Why We Use Laravel for Web Application Development

Choosing the proper framework is crucial for speed and efficiency when building robust and scalable web applications. Laravel, a robust PHP framework, has emerged as one of the go-to choices for developers worldwide. Since its release in 2011, Laravel has garnered widespread acclaim for its elegant syntax, developer-friendly features, and comprehensive suite of tools designed to make web development faster, easier, and more enjoyable.

Laravel’s clean and readable codebase, flexibility, scalability, and active community support make it a standout choice for developers working on small and large-scale applications. From handling complex database queries to offering built-in solutions for routing, authentication, and caching, Laravel helps developers focus on building exceptional user experiences while streamlining the development process.

In this post, we’ll explore why Laravel is our framework of choice for web application development and how it empowers us to create high-performance applications that are easy to maintain and scale.

What is the Laravel framework?

Laravel is an open-source PHP framework that offers a wide range of features for web application development. PHP is a programming language used by many websites worldwide, including all WordPress websites.

Laravel provides an elegant syntax and a set of tools for everyday programming tasks, making it easier for developers to build modern web applications. Key features and components of Laravel:

• MVC Architecture Pattern: Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, which helps developers maintain application code and ensure separation between presentation layers and business logic.
• Blade Templating Engine: Laravel uses the Blade templating engine, which provides a lightweight, powerful way to structure dynamic content in views.
• Eloquent ORM (Object-Relational Mapping): Laravel has an advanced implementation of the database management tool Eloquent, which allows developers to interact with the database using object-oriented syntax.
• Middleware: Laravel uses Middleware to filter HTTP requests entering an application. This can be useful for authentication, logging, and more tasks.
• Routing: Laravel makes it easy to define web routes for your application, allowing you to handle HTTP requests with specific controllers and methods.
• Authentication and Authorization: Laravel provides a simple and easy-to-use authentication system that is out of the box and includes login, registration, and password reset.
• Artisan Console: Laravel includes a command-line tool called Artisan, which provides various commands to assist you while building your applications.
• Testing: Laravel supports PHPUnit tests and provides convenient methods for testing applications.

Overall, Laravel provides various features, making it a popular choice among developers. These include intuitive syntax, built-in features, and community support. It is widely used for building various web applications, from small projects to large enterprise-level applications.

Laravel is a PHP framework for server-side programming tasks and develops full-stack web applications that support frontend tasks. Front-end development is usually supplemented with Javascript, CSS and HTML.

History of Laravel

Laravel was created by Taylor Otwell and released the first version in 2011.  Below is a brief timeline for versions of Laravel from the beginning until now:

• 2011 – Laravel 1
• 2012 – Laravel 2
• 2013 – Laravel 3
• 2013 – Laravel 4
• 2014 – Laravel 5
• 2016 – Laravel 5.3, 5.4, 5.5
• 2017 – Laravel 5.6
• 2018 – Laravel 5.7
• 2019 – Laravel 5.8
• 2020 – Laravel 7 and Laravel 8
• 2022 – Laravel 9
• 2023 – Laravel 10
• 2024 – Laravel 11
• 2025 – Laravel 12

Laravel has been developed with a focus on expressive syntax, developer experience, and the adoption of modern PHP features. It has become one of the most popular PHP frameworks, known for its ease of use, contemporary features, and strong community support.

In 2011, Codeigniter was the most popular framework used in PHP, but it lacked several essential features such as authorisation & authentication, a template engine and unit testing. When Taylor Otwell introduced the Laravel framework, it was received as a great alternative to Codeigniter, as explained in the comparison below:

Below are the statistics showing the success of Laravel in competing with Codeigniter.  The statistics are from 2023 showing the percentage of PHP developers using the various frameworks available:

Why Contactpoint chooses Laravel for complex web applications

Popularity on its own is not enough to choose a framework.

Modern programming generally starts with a framework to reduce the development cost and deliver all the benefits gained from the approach.  Below are some general factors that should be considered when choosing a framework for your web application:

• The popularity of the framework
• Performance support
• Security
• Testing features
• Database access
• Third-party integrations
• Modularity
• Built-in modules
• Cost of development
• Community support

Laravel Advantages:

• Robust MVC Architecture:
  Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, which enforces the separation of concerns, making the code more organised, scalable, and maintainable. This enhances development efficiency and improves long-term project sustainability.
• High Code Quality and Maintainability:
  Laravel’s built-in tools, such as Eloquent ORM, Blade templating engine, and Service Providers, encourage clean, modular, and reusable code. As experienced software engineers, we prioritise code quality to ensure maintainability and easy debugging.
• Enterprise-Grade Security:
  Security is a core aspect of our development standards. Laravel provides CSRF protection, SQL injection prevention, authentication, authorisation, and encryption, ensuring that applications remain secure by designing excessive manual configuration.
• Scalable and High-Performance Applications:
  We chose Laravel because it supports caching mechanisms, queue management, event broadcasting, and database optimisations. These help us efficiently handle high-traffic loads and build enterprise-scale applications with superior performance.
• API-First Development Approach:
  Laravel’s built-in support for RESTful APIs, Laravel Sanctum, and Laravel Passport make it ideal for API-driven applications and microservices architectures. It ensures seamless integration with mobile apps and third-party systems.
• Robust Database Management and Migrations:
  Using Eloquent ORM, Database Migrations, and Seeders, we ensure structured and version-controlled database management, making deployments and updates seamless. This guarantees data integrity and consistency across environments.
• Advanced Testing Capabilities:
  We follow a test-driven development (TDD) approach, using Laravel’s built-in PHPUnit testing, feature tests, and browser tests to ensure software reliability and stability before deployment. This minimises production issues and enhances user experience.
• Seamless DevOps and Deployment:
  Laravel supports modern deployment tools like Docker, Laravel Forge, Envoyer, and CI/CD pipelines, allowing us to automate builds, manage environments, and deploy with zero downtime. This ensures efficient software delivery.
• Rapid Development with Built-in Tools:
  Laravel accelerates development through Artisan CLI, built-in authentication scaffolding, job queues, event handling, and caching systems—allowing us to deliver projects faster without compromising quality.
• Active Community and Long-Term Support:
  Laravel has a strong, active developer community and long-term support (LTS), ensuring that projects remain future-proof with continuous updates, security patches, and new features.
• Cost Efficiency and Business Value:
  Laravel’s development efficiency reduces project costs while maintaining high performance and security standards. It provides enterprise-level features without excessive licensing fees, ensuring cost-effective solutions for businesses.

Laravel Disadvantages:

• Resource Consumption – Laravel has many built-in features, which may require proper optimisation for high-traffic applications.
• Learning Curve for Complex Features – While beginner-friendly, mastering advanced concepts like Service Containers and Dependency Injection takes time.
• Frequent Updates Require Maintenance – Regular updates bring improvements but require periodic code adjustments, especially for long-term projects.
• Deployment & Server Configuration – Laravel is best suited for VPS or cloud hosting; shared hosting environments may not fully support it.
• Eloquent ORM Can Be Inefficient for Large Data Sets—While powerful, complex queries may require a query builder or raw SQL for optimal performance.

I enjoy the following aspects of using Laravel for web application development:

• Installing packages and dependencies can be performed quickly via the command line.
• Building a strong user interface by combining the blade template with HTML & CSS.
• Good structure for model, view and controller (MVC).
• It is easy to include the Javascript libraries for a superior user interface.
• Easy to integrate with third parties such as AWS, Google, etc.
• It’s convenient & easy to set up the project on my local machine.
• Debugging backend code can be done quickly.
• Easy to connect to databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• Provided authentication system.
• Easy to build RESTful APIs.

ContactPoint has built many web applications using the Laravel framework, including, most recently, the Deaths and Funerals web application.

As you can imagine, utilising pre-existing libraries allows everyday tasks to be incorporated into a web application cost-effectively and robustly.  We have utilised many Laravel packages/libraries and other codebases across the many applications we have built, including:

• aws/aws-sdk-php-laravel package: for AWS services such as SMS, email, etc.
• darryldecode/cart package: a shopping cart solution.
• barryvdh/laravel-dompdf: converting html to pdf.
• intervention/image
• laravel/sanctum
• laravel/socialite
• laravel/telescope
• renatomarinho/laravel-page-speed
• spatie/laravel-image-optimizer

When we won’t use Laravel

While Laravel is a powerful and popular PHP framework, there are situations where it may not be the best fit for a particular project.  Below are some reasons why Laravel may not be appropriate for a specific web application:

• Static Websites & Basic CMS Needs: Laravel is overkill for simple content sites where WordPress would be more efficient.
• High-Performance Real-Time Applications: Apps that heavily use Web Sockets (e.g., stock trading and live chat) may perform better with Node.js (Socket.io) than Laravel’s event broadcasting.
• Microservices with Minimal Overhead: When building microservices that need to be extremely lightweight,  Node.js may offer better performance with fewer dependencies.
• Legacy System Integration: If you are working with an older PHP system or a legacy application with a different architecture, Laravel may require significant refactoring to integrate correctly.
• Tight budget and time constraints

If you have an idea for a web application, contact us. We look forward to understanding your idea and helping you choose the best development framework!