocks mixed and matched on top of the core. These building blocks are called plugins. Plugins can run independently or interact with other plugins, and this makes the framework infinitely expandable and flexible.
User registration and login
Billing and subscription for e-commerce
Search engine for user content
Internal logging and monitoring
Caching of frequently used data
Processing background tasks on a schedule
Access to backend data via other applications (APIs)
...these features are required for most web applications.
Having common features available to simply “turn on” is valuable to your business because it reduces the risk of bugs, saves on expensive development time, and allows your managers and developers to focus on building features that solve high-priority business problems.
In other words, Laravel frees up developers to work on solving problems that have direct value to your internal operations. Laravel also frees up developers to create more downstream value for customers and partners who use your web application.
The Laravel community promotes the framework as a foundation, freeing up developers to “create without sweating the small things.”Therefore, core features and plugins for Laravel are intended to provide rich functionality while also offering the flexibility for developers to extend and customize the original functionality.
Custom functionality modifies the behavior of a feature to meet the unique needs of a business with minimal development time.
Let’s say that again
If you’re considering Laravel for a web project, you may be asking,
“why use Laravel and not some other framework?”
After all, Laravel is not the only framework for web application development. In fact, there are thousands of frameworks for web projects and at least a dozen top-tier frameworks specifically for PHP programming.
01. First, using any top-tier framework for web development is almost always a better choice than writing code from scratch.
As a real-world example, consider building a house. Every house has standard features that must be constructed before the walls can be painted and the rooms can be furnished.
A coding framework, like Laravel and many others, gives your developers the tools and pre-built components to do all of these steps in a matter of days or weeks.
Without a framework, coding basic features can take months before you ever start working on features that provide real business value.
02. The second reason to use Laravel is if your project is built with PHP. If you’re not using PHP, Laravel is not for you.
If you already have a PHP-based project that you’re upgrading or maintaining, chances are you may be already relying on Laravel to save time and money. If you’re starting from scratch and have the freedom to choose your programming language and framework, you have a fresh opportunity.
PHP is used by approximately 78% of all websites worldwide, so it’s definitely the heavyweight contender in programming for web projects.
PHP is the defining reason that the Laravel framework is the right choice for so many businesses.
For example, Facebook was developed with PHP. Facebook is actually so dependent on PHP that they made their own version of the programming language. Their proprietary version is faster than the community version and optimized to support the computational load of billions of users.
Every business must balance cost, turnaround time, stability, and availability of talent.
The Laravel framework has a strong business case on all of these points. Because Laravel is built on top of PHP, it inherits many of the same qualities that make PHP so popular.
Saving time and money with Laravel
Cost and time are usually the leading factors when companies decide if a web development project is worth the investment. Again, less development and staging time, lowers the cost of any project as well as freeing up development time.
Building your web project with PHP and the Laravel framework offers cost and time advantages in multiple ways.
If you already have developers on your team who have never used Laravel, they will spend less time learning how to use the framework.
But even if you outsource your development to a freelancer or agency, your developers will spend less time during the project solving problems.
With detailed documentation and a large community to offer support, developers can easily find what they need in minutes or hours.
This is true for basic instructions that tell a developer how to implement a core feature. It’s also true for getting the answer to difficult questions.
Chances are someone in the community has already faced the same problem and is standing by to answer difficult questions quickly.
PHP and Laravel have existed for decades, so the code is mature and well-connected to other technologies.
As time goes on, developers find and fix bugs in Laravel’s core code and plugins, so everyone who uses the framework benefits from the collective effort to make sure the code is fast, secure, and free of bugs.
If you use Laravel for your web application, you get the benefits of thousands of hours of development time, but you didn’t have to pay for developers or wait for bugs to be fixed all those years.
As the years go on, developers also create more plugins that make it easy to integrate Laravel with other technologies, such as specialty databases and 3rd party services.
Laravel also runs on almost all types of servers because it is platform-independent. Generally speaking, hosting is less expensive on Linux servers than on Windows servers, so this option can mean further cost savings for your business.
All of these advantages stack up to more time and investment that you get for free out-of-the-box when you build a web application with PHP and Laravel.
If your company is starting a new web development project, the main question you want to answer is: “when do we choose Laravel?”
The bottom line is this: use the Laravel framework when your project is built on PHP and needs to be finished quickly and cost-effectively.
To make that decision easier, here's a checklist of questions that can help you decide when to use Laravel.
If your answer to all of these questions is yes, then Laravel is most likely the best choice for you.
Finding developers is a big consideration when choosing a technology for any development project.
The best situation is to be able to find the developer you need anywhere in the world at a reasonable price. But if your project is based on rare or highly specialized technology, developers will be more expensive and harder to find.
This is one of Laravel's biggest strengths. Because PHP is so widespread, many developers are available with a wide variety of experience.
A good PHP developer with no experience in Laravel can easily learn the framework and be productive on your project. But chances are a good PHP developer will already have experience with Laravel anyway.
This can be a challenging decision, especially for smaller businesses that may not want to commit to hiring dedicated developers for a short-term project, but using Laravel for a web project means you will be able to find the developers you need quickly for a reasonable budget.
Most projects have a big spike of effort for at least a few months to build out the initial code. Then they go into maintenance mode where a single developer is often sufficient to fix bugs and add minor new features. Based on this workload, it usually doesn’t make sense to hire an internal team of developers unless you expect to have many ongoing projects to justify the overhead.
More often, one-off projects are outsourced to an agency for the initial development. Then, the ongoing maintenance is either outsourced to the same agency, or an internal developer may be hired to take over the project. Large projects also need multiple developers, while smaller projects can typically get by with a single developer full-time or even part-time.
Depending on how long you intend to retain your developers, this can add to your commitment when hiring an internal team.
Managing a development project is difficult even with a great team and an experienced manager. Usually, there are many competing priorities to juggle, such as the desire for additional features that increase cost and push back the delivery date. If you decide to hire internal Laravel developers, your success will depend on if you also have a manager who is comfortable and experienced in managing those developers.
One of the main benefits of hiring a Laravel development agency is that you get an experienced manager as part of the development team. A great development manager takes requests from your leadership team and works with developers to plan and build the features you need.
This management role requires a solid understanding of technology and the ability to communicate clearly between business requirements and technical details.
Whether you hire your own Laravel developers or hire an agency with Laravel experience, be sure there is a great manager there to carry the load.
If you would like help deciding if Laravel is right for you, or choosing the right Laravel development partner, we’re happy to assist.
We can support you directly or refer you to the right resource based on your specific requirements.
Book a call now to speak with one of our Laravel specialists
