Deciding to develop an application for your business can be a complex and time-consuming journey. It involves making important decisions, such as choosing the right technology, defining the project scope, assembling a skilled team, and managing the development and testing phases, among other things.
One of the biggest challenges, especially at the start, is selecting the right technology for your web application. This choice can greatly impact the success of your project.
In this article, we’ll look at the many benefits of using Laravel for large-scale applications and discuss how it can improve your app development process.
An Overview of Enterprise App Development
Enterprise web applications are made to serve the unique needs of big companies and organizations. They usually have complicated features, connect with different systems, and focus on high security and the ability to grow with the business.
These applications are commonly used for managing customer relationships (CRM), planning company resources (ERP), handling supply chains (SCM), and running online stores (e-commerce).
Creating scalable and effective enterprise solutions requires a strong knowledge of business processes, technology tools, and the best ways to build systems that are both secure and able to handle growth.
Example of Enterprise Applications :
ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning) Systems : SAP ERP and Oracle ERP Cloud
CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Salesforce and HubSpot CRM
SCM (Supply Chain Management): Oracle SCM Cloud and IBM Sterling Supply Chain
eCommerce: Woocommerce and BigCommerce
An Overview of Laravel Framework
Laravel is a PHP framework created by Taylor Otwell in 2011. It is open-source and follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern.
In recent years, Laravel has become very popular among PHP frameworks. Laravel offers a wide range of features and tools that help developers build enterprise applications more easily.
Its user-friendly design and clear documentation allow developers to start creating scalable and manageable apps quickly.
Laravel provides important features like MVC architecture, Eloquent ORM for database management, a Blade templating engine for designing views, and a strong testing framework, making it a great choice for enterprise applications.
Laravel is suitable for many types of projects, from complex business processes to managing large datasets and setting up precise access controls for users. This adaptable framework allows developers to build powerful and efficient enterprise applications.
Laravel Market Size Statistics
Taylor Otwell, the CEO of Laravel, says, “Laravel is the leading option in the PHP ecosystem because it has all the features needed to create modern web applications.”
Data from BuiltWith shows that around 1,768,726 websites have chosen Laravel for their business application development, with 280,258 of those websites located in the United States.
Furthermore, TechJury reports that since its launch in 2011, Laravel has greatly influenced the global PHP industry. It is the most popular PHP framework for enterprise projects, holding a 35.87% market share.
Other PHP frameworks like Yii, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, and Symfony have market shares of 30.56%, 26.05%, 4.95%, and 2.57%, respectively.
According to Google Trends, Laravel’s popularity for business application development has remained strong over the past five years, with a significant increase in the last two years.
Characteristics of Laravel For Enterprise Application Development
When developing large-scale applications with Laravel, there are several important features that help you create next generation apps. The most important ones are that it’s open-source and has a large community that is always ready to help. This makes Laravel development one of the best in the tech development world. Other important features include:
1. MVC Architecture
Laravel follows the MVC architectural pattern, which splits the application logic into three parts: Model, View, and Controller. This division helps keep the code organized and easier to manage, making it more scalable.
The model handles the data and the rules behind it, while the view is in charge of how things look on the screen. The controller acts as a link between the model and the view, making sure they work together smoothly.
Example: Enterprise CRM System
Scenario: Imagine you’re developing a large-scale Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for a multinational corporation. This system needs to manage customer interactions, sales data, and reporting features.
MVC Breakdown:
- Model (Data Handling):
- Example: You have a
Customer
model that handles all the data related to customers. This model manages customer information such as contact details, purchase history, and interaction logs. It also enforces business rules, such as validating customer data before saving it to the database. - Benefits: By centralizing data management in the model, you ensure that all data-related operations are consistent and easy to update. Changes to the data structure or validation rules are made in one place, reducing the risk of errors and simplifying maintenance.
- Example: You have a
- View (Presentation Layer):
- Example: The CRM system has various views such as dashboards, customer profiles, and reports. The
CustomerView
might be responsible for displaying customer details, transaction history, and interactive charts. - Benefits: The view focuses solely on how data is presented to the user. By separating the presentation logic from the data handling, you can make design changes or add new user interfaces without altering the underlying data logic. This separation also facilitates collaboration between developers and designers.
- Example: The CRM system has various views such as dashboards, customer profiles, and reports. The
- Controller (Application Logic):
- Example: The
CustomerController
manages user interactions, such as viewing a customer’s profile or updating their information. It retrieves data from theCustomer
model and passes it to theCustomerView
. It also handles form submissions and validates user input before passing it to the model. - Benefits: The controller acts as the intermediary between the model and view, managing the flow of data and ensuring that user actions are processed correctly. This separation of concerns makes it easier to manage complex workflows and add new features, such as integrating with other systems or implementing advanced reporting.
- Example: The
2. Blade Templating Engine
Laravel’s Blade templating engine is a useful tool for keeping the design of a website separate from the actual application code. It has a simple and clear syntax that makes it easier to create templates that can be reused and organized effectively, which helps to reduce development time.
Blade provides several features like template inheritance, sections, and components, which help developers build interactive and dynamic user interfaces.
3. Eloquent ORM
Laravel’s Eloquent is a strong Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) system that makes working with databases easier by using a clear and straightforward query language. This makes it a user-friendly and effective tool for handling database queries.
Eloquent also provides a simple and effective way to manage relationships between different tables, such as one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships.
In enterprise applications, where the data structure can be complex (e.g., customer orders, product inventories, and user roles), Eloquent makes it easier to query and manage these relationships with minimal code.
Real-World Scenario: Enterprise Inventory Management System
Scenario: Imagine you’re developing an inventory management system for a large retail company. This system needs to manage products, suppliers, customer orders, and stock levels. These entities are interconnected, with relationships like:
- Products belong to Suppliers (many-to-one relationship).
- Orders contain multiple Products (many-to-many relationship).
- Customers place Orders (one-to-many relationship).
Without a tool like Eloquent, managing these relationships would require writing complex SQL queries to handle joins, foreign keys, and data retrieval. With Eloquent, these relationships are defined using simple methods in the model classes.
4. Routing
Laravel simplifies the process of creating and managing HTTP routes with routing system. It uses a simple way to define routes, which is easy to understand.
Plus, Laravel includes caching technology that helps improve the performance of applications by lowering the workload involved in registering routes.
Example: High-Traffic Enterprise Application
In an enterprise-level e-commerce application with thousands of products and users, performance is critical. The application may have hundreds of routes handling various functions like product searches, user authentication, and order processing.
Route Caching to Boost Performance: Laravel provides a built-in route caching feature that dramatically improves the performance of such high-traffic applications. By caching the entire routing table, Laravel reduces the time needed to register and look up routes during each request, cutting down processing time and server load.
Here’s how it works:
bashCopy codephp artisan route:cache
This command compiles all your application’s routes into a single cached file, making route lookup faster. In a high-traffic scenario, where thousands of requests hit the server every second, this cached route table allows Laravel to serve responses quicker.
5. Caching
Laravel has a flexible caching system that lets developers save data that is often used in different caching stores, such as Redis and Memcached.
This helps lighten the load on databases and makes retrieving data faster. The API provided makes it easy to use caching strategies in your business applications.
Example: High-Traffic E-Commerce Platform
In an enterprise-level e-commerce application, thousands of users might be browsing products and adding them to their carts simultaneously. Without caching, each user request would hit the database, potentially causing slowdowns due to heavy database queries.
How Caching Improves Performance:
For an e-commerce site, one of the most frequently accessed pieces of data is the product catalog. Instead of querying the database every time a user visits the product page, Laravel’s caching system can store the catalog data temporarily in memory (using Redis or Memcached). Here’s how:
- Caching Product Data: When a user requests a product page, Laravel can first check if the product data is available in the cache. If it is, the page is loaded faster since the database query is skipped.
phpCopy code$product = Cache::remember('product_'.$id, 3600, function () use ($id) {
return Product::find($id);
});
In this example, Cache::remember
stores the product data for an hour (3600 seconds). If the data is not available in the cache, Laravel fetches it from the database and stores it in the cache for future requests.
- Caching Frequently Viewed Pages: You can also cache entire pages or sections of pages that don’t change often, such as homepage banners or best-seller product lists.
phpCopy code$bestSellers = Cache::remember('best_sellers', 600, function () {
return Product::where('is_best_seller', true)->get();
});
This approach reduces the need for database queries, resulting in quicker load times, especially when hundreds of users are viewing the same popular products.
6.Authentication and Authorization
Laravel’s authentication and authorization system simplifies the process of managing user access in enterprise applications. With features like user registration, login, password resets, and email verification, developers can quickly implement secure user management.
Additionally, role-based access control (RBAC) allows for efficient management of user permissions across complex business applications.
Role-Based Access Control(RBAC) in Enterprise Apps
Example: A Company Intranet System In an enterprise intranet system, employees from different departments (HR, Finance, IT, etc.) need different levels of access to sensitive information. Laravel’s RBAC system makes it easy to assign roles (e.g., Admin, Manager, Employee) and control which areas of the system each role can access.
- Role Assignment:
For instance, in the company intranet, HR employees should only access personnel records, while Finance employees can view financial reports. Laravel simplifies this by assigning roles to users and controlling what they can do based on these roles.
- Authorization in Controllers:
Laravel provides theGate
andPolicy
systems, allowing developers to control access to certain actions within controllers. For example, an employee can only edit their own timesheet, while an admin can edit any employee’s timesheet.
- Compliance with Security Standards:
By managing roles and permissions through Laravel’s built-in systems, developers can ensure that the right people have access to the correct resources, simplifying compliance with security standards like GDPR or HIPAA, which require strict access control over sensitive data.
Laravel Breeze and Laravel Jetstream
Laravel Breeze and Laravel Jetstream provide pre-built scaffolding for user authentication and authorization, making it even easier for developers to integrate these features into their applications:
- Laravel Breeze:
It offers a simple, minimal scaffolding for authentication, including login, registration, password resets, and email verification. It’s ideal for quick and straightforward setup in enterprise apps where developers want to keep the authentication features lightweight.
- Laravel Jetstream:
A more advanced scaffolding tool, Jetstream includes everything in Breeze, but also provides additional features such as two-factor authentication, API token management, and team management. In a large-scale enterprise app, Jetstream’s team management features are particularly useful for allowing users to invite and manage members within their departments.
7. Queues and Job Scheduling
Laravel provides developers with an advanced queuing system that allows them to assign heavy tasks to background workers. This makes applications more responsive and helps manage tasks that don’t need to happen right away.
Laravel’s Queuing System supports several queue drivers, such as Redis, Beanstalk, and Amazon SQS. This variety of options helps the system be more scalable and flexible. Additionally,
Laravel has a task scheduler that makes it easy to set up recurring tasks and automate job execution, which improves the efficiency of business applications.
Real-World Example:
1. Processing Payments: In an e-commerce platform, payment processing can take several seconds due to communication with external payment gateways. Instead of making the user wait for the payment to complete, Laravel’s queuing system allows the payment to be processed in the background.
Example:
phpCopy code// Dispatch payment processing job to the queue
ProcessPayment::dispatch($order);
Once the payment process is offloaded to the queue, users can continue interacting with the application without experiencing delays.
2. Sending Emails: Sending bulk emails, such as order confirmations or promotional emails, can be resource-intensive. With Laravel’s queue, these emails can be sent in batches without slowing down the application.
Example:
phpCopy code// Queue email sending job
SendOrderConfirmationEmail::dispatch($order->email);
In enterprise apps, this is especially useful when sending thousands of emails to customers.
3. Generating Reports: For an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, generating detailed reports (e.g., sales data, financial summaries) can be time-consuming. Laravel’s queuing system allows these reports to be generated in the background, without interrupting the user’s workflow.
phpCopy code// Queue report generation job
GenerateMonthlySalesReport::dispatch($startDate, $endDate);
Users can request a report and continue using the system while the report is being prepared in the background.
Job Scheduling for Efficiency:
In addition to queuing, Laravel’s Task Scheduler automates the execution of recurring tasks, reducing manual work and improving overall efficiency in business applications. For example, an LMS could use the task scheduler to automatically send weekly progress reports to students.
Example:
phpCopy code// Schedule a job to send weekly course progress reports
$schedule->job(new SendWeeklyCourseReports)->weekly();
This eliminates the need for developers to manually trigger recurring tasks or rely on complex cron jobs. The task scheduler makes it easy to set up and manage routine operations, allowing businesses to focus on more critical aspects of their applications.
8. Testing
Laravel provides easy-to-use and effective testing tools. It makes writing automated tests for applications simpler, covering unit tests, integration tests, and browser tests.
This complete set of tools helps developers make code that is easy to test and maintain, which ensures that your business applications are high quality and reliable.
Laravel’s testing tools ensure that new features don’t break existing functionality. By writing tests as part of the development process, developers can confidently make changes, knowing that their codebase is continuously checked for issues.
For example, Laravel’s HTTP Testing allows developers to test API endpoints and web routes effortlessly. This makes it easier to catch bugs in application logic before they reach production.
Additionally, Laravel Dusk provides powerful browser testing tools that allow for automated end-to-end testing of user interfaces, ensuring that complex workflows in enterprise apps, like user authentication or purchasing processes, function smoothly across different browsers.
Moreover, adopting Test-Driven Development (TDD) practices helps further enhance the reliability of the application. You can explore more about how to implement TDD in Laravel and its importance in our blog article on TDD in Laravel.
For a deeper dive into Laravel’s built-in testing features, you can refer to the official Laravel Testing Documentation.
10 Reasons Why Laravel is the Best Choice for Enterprise Application Development
Still thinking about choosing Laravel? Here are some factors to consider that can help you make your decision:
1. Rapid Application Development
Laravel provides developers with a fast and effective way to create enterprise applications. Its clear syntax and extensive libraries make it easier to write clean code, which helps save time and effort during development.
A survey by SitePoint showed that many people prefer Laravel as their PHP framework because it speeds up app development, with 58% of respondents naming it as their first choice.
2. Robust Security Features
Laravel offers strong protection against common security risks like cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and SQL injection attacks. This focus on security is a major part of the development process.
With tools like password hashing encryption and two-factor authentication, Laravel makes sure that security is a top priority in its operations.
3. Scalability
Sometimes enterprise apps have to serve a large number of users and manage heavy traffic, which makes Laravel a great choice for these needs.
Laravel supports horizontal scaling, meaning developers can spread their applications across multiple servers if necessary. It also includes features like caching, database replication, and load balancing, all of which help maintain good performance, even during busy times.
4. Integrating Third-Party Services
Large applications often need to connect smoothly with different third-party services, like payment gateways, cloud storage, and email providers. Laravel makes this integration easier by offering a strong API and prebuilt libraries designed for common services.
One great example is Laravel Cashier, a library that helps users easily connect to payment gateways like Stripe and Braintree.
5. Robust ORM
Laravel’s ORM (object relational mapping), called Eloquent, makes managing databases easier. It offers a simple way to work with databases, so you don’t have to write complicated SQL queries by hand. Eloquent works smoothly with different database systems, making it easier to manipulate and retrieve data.
6. Open Source with Extensive Community of Laravel Developer
One of the main strengths of Laravel is its active community of developers. This committed group regularly contributes by making packages, writing tutorials, helping out on forums, and suggesting solutions with best practices to common web development problems.
These combined efforts greatly improve how quickly and easily developers can work.
7. Simplified Coding
The Laravel development platform provides easy-to-follow tutorials that make coding simpler. By offering clear instructions at various stages of development, it helps reduce the time needed to write complex code.
This allows developers to create optimized code quickly and work more effectively when things are less complicated. Whether your developers are beginners or experienced, they can easily understand this framework and produce great code.
8. Efficient Traffic Management
Another reason to consider using Laravel for building enterprise apps is its ability to handle a lot of users efficiently. It supports the creation of multilingual applications, which means you can reach more people from different parts of the world.
Laravel offers a wide variety of tools that make it easy to scale your application, and its many features work together to help manage traffic effectively.
9. Futuristic Approach
The large Laravel community and its dedicated core team work hard to establish Laravel as the top framework available. In 2023, Laravel released version 10, and in 2024, they introduced version 11.
This shows that businesses can build applications that are ready for the future using Laravel as their framework. Clearly, applications created with Laravel will be more scalable and efficient as technology continues to change.
10. Hybrid App Adoption
The demand for hybrid applications has grown a lot because more people are using mobile devices. This change is mainly because native applications take a lot of time and money to develop.
Laravel is a strong web development framework for creating hybrid apps. Its “write once, deploy everywhere” approach makes it easier for businesses to adopt hybrid apps built with Laravel.
Companies Using Laravel Application in 2024
As we’ve talked about before, the need for Laravel and applications built on it will continue to grow in the coming years. Companies know that Laravel is a strong and dependable framework for creating high-quality web applications. When you combine Laravel with AI, this framework becomes even more powerful.
Many well-known companies are already using Laravel or have switched to Laravel-based applications to meet their business needs. In the table below, you’ll find a list of companies that have used Laravel for their enterprise projects
Company | Revenue | No. of Employee(approx) |
Pfizer | 68.53 B | 83k |
Liberty Mutual Insurance | 50 B | 50k |
BBC | 7.2 B | 21k |
Tour Radar | 58.7 M | 200 |
9 GAG | 3.00 M | 50 |
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FAQ
Why choose Laravel for SAAS Application Development ?
Laravel is a great choice for SaaS apps because it’s flexible, has built-in features like authentication and billing, and is easy to scale. It helps developers build secure and efficient applications quickly.
What is a Progressive Web App?
A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a website that looks and feels like an app. It works offline, is fast, and can be installed on a user’s device, giving a more app-like experience.
What is an API in Laravel?
An API (Application Programming Interface) in Laravel allows different software systems to communicate with each other. It lets your app interact with other services, like getting data or sending information, in a structured way.
What is the Lightest PHP Framework for Developing Enterprise Applications ?
While Laravel is a powerful and popular choice, Slim is often considered one of the lightest PHP frameworks.