Laravel development
The framework we build almost everything in, and the one we are most often asked to take over. Written by our own developers in Belfast.
Talk to a Laravel developerIt does the boring parts properly, so we spend the budget on your part.
Authentication, queues, scheduled jobs, migrations and testing are built in and maintained by a large community, which means our time goes on what is actually specific to your business rather than on reinventing plumbing. It is PHP, so it runs cheaply almost anywhere, and it has a predictable release cycle we can plan upgrades around.
Booking systems, portals and platforms from scratch.
Laravel sites with an admin your team can use.
Backends for apps and services that talk to each other.
Stripe, accounting, CRMs and whatever else you run.
Moving older projects onto a supported version safely.
Taking on a codebase somebody else started.
Who it is for
Tick anything that sounds familiar.
As someone that is not tech savvy they are a pleasure to work with and I never feel awkward about asking any questions if I don't personally understand something, which is a big deal to me. No matter what we have as an idea, we know they will have the best ways to do it to hand and always give us realistic timelines and expectations.
How we deliver
A fixed price agreed first, and the same people the whole way through.
We sit down and work out what the software actually has to do. If there is an existing system, we go through it with you and find out which parts earn their keep and which parts nobody has used in two years.
We map out the database, the models and how the pieces fit together before we write much code. Getting this wrong is expensive later, so it is worth the time up front.
We build in short cycles and put working software in front of you as we go, on a staging site you can log into. You see progress in weeks rather than waiting months for a reveal.
Automated tests cover the parts where a bug would cost you money, and we test the whole thing properly ourselves before anyone else sees it. We also check performance under a realistic amount of data.
Deployments are automated and zero downtime, so releasing a change is a non event. We set up backups, monitoring and error reporting at the same time rather than after something goes wrong.
Laravel puts out a major version every year. We keep your application on a supported version, apply security patches and stay available when you want to add something. See our website maintenance packages.
Custom software for the parts of your business that spreadsheets and off-the-shelf tools have stopped coping with.
Online booking built around how your venue actually runs, with no commission on every booking you take.
You get the approach, what is in, what is out, a timeline and a price before anything starts. No hourly rate quietly running in the background.
How much of it is bespoke, how many systems it has to talk to, and how much content needs moving across. We will tell you which of those is driving the cost.
A monthly plan covering updates, backups and small changes, priced separately so you can see exactly what the ongoing commitment is.
Why Laravel rather than WordPress?
They answer different questions. WordPress is a content management system and it is very good at publishing content. Laravel is a framework for building software, so it suits anything with accounts, permissions, calculations, workflows or integrations. If the site is mostly pages, WordPress is often the cheaper honest answer. If it has to do a job, Laravel is.
Can you take over a Laravel project somebody else started?
Yes, and we do it regularly. We start by reading the code and telling you what state it is genuinely in, including the parts that will cost money later. You get that assessment whether or not you go ahead with us, because deciding to continue or rebuild is easier with an honest read than a sales pitch.
Will we be locked in to you?
No. Laravel is the most widely used PHP framework, which means any competent Laravel developer can pick up what we write. The code, the repository and the hosting are yours. We document as we go and we keep to framework conventions rather than inventing our own, precisely so somebody else could take over.
Do you work alongside an in-house team?
Yes. We work as an extra pair of hands on an existing codebase, review work in progress, or take on the parts a small team does not have capacity for. We follow whatever review and branching process you already use rather than imposing ours.
Is Laravel a safe long-term choice?
It is the most used PHP framework, with a large commercial ecosystem, a predictable release cycle and long-term support versions. That matters more than fashion when you are choosing something you will still be running in five years. We keep applications on supported versions as part of maintenance rather than letting them drift.