Estimated read time: ~3–4 minutes
If you’ve started talking to developers about a custom build, you’ve probably heard:
“We’ll build this in Laravel.”
If that means nothing to you, that’s completely normal. Laravel is a tool developers care about, but it has real implications for you too.
So, what is Laravel?
Laravel is a framework for building web applications in PHP.
Think of it as a set of well-tested building blocks and rules for putting them together. Instead of writing everything from scratch, developers use Laravel to handle the boring but important stuff:
- Logging in and out
- Talking to the database
- Keeping things secure
- Structuring the code so it’s not a mess
That means they can spend more time on the bits that are unique to your business.
Why developers like it – and why you should care
Here’s what Laravel tends to mean for you, not just for the dev team:
1. Faster build, cleaner code
Because lots of common features are already solved, Laravel projects can be delivered faster and with less “inventing wheels”. Clean structure also means another Laravel developer can step in later without needing to decipher spaghetti.
2. Better security by default
Laravel ships with sensible security practices baked in. It doesn’t magically make everything bullet-proof, but it makes it harder to do obviously unsafe things. For anything handling logins, payments or personal data, that’s a big deal.
3. Easier to maintain and extend
Most modern PHP developers know Laravel. If your original developer moves on, it’s much easier to find someone who can take over a Laravel project than a one-off, home-rolled codebase. Adding new features later is usually cleaner too.
4. Scales with you
Whether you start with a simple portal or a more complex system, Laravel is used in everything from small tools to very large apps. If you grow, you’re unlikely to hit a “we have to throw it out and start again” moment just because of the framework choice.
When Laravel is a good fit
Laravel is usually a strong option when you’re building:
- A client portal or dashboard
- A custom booking or workflow system
- A back-office tool for staff
- Anything that feels more like software than a simple website
If all you need is a few pages and a contact form, you don’t need to care about Laravel at all. But when your site starts to become “how your business runs”, the underlying framework starts to matter.
What to ask your developer
You don’t need to become technical. A couple of simple questions go a long way:
- “If we build this in Laravel, what does that mean for maintenance and future features?”
- “If someone else had to work on this later, how easy would it be to hand over?”
If the answers are along the lines of “straightforward” and “well-supported”, you’re on solid ground.
Laravel is just one ingredient in the stack, but it’s a sensible, modern choice. You don’t have to love it. You just have to know it’s not a random experiment – it’s there to give you a safer, more maintainable custom system.
