Why Laravel Is A Great Choice For Enterprise Web Applications

By Darren Chowles on Friday, 10 January 2025

At ID Studio, we’ve been using Laravel for more than 10 years. We developed our first Laravel website in 2014 when Laravel was still on version 4.2. Since then, we’ve developed dozens of high-performing, scalable web applications in Laravel. From Fortune Global 500 companies (DHL) and popular personalities (Steven Bartlett) to online platforms serving millions of members and processing millions of pounds in transactions, our experience in scalable Laravel web applications is extensive.

During this time, our team members became Laravel certified, spoke at Laravel conferences, and developed internal tools to boost productivity.

Large enterprises increasingly adopt Laravel because it addresses many common core needs in large-scale web application projects. Whether maintaining large, complex monolith codebases or more modular microservices, Laravel provides the ideal framework to enforce best practices and streamline team collaboration.

We’ll explore some key points below on why Laravel is a wise choice for any large enterprise platform.

Secure By Default

Out-of-the-box, Laravel includes numerous secure features at its core. This commitment to secure coding practices and compliance is especially beneficial to organisations that handle sensitive data. Some of these secure features include:

Preventing SQL injection using Eloquent, Laravel’s ORM (object-relational mapper);
CSRF protection for forms;
Encryption and password hashing with the ability to change algorithms and work factors;
Secure user sessions and cookies;
Rate-limiting to prevent spam submissions on forms, logins, and registrations.

Laravel also makes it easier to remain compliant under data protection laws like GDPR and the UK DPA by providing developers with tools to develop secure data processes. This includes supporting encryption at rest, HTTPS for secure data communication, middleware to manage cookie consent, integration with several logging providers, and keeping secrets safe using .env files.

High Performance And Scalability

Enterprise-level applications must handle large amounts of traffic and respond to all requests as quickly as possible. Laravel allows you to support rapid growth efficiently by allowing you to use several built-in and readily available features:

Caching data (using Redis or Memcached) for faster response times;
Using stateless architecture, you can run multiple application servers behind a load balancer to scale horizontally and handle high levels of traffic;
Laravel supports several queue systems by default (Amazon SQS, Redis, Beanstalkd), which can be used to offset expensive and time-consuming tasks such as emails, image and video processing;
Using Laravel Octane allows you to boost application performance.

To improve performance further, you can use Laravel Vapor, a serverless deployment platform built on AWS. It’s what Fathom Analytics uses to serve billions of requests every month.

Third-Party Integration Capabilities

Often, enterprise applications have a diverse infrastructure and need to integrate with other enterprise systems like Oracle ERP, Salesforce or SAP. It may also need to connect and sync from/to your in-house systems or fulfilment centres.

Laravel has an extensive package ecosystem and features built-in API support. This lets you connect easily to other RESTful or GraphQL-based APIs and endpoints.

Quality Assurance and Testing

Quality assurance and rigorous testing are part of the deployment process for most enterprise applications. Reliable testing frameworks are a high priority for these projects, especially if it’s a sizeable customer-facing system or SaaS product.

Laravel provides an extensive testing suite for developer workflows and includes:

Feature and unit testing using PHPUnit and Pest;
Fluent APIs for HTTP and console tests;
Browser automation and testing using Dusk;
Database testing using model factories and seeders.

Streamlined Workflow For Development

It’s crucial for organisations to accelerate time-to-market as efficiently as possible and maintain consistent coding standards and workflows while doing so. Laravel’s tools and services simplify both coding processes and deployment. These tools and services include:

Built-in unit and feature testing for CI (continuous integration);
Easy deployment and DevOps using official Laravel services like Forge, Envoyer and Vapor (and coming soon, Laravel Cloud!);
Artisan CLI allows you to generate repetitive boilerplate or scaffolding code quickly.

Bustling Ecosystem And Strong Community

When any organisation decides on a technology stack, it’s essential to remember how strong the community is around the technologies involved and whether that technology has an extensive collection of up-to-date libraries available to speed up certain aspects of the development cycle. A large developer community means quick solutions to problems and speedy updates to packages that might need them.

Laravel has a massive community and is the top-starred repository under PHP on GitHub. It has multiple conferences worldwide every year (we gave a talk about web app security at one of these conferences), and the core development team are very involved and responsive on various social platforms.

It also has an expansive ecosystem of services and packages, including:

Forge and Vapor server deployment platforms;
Cashier for easy Stripe and Paddle subscription management;
Livewire for lighting fast SPAs (single-page applications);
Socialite for social authentication;
Reverb for fast, scalable, real-time communication over WebSockets;
Telescope and Pulse for debugging and application performance monitoring.

Ease Of Adoption

Since many enterprise applications have remained around for many years, it’s vital that there is always a skilled developer talent pool available to take over from previous teams or to refactor certain parts of the application in response to new features.

Laravel’s popularity and accessible learning curve make it easier to find high-quality developers or train new developers. Laravel has comprehensive documentation, and learning sites like Laracasts allow developers to learn Laravel conventions and styles more efficiently, resulting in faster onboarding of new team members.

Future-Proof Your Application With Laravel

As mentioned above, enterprise applications have been in use for many years. Organisations look for technology and frameworks that will ensure longevity and reduce technical debt in a tech landscape that is constantly evolving.

Laravel continues to innovate year after year, with the founder, Taylor Otwell, revealing groundbreaking features annually at the Laracon conferences. Laravel’s commitment to backward compatibility, update support, and security patches means applications can be upgraded more quickly, keeping enterprise applications secure in the ever-evolving landscape of security threats.

ID Studio specialises in crafting bespoke Laravel business platforms. Look at our portfolio of Laravel projects we’ve completed for past clients. If you’re wondering how Laravel can power your enterprise application, or if you’re looking for a live demo with one of our expert Laravel developers, get in touch with us today.