Why Choose Laravel for Your Website or Web App? (Features & Benefits)

Whether you are building a website or a web application, selecting the right framework is a foundational decision. It directly impacts development speed, long-term maintenance costs, and scalability. For those seeking a robust and future-proof solution, Laravel stands out.

Laravel is designed to streamline complex tasks; everything from seamless routing and caching to secure authentication and beyond. By enforcing clean, maintainable code, Laravel accelerates time-to-market and reduces technical debt. That ensures a superior return on investment and a sustainable competitive advantage for the businesses.

This blog dives deep into the reasons to choose Laravel for your next web application development project. But first, what is Laravel?

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a free, open-source PHP web framework designed for building modern, robust web applications. Among the top PHP frameworks, Laravel is arguably the most popular one, with over 636K websites using it worldwide.

Its primary goal is to simplify the process by handling common tasks like routing, authentication, sessions, and caching. This allows developers to focus on crafting the unique business logic of an application.

At its core, Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. That organizes code logically to promote separation of concerns. So the application’s data (Model), user interface (View), and control logic (Controller) are developed independently. It results in more scalable and manageable projects.

Why Choose Laravel?

Laravel offers some of the best features that can help improve the appearance, functionality, performance, and security of web applications. Let’s look at these reasons in detail.

#1. MVC & Object-Oriented Architecture

Laravel’s Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture separates your application’s concerns into distinct layers. It keeps your code clean, maintainable, and scalable.

Models

These represent the data your application interacts with. Think of them as the data storage units. It contains information about entities like users, products, or blog posts.

Views

These handle the visual presentation of your application. Views utilize templates to render HTML based on data received from the controller.

Controllers

These act as the central hub, orchestrating the flow of data between models and views. They receive user requests and interact with models to retrieve or manipulate data. Then instruct views to render the appropriate response.

MVC fosters clean, maintainable, and scalable applications. It lets you build scalable applications that thrive in the long run.

#2. Built-in Authentication & Authorization

Regardless of whether you are aiming for a static blog or an e-commerce store that thrives, security is paramount. Laravel stands out from the competition by providing robust, built-in authentication and authorization features. It secures that your applications remain shielded and that user access is controlled.

User Management

Laravel provides pre-built user models and controllers. This simplifies user registration, login, and profile management.

Authorization

Define advanced Laravel user management for different access levels and permissions. It also allows you to use Laravel’s middleware to control user access to specific routes, actions, and resources.

Session Management

Laravel handles session management seamlessly, maintaining user authentication state across requests.

Flexibility and Customization

While Laravel provides a solid foundation, it’s highly customizable. Extend and adapt its features to meet your specific security requirements. It integrates with third-party authentication providers or implementing custom authorization logic.

Laravel’s built-in authentication and authorization features are integral to its secure development philosophy. These features help you build applications that are secure by design. Also, protects your users and data from potential threats.

#3. Eloquent ORM (Object Relational Mapping)

Laravel’s Eloquent ORM (Object Relational Mapper) is a game-changer for database interactions. Advanced Eloquent tactics allows you to interact with your database in a natural, object-oriented way. It lets you craft code that reads like plain English, interacting with your database tables as if they were objects in your application.

Data Retrieval

Eloquent simplifies data retrieval. Instead of writing complex SQL queries, you can fetch records using intuitive methods. You can use functionalities like find, where, and orderBy, making your code cleaner and easier to maintain.

Data Manipulation

Eloquent provides methods like update, save, and delete to prevent data from being directly manipulated on your Eloquent models. This reduces the risk of errors and ensures consistency.

Associations

Dealing with complex relationships between tables can be a nightmare. Eloquent handles this effortlessly with built-in support for one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships.

Eloquent Collections

Working with multiple records retrieved through Eloquent is a breeze. Eloquent collections offer methods for filtering, sorting, and grouping data. It allows you to manipulate your data efficiently and effortlessly.

Flexibility

While Eloquent provides a set of features out of the box, it’s highly customizable. You can easily extend Eloquent functionality to fit your specific needs.

With its intuitive approach and powerful features, Eloquent is more than just a database access tool. It works as a productivity booster and a key contributor to Laravel’s popularity. With Laravel ORM, you’ll experience faster development, cleaner code, and a deeper understanding of your application’s data.

#4. Automated Unit Testing

Laravel provides an incredibly streamlined and powerful testing experience right out of the box. Every new Laravel application includes a pre-configured phpunit.xml file and a /tests directory with example test cases.

This eliminates the complex setup often required in other environments, allowing developers to write tests immediately.

Fewer Bugs

A comprehensive test suite catches regressions instantly when adding features or refactoring, preventing bugs from reaching production.

Cleaner Code

The testing environment encourages a modular architecture, resulting in more maintainable and understandable code.

Fearless Refactoring

Developers can improve code quality and performance aggressively, confident that tests will immediately identify any errors.

Efficient Testing

Simulate complex user interactions and verify application behavior without a browser, streamlining the testing process.

Laravel’s integrated testing environment empowers developers to deliver higher-quality software with greater predictability.

#5. Artisan Console

Laravel’s Artisan Command-Line Interface (CLI) works as a productivity superpower. It enables you to generate code, manage migrations, and even interact with your database. Artisan streamlines your workflow, allowing you to focus on the creative aspects of development.

Code Generation

With simple commands like php artisan make:controller, you can instantly generate essential code structures.

Database Management

Migrate your database schema, seed it with sample data, and even interact with your models directly using Artisan commands. This will simplify database operations and ensure data consistency.

Project Maintenance

From running tests to clearing caches to scheduling tasks, Artisan handles various maintenance tasks. It helps you keep your project clean and optimized with comprehensive maintenance commands.

Custom Commands

Don’t let Artisan’s built-in commands limit you. Create your own custom commands to automate repetitive tasks specific to your project.

Artisan empowers you to focus on what matters most. Leveraging Laravel Artisan’s capabilities, you can reduce errors and achieve a more efficient workflow. It enables you to focus on developing innovative and impactful applications.

#6. Better Website Performance

While Laravel is feature-rich, it’s built for performance. It employs powerful mechanisms like a built-in caching system that stores frequently accessed data in memory. That drastically reduces database load and page load times.

Features like route caching and optimized autoloader are simple Artisan commands. They significantly boost response speeds for production environments.

Robust Caching

Effortlessly cache data and entire pages using drivers like Redis, slashing server load and speeding up response times.

Efficient Database Interaction

The Eloquent ORM provides an intuitive syntax for writing optimized queries. It prevents common performance issues that slow down applications.

Task Queuing

Defer slow processes like email sending to a background queue. That ensures your web server remains fast and responsive for user requests.

This focus on optimization results in a smoother and faster user experience.

#7. Flexible Framework

Laravel’s flexibility stems from its modular design and built-in support for modern development practices. Its package system allows developers to integrate pre-built functionality seamlessly. There’s also a powerful IoC (Inversion of Control) container that enables easy swapping of components and dependencies.

Modular Packaging

Features are organized into separate, installable packages (e.g., Laravel Cashier, Socialite). So you can build a lean application with only what you need.

Service Container

This powerful tool for managing class dependencies makes code more testable and simplifies the process of swapping implementations.

Robust ORM

Eloquent allows you to work with databases using an intuitive syntax, supporting a wide variety of database systems with ease.

API-Friendly

Building a RESTful API is seamless, making Laravel a perfect backend for single-page applications (SPAs) and mobile apps.

This adaptability ensures that your project can scale and integrate new technologies without being constrained by the framework.

Security

Laravel provides a robust security foundation by automatically handling critical vulnerabilities. Key security features include:

Hashed & Salted Passwords

It uses Bcrypt and Argon2 hashing for passwords, ensuring they are never stored as plain text.

SQL Injection Protection

The Eloquent ORM uses parameter binding, which effectively neutralizes this common attack vector.

CSRF Protection

Laravel generates and validates tokens to prevent Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks on every form submission.

XSS Safeguards

The Blade templating engine automatically escapes output to prevent Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks.

By managing these concerns natively, Laravel allows developers to build applications with a significantly reduced risk of critical security flaws.

Events & Broadcasting

Laravel’s event system provides a powerful way to decouple application components and enable real-time features. Key factors include:

Simple Event-Listener Mapping

Easily define events and map them to listeners. So different parts of your application can communicate without being tightly dependent on each other.

WebSocket Integration

Seamlessly broadcast events to the client using Pusher or Laravel Reverb, enabling live feeds, notifications, and chat without complex setup.

Decoupled Architecture

Events enable different parts of your application to communicate without being tightly coupled, making the code more maintainable and testable.

Queue System Integration

Listeners can be queued to handle time-consuming tasks in the background, ensuring your application remains fast and responsive.

This native support for event-driven architecture simplifies the development of dynamic, real-time user experiences.

#8. Blade Template Engine

Laravel Blade components seamlessly implant PHP code within HTML. It allows you to create stunning views without writing excessive logic.

Intuitive Syntax

Forget complex templating languages. Blade leverages a clean and intuitive syntax. This makes it easy to learn and use, even for beginners.

Dynamic Data Injection

You’re not limited to static HTML. Blade allows you to seamlessly inject variables, expressions, and control flow logic directly into your templates.

Conditional Statements

Control what content gets displayed based on specific conditions. Blade provides familiar conditional statements like @if, @elseif, and @else to tailor your views based on application logic.

Loops and Iterations

Need to repeat content for lists, menus, or other dynamic elements? Blade’s powerful loops like @foreach and @for simplify this process. This helps in ensuring consistent and efficient iteration over data collection.

Components and Reusability

Break down complex views into reusable components. Blade’s component system allows you to create modular units and reduce redundancy.

With its intuitive syntax and built-in features, Blade is a key contributor to Laravel’s developer-friendly nature. Using Laravel Blade lets you speed up the development process and create responsive user interfaces that delight your users.

Database Migration

Ever thought of managing your application’s database schema with ease even as your project grows? Laravel’s database migration system empowers you to do just that. It offers a structured and version-controlled approach to schema changes.

Version Control

Laravel migrations allow you to define changes to your tables, columns, and relationships in code files. This ensures your schema changes are version-controlled, trackable, and easily rollbackable if needed.

Schema Modifications

Need to add a new column, modify a data type, or create a new table? Define these changes in migration files using Laravel’s fluent schema builder syntax.

Team Collaboration

Seamlessly share and collaborate on database schema changes with your team. Migrations are version-controlled and can be easily deployed to different environments.

Rollback and Rollforward

Made a mistake or need to revert a change? No problem! Laravel’s migration system allows you to easily roll back migrations to previous versions.

Future-Proofing

As your application grows and data requirements evolve, Laravel’s migrations easily adapt. You can add new migrations as needed, keeping your database schema scalable to meet future needs.

Laravel’s database migration system is a perspective of managing your database with structure and control. By using migrations, you’ll ensure a smooth and predictable evolution of your database schema. It will benefit you to build applications that are robust, maintainable, and future-proof.

Routing System

Ever wondered how URLs transform into dynamic web pages? Laravel’s routing system is the answer. It works as the traffic controller of your application, directing users to the destinations based on their requests.

Route Definitions

Define your routes in clear and concise syntax, mapping URLs to controllers and methods. Laravel’s routing techniques make it easy to understand and maintain, even for beginners.

Routing Parameters

Need to capture specific information from the URL? Use route parameters to extract data like user IDs, product slugs, or blog post categories. This allows for dynamic and flexible routing based on user input.

Middleware

Enhance security and functionality with middleware. These powerful tools intercept requests before they reach controllers. It allows you to implement tasks like authentication, authorization, or rate limiting, ensuring your application behaves as intended.

Named Routes

Tired of repeating the same URL patterns? Give your routes meaningful names for easier reference and cleaner code. Use these names to generate URLs within your application, improving code maintainability.

Route Groups

As your application grows and routes become more complex. You can organize route groups based on functionality. This promotes a cleaner code structure and makes it easier to maintain your routing system.

Laravel’s routing system isn’t just a technical necessity, but a foundation for building user-friendly and dynamic web applications.

#09. Events & Broadcasting

The broadcasting option in Laravel is used by developers in modern web applications and websites to show live feeds, implement real-time data, etc. It helps share the event names between the client and server side for real-time data acquisition. 

#10. Security

Security is one of the biggest points of concern with any website or application, no matter the size of the business. Fortunately, Laravel has several security features including HTTP middleware, input sanitization, encryption, rate limiting, password hashing, etc. These features help protect your website and application from attacks and unauthorized access.

However, Laravel introduces new security features regularly. But it’s very important you update Laravel to its latest version to ensure your website or application is secured with the latest features.

So if you want to create a website or web application, choosing Laravel would be the way to go. Now, it may be possible that you are not proficient enough in programming to create applications or websites through Laravel. Then hiring a Laravel development company would be a great choice.

Popular Laravel Combinations

Experts use several frameworks in combination with Laravel to develop the best web applications. A few of these framework combinations are as follows:

Laravel + Vue.js

The JavaScript framework Vue.js is used to develop interactive UIs for websites and web applications. Laravel offers built-in support for Vue.js, which makes it easier for developers to use this framework combination to develop advanced, client-side applications.

Laravel + Angular

Angular is generally used by developers to create single-page applications or SPAs. Subsequently, you can use Laravel to develop the back-end of a web application, while the back-end can be developed with Angular. It ensures a more powerful, full-stack application with the ability to process significant amounts of traffic and data.

Laravel + BootStrap

Bootstrap is a common front-end web development framework that can be used in combination with Laravel to develop mobile-friendly, responsive applications with consistent, excellent-looking designs. 

Laravel + AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the most popular cloud computing platforms, offers to host, store, and data processing services, and can be used in combination with Laravel to create dependable, expandable websites and web applications.

Laravel + Git

Usually, Git is used in tracking the changes in the code and partnering up with other developers. Moreover, you can use Git in conjunction with Laravel to deploy and implement the changes to the web applications.

These are just a few of the popular Laravel framework combinations to create powerful, secure, feature-rich websites and web applications.

FAQs on Using Laravel

In a nutshell

As mentioned before, Laravel is used by more than 636K websites around the world. It offers some of the best features of any framework, like Artisan, Blade Template Engine, Automated Unit Testing, Event & Broadcasting, etc. So more and more companies are opting for this framework and even looking to hire outsourcing Laravel development agencies for the same. 

At last, Laravel is one of the popular PHP frameworks that offer several advantages to developers, including expressive syntax, MVC Architecture, strong Testing, and Debugging tools, an active community, several built-in features, etc. That’s why Laravel is an ideal choice for developing web applications quickly and efficiently.

If you want to get the best of this framework for your website, hire dedicated Laravel developers with us today!