Laravel Development Services from first commit to live traffic
New Laravel applications, SaaS products with billing and teams, APIs for mobile apps, admin tools, and older PHP moved onto Laravel route by route, delivered by Laravel developers on our own staff. Two weeks of discovery fix the scope and the price before the build starts, and the repository is yours from the first commit.
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What our Laravel development services deliver, blank repository to running app
Laravel is a PHP framework with its own answers for sign in, queues, billing, search, live updates and testing. Our Laravel development services use those answers to deliver a working application, its tests and its deploy pipeline, then keep it current. What you buy is a finished product against a written scope, not hours from a developer you have to direct.
- SaaS productsSubscription plans, teams, invitations and limits for each plan.
- Customer portals and dashboardsOrders, documents and account history over the data you already hold.
- Internal admin toolsScreens for operations, support and finance staff who outgrew a spreadsheet.
- APIs for appsREST and JSON:API backends for iOS, Android and single page front ends.
- Live featuresNotifications, presence and chat over WebSockets with Reverb.
- AI featuresSummaries, assistants and semantic search through the Laravel AI SDK.
- Moves onto LaravelOlder PHP applications rebuilt on Laravel one route at a time.
- Upkeep after launchThe yearly major upgrade, security releases and monitoring.
What you bring, and what comes back
| You bring | You get back |
|---|---|
| An idea or a written spec | After two weeks of discovery: a written scope, decision records for each architecture choice, and a fixed bid, or a recommendation to buy an existing product |
| A live PHP application | A read of the code and a staged plan for moving it onto Laravel without a big launch day |
| A Laravel app that has to grow | Features delivered through review and tests, with the stack choices below written down where they were never recorded |
| A launch date | A release pipeline, monitoring, and a handover pack for whoever runs the app next |
Seven choices to settle before the first migration runs
A Laravel app is quick to start and slow to re-plan. These seven choices shape everything built on top of them, so discovery writes each one down with its reason, in an architecture decision record that stays with you.
| Decision | Options | What settles it |
|---|---|---|
| Front end | Livewire with the Flux UI kit; Inertia with React, Vue or Svelte; or a separate Next.js front end calling an API | Who maintains the screens. A team that writes only PHP suits Livewire; one that writes React suits the React kit, built on React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind and shadcn/ui |
| Sign in | Starter kit accounts on Fortify, with two-factor codes; a WorkOS AuthKit variant with social login, passkeys and SSO; Sanctum tokens for mobile apps | Whether business customers will ask for SSO, and whether a mobile app signs in too |
| Database | MySQL or PostgreSQL | PostgreSQL with pgvector if semantic search is on the roadmap, because Laravel 13's vector queries are built on it |
| Queues | Redis, with Horizon watching the workers; or the database driver for light loads | How much work runs in the background, and whether someone needs a dashboard of failed jobs |
| Hosting | Laravel Cloud, managed and auto-scaling; Forge on a server you rent; Vapor, serverless on AWS; or servers you already run | How much server administration your own team wants to keep |
| Live updates | Reverb, Laravel's own WebSocket server, with Echo in the browser | Whether users must see changes without reloading; Reverb spreads across servers through Redis when one is not enough |
| App server | PHP-FPM behind Nginx, or Octane on FrankenPHP, Swoole or RoadRunner, which boots the app once and keeps it in memory | Request volume, and whether the code is free of state that would leak from one request to the next |
Sources: Laravel documentation on starter kits, deployment, Reverb and Octane.
SaaS on Laravel: tenants, plans and feature flags
The tenancy model is the choice that costs most to undo, because it ends up inside every query, every queued job and every backup. Laravel does not force one. Its starter kits can now generate team support, where each user belongs to one or more teams and team pages carry the team's slug in the URL, which covers the most common pattern from day one.
| Model | How it works | Suits | The cost of it |
|---|---|---|---|
| One database, team column | Every customer table carries a team id, and a global scope filters each query by it | Most B2B products whose customers look alike | One forgotten scope shows one customer another's data, so tests check isolation on every model |
| A database per customer | Each customer gets a database of its own, picked at the start of every request | Customers who contract for separate data, or accounts of very different sizes | Migrations run once per customer, so deploys take longer as the list grows |
| A deployment per customer | A separate copy of the whole app for each customer | A handful of large customers with hosting rules of their own | Every upgrade and fix is repeated on every copy |
Billing runs through Laravel Cashier, which handles Stripe subscriptions, coupons, plan swaps, seat quantities, grace periods after a cancellation and invoice PDFs, and checks the signature on each Stripe webhook before acting on it.
Feature flags run through Pennant, whose flags can be scoped to a team as well as a user, so a beta reaches one customer account at a time. Per-plan limits sit in Laravel's rate limiter, keyed by team.
The product side of a SaaS launch, from pricing pages to onboarding and the first paying customers, is covered on our custom SaaS development services page.
Moving older PHP onto Laravel, one route at a time
Rewriting a working PHP application in one go means months with nothing live and a launch day that changes everything at once. The safer path is the one Martin Fowler calls the strangler fig: build the new system beside the old one and move behaviour across piece by piece, until the old code can be switched off.
- Laravel goes in front. Every request reaches Laravel first, and any route it does not handle yet falls through to the old application's entry script, so visitors still see one site.
- One login across both halves. The old and new code share a session or a signed token, so someone who signs in on an old page is still signed in on a new one.
- The data stays put. Eloquent models point at the existing tables first. Schema changes come later, each one a migration of its own.
- Modules move busiest first. Each one ships behind tests and a Pennant flag, and the old route stays available until the new one has run cleanly in production.
- Switch off, then delete. Once the last route has moved, the legacy code is removed, not left running where nobody watches it.
Whether to move at all, or simply bring the PHP underneath up to date, is the first question on our PHP development services page, along with the PHP branch dates that set the deadline.
What a healthy Laravel codebase has at every release
Laravel arrives ready for testing with Pest and PHPUnit, and its documentation advises that most tests be feature tests, which send real requests through the app. Use the list below to judge any Laravel codebase, including one we hand over.
- Feature tests on every route that moves money or changes data, run on each push, with parallel runs keeping the suite quick.
- One code style enforced by Pint, so reviews argue about behaviour rather than spacing.
- A deploy that runs
php artisan optimizeto cache configuration, events, routes and views, thenphp artisan reloadso workers, Reverb and Octane pick up the new code. - The built-in
/uphealth route wired to an uptime monitor or the load balancer. - Slow requests, failed jobs and exceptions watched in Pulse, Horizon or Laravel's hosted Nightwatch service.
Security defaults worth keeping
- Two-factor sign in and login rate limiting, which the starter kits include through Fortify.
- Laravel 13's PreventRequestForgery middleware, which checks where a request came from as well as its CSRF token.
- Policies deciding who may see or change each record, with tests that try the forbidden cases.
APP_DEBUGset to false in production; the deployment guide warns that leaving it on can expose configuration values to visitors.- Keys read from the environment, with the .env file kept out of Git.
On our builds, a separate QA team tests each release before you see it, and the pipeline with automated tests and a rollback route exists before the first production deploy.
After launch: keeping a Laravel app current
Laravel ships a major version every year, around the first quarter, and patches each one for bugs for 18 months and for security issues for two years, per its release notes. Read together, those dates leave little slack: an app one major release behind is still patched, and an app two behind is not.
So one major upgrade a year belongs in the plan from the start. Laravel says it aims to make each one possible in a day or less; packages and custom code decide how close a real app gets to that.
- Every month: minor and patch releases inside the current major, a look at the failed jobs list, and the slowest routes in Pulse.
- Every quarter: renewal dates for paid licences such as Nova checked, abandoned packages flagged, and a restore of the backup to a test server.
- Every year: the move to the next Laravel major, with any PHP branch it requires.
A monthly retainer keeps a named team on fixes, upgrades and small features, starting at one senior engineer and one designer. If you would rather add one developer to your own team, that is a separate purchase, billed by the month, with its own page: hire expert Laravel developer. That page also carries the support dates for Laravel 10 to 13.
What a Laravel build costs, and how long the first release takes
This site carries no Laravel rate card; the price of a build is fixed once discovery ends. For a benchmark before that, the bands in our guide to custom software development cost hold for Laravel as for any stack. A focused first version typically lands between $40,000 and $150,000, and a complex enterprise platform can pass $250,000 and reach $500,000 or more.
As for time, the first release of an MVP usually follows discovery by 8 to 12 weeks, and a production platform by 16 to 28.
Costs that belong to Laravel itself
- The hosting model. Managed platforms such as Laravel Cloud charge for compute, databases and caches as you use them; Forge manages a server you rent yourself, so you pay for both.
- Paid packages. Laravel Nova, an admin panel, is sold as a licence; most other first-party packages are free.
- Outside services. Stripe's fees, email delivery and, on the WorkOS starter kit, WorkOS itself, which the Laravel docs say is free up to 1 million monthly active users.
- The yearly upgrade. A known cost from day one, best budgeted rather than discovered.
To set your own hours against a team, the development team cost calculator estimates a monthly burn from the roles you add.
The Laravel development company behind the build
Laravel is one of the web stacks our in-house developers put on client projects, with Angular and Magento beside it. Engineering sits in Delhi, our engineering headquarters, and in Lucknow; New York holds leadership and account directors and replies to US clients on weekdays between 9 AM and 6 PM Eastern.
This page is signed by our CTO, Divyansh Singh, who sets the architecture and the engineering standard and leads the code review of our API, CRM and AI chatbot builds. Contracts assign you the code made for your project once it is paid in full.
We show no named Laravel client build on this page. Once the NDA is signed, ask for reference calls with past clients, and judge the code against the checklist in section 05.
Who we build for
- Founders taking a SaaS idea to its first paying customers.
- Operations teams replacing a tangle of spreadsheets with an internal tool.
- Mobile app teams that need an API and an admin panel behind the app.
- Owners of an older PHP system who want it on Laravel without a risky launch day.
Laravel or Next.js: which we would pick for your build
Next.js with React is our default for new web builds, so a page selling Laravel work owes you the cases where we would point you elsewhere. The table is our judgement, not measured data.
| Your situation | Our pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your developers write PHP, or the new system sits beside PHP you already run | Laravel | One language across old and new code, and first-party packages for sign in, queues and billing |
| A portal or SaaS product with heavy background work: invoices, imports, scheduled emails | Laravel | Queues, the scheduler and Horizon come with the framework |
| A marketing site where page speed and search traffic matter most | Next.js | Our default for new web builds, staffed by our React developers |
| A product that is mostly front end, with a thin backend | Next.js | A second language would add cost without adding much |
| A mobile app that needs an API and a large admin side | Either | Laravel with Sanctum tokens fits well when the admin screens are most of the work |
Quick answers on a Laravel project
What can be built with Laravel?
Most web software with accounts and data behind it: SaaS products, customer portals, internal admin tools, booking and order systems, and the API behind a mobile app. Laravel's first-party packages cover sign in, queues, subscription billing, feature flags, WebSockets and search, so those parts are configured rather than written from nothing.
How much does a Laravel application cost to build?
The ranges in our custom software cost guide apply: a focused first version usually lands between $40,000 and $150,000, and complex enterprise platforms run from $250,000 to $500,000 or more. Hosting, paid packages such as Nova and outside services come on top. Our own price is a fixed bid made after two weeks of discovery.
How long does a Laravel build take?
After a two-week discovery sprint, an MVP usually reaches its first release in 8 to 12 weeks and a production platform in 16 to 28. Integrations, data migration and how many user roles the app needs move a project within those ranges.
Can an older PHP app be moved onto Laravel?
Yes, in stages rather than in one launch. Laravel takes every request first and hands unknown routes to the old code, both halves share one login, and modules move across one at a time behind tests and feature flags. The existing database stays in place until each part has moved, and the old code is deleted at the end.
How much traffic can a Laravel app handle?
A great deal, when the app is built for it. Slow work goes onto queues, Octane keeps the booted app in memory between requests, Reverb spreads WebSocket connections across servers through Redis, and Laravel Cloud scales compute automatically. In practice the first limit is usually the database: unindexed queries and pages that load related records one at a time.
Is Laravel secure enough for payments and personal data?
The framework gives sound defaults: request forgery protection, escaped output in Blade, hashed passwords, two-factor sign in in the starter kits and signature checks on Stripe webhooks through Cashier. Security still depends on the app's own code, so access policies need tests, debug mode must be off in production, and the app has to stay on a supported Laravel version.
Which hosting should a Laravel app use?
It depends on who will look after the servers. Laravel Cloud is fully managed and scales on its own. Forge sets up and manages a server you rent from a provider such as DigitalOcean or AWS. Vapor runs the app serverless on AWS. A team with its own operations staff can run Nginx and PHP-FPM on servers it already has.
Livewire or Inertia: which front end should we choose?
Choose by who will maintain the screens. Livewire builds reactive pages in PHP and Blade, which suits a team that does not want a JavaScript framework. Inertia keeps Laravel's routing and controllers but renders pages in React, Vue or Svelte, which suits a team that already writes one of them. Laravel ships a starter kit for each.
Do you support a Laravel app after launch?
Yes, on a monthly retainer with a named team, starting at one senior engineer and one designer. It covers fixes, small features, patch releases, monitoring and the yearly major upgrade, which matters because Laravel stops security fixes two years after each major release.
Will we be tied to your team once the app is live?
No. The repositories and cloud accounts are in your name from the start, the code follows Laravel's own conventions, and the handover pack holds the architecture notes, runbooks and decision records another Laravel team needs to take over. Our engineers sit on access you can remove at any time.
Last reviewed .
Bring the idea or the codebase, leave with a scope
Tell us what the app must do, who will use it and, if it already exists, which Laravel and PHP versions it runs. A free 30-minute call comes first; discovery follows only if both sides want it, and every form on this site gets an email reply within 24 hours. Book a call with a Laravel developer.
What clients say after launch.
Published reviews from our Fiverr profile, reproduced word for word. 397 public reviews across 4 gigs, from clients in 36 countries. Read them all on Fiverr.
Most developers can build features. Very few can make them feel like they were always part of the original product. That's exactly what happened here. Everything fits naturally, and I never had to explain the same thing twice. Really happy with the outcome.
Really impressed with the final platform. The marketplace is clean, responsive, and everything works exactly as discussed. Every small refinement was handled with care. Very happy with the final outcome.
Very happy with the final website! The design is clean, mobile friendly, and performs smoothly. Highly recommend for responsive full stack websites.
I came here expecting someone to fix a few bugs, but what I really got was someone who took the time to understand how the whole website actually works. The updates blend in perfectly with the existing site, nothing feels patched or out of place. Would definitely recommend them!!
What impressed us the most was the thorough testing and attention to detail. Throughout the project, we received clear progress updates, and every concern we raised was addressed quickly and professionally. Communication was excellent, and the final delivery exceeded our expectations.
Very professional to work with, attentive to details and very responsive. Everytime that we have corrections they respond rapidly and correct them within the next day or so. This is the level of quality of work we have been looking for
Reviews are reproduced as published on Fiverr, captured 2026-08-03. Fiverr shows the buyer's username and country publicly; no other client detail is used here.
Why work with Digital Heroes
115 people in New York, Delhi, Lucknow, London and Sydney, shipping ecommerce, web, software and mobile work for founder-led brands. Senior engineers only, no account-manager relay, and the same team from kickoff to launch.
- Shopify Select Partner, as listed in the Shopify Partner Directory
- Tier 1 registered supplier on the United Nations Global Marketplace, which requires audited company documentation
- Top Rated Plus on Upwork, the bracket for the top 3% of talent by client outcomes
- 397 public five-star-weighted reviews across four Fiverr gigs, from clients in 36 countries
- DUNS verified business, No. 650878346, so procurement can check us before signing
- Listed by Clutch in Top 1000 Global B2B Companies and Top Web Designers 2024
- Verified profiles on GoodFirms, DesignRush, Digital.com, AppFutura and TopDevelopers
- 2,000+ brands built across 40+ countries, with $50M+ in client revenue scaled
More from Divyansh.
Chief Technology Officer · Lucknow · 57 posts on the site
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