Laravel is an open-source PHP framework created in 2011 by Taylor Otwell. It's designed to make web applications faster to build by handling the repetitive work every web app needs: routing, database management, user authentication, background jobs, sending emails, managing sessions.
What Laravel does
Instead of building each project from scratch, Laravel gives you a structured foundation to build on. Want users to log in? Laravel has a system for that. Want recurring tasks to run in the background? Also handled. Want to build an API? Standard tooling included.
That saves time, often days to weeks per project. More importantly, it makes code predictable. A Laravel project from team A looks structurally the same as a Laravel project from team B, which makes handing over and maintaining code much easier.
What Laravel is good for
Laravel is suitable for nearly any web application where business logic matters. Some common applications:
Customer portals where businesses give clients access to their own data
Back-office systems that support internal processes
SaaS platforms serving multiple clients at once
Marketplaces, booking platforms, and workflow tools
APIs that supply data to other systems (mobile apps, external partners)
The framework is used worldwide by businesses of every size, from small startups to enterprises. There are plenty of developers available, and the ecosystem is large enough that almost every problem has been solved by someone else already.
The ecosystem
A large ecosystem of tools has grown around Laravel. Forge handles server management, Cashier handles payments (subscriptions, invoicing), Reverb handles real-time communication. Livewire lets you build interactive pages without a separate JavaScript frontend, and together with Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js it forms the TALL stack.
When Laravel isn't the right choice
Laravel isn't universal. For a simple content website, a CMS like WordPress or Statamic often makes more sense. For applications with thousands of concurrent users requiring real-time interaction (like chat apps or trading platforms), Node.js or Go are sometimes a better choice. And if your existing team works entirely in JavaScript, adding a PHP framework isn't obvious.
Vulpo and Laravel
We've been building with Laravel since 2012. Bert De Swaef is an active community member with his YouTube Channel and he has spoken at Laracon EU and Laracon India. Our team maintains two publicly available Laravel packages used by thousands of developers.
