Building a Custom Laravel Web App: Best Practices From Our 10+ Years of Experience

When building a custom Laravel web application, writing code is only one part of the equation. At Redberry, we’ve learned over the course of building 250+ Laravel apps that the real difference lies in how you approach the problem before touching a single line of code, and how well you leverage the Laravel ecosystem throughout. Laravel may be known for its developer ergonomics, but without a strategy, structure, and depth of ecosystem knowledge, it’s easy to underuse its true power. Here are our hard-earned best practices.

Plan Before You Code: Discovery, Strategy & Design

We often say the biggest cost in software is not development - it's rework. That’s why every Laravel app we build starts with a detailed Discovery & Requirement Gathering phase. During this step, we:

• Identify user types and their flows
• Create backlog outlines and detailed user stories
• Map out wireframes for core interactions
• Validate the product logic with stakeholders

This upfront planning process doesn’t just reduce risk - it builds alignment between business goals and technical implementation. But we’ve also seen teams fall into the trap of over-planning, designing for every edge case upfront and never leaving space for iteration. There’s a golden mean: plan just enough to de-risk delivery, then let user feedback guide what comes next.

Leverage Laravel's Rich Ecosystem

One of Laravel’s greatest strengths is its vibrant ecosystem. From billing to search to authentication, there are well-maintained, battle-tested packages for almost every foundational need. At Redberry, we rarely build these from scratch. Instead, we rely on the best tools in the Laravel ecosystem:

• Laravel Cashier for subscription billing
• Laravel Scout + Meilisearch for full-text search
• Laravel Sanctum for simple token-based API authentication
• Laravel Socialite for OAuth integrations
• Spatie packages for permissions, media handling, and more

Rather than reinventing the wheel, we plug into Laravel’s batteries-included foundation. It’s not just faster - it’s more maintainable. As the Laravel core evolves, so do these packages, keeping your app future-proof.

Knowing when to use a package vs build custom logic is key - and after a decade in the ecosystem, this judgment is where our team brings the most value.

Clean Code & Scalable Architecture

Writing code that works is easy. Writing code that scales and is understandable to your future team? That takes discipline.

At Redberry, we follow clean architectural principles:

• Follow MVC properly, and keep controllers slim
• Offload logic to Service classes and Action classes
• Use the Repository pattern for separation of concerns where needed
• Group related logic into modules or domains to improve scalability

We also rely on Laravel Horizon for queue monitoring and task scheduling via CRON, ensuring that background jobs are visible, reliable, and don’t become black boxes.

One of our senior developers often says: “Name your methods as if someone else will debug them at 2am. That someone will probably be you.” Naming conventions, consistent folder structures, and comment standards are not fluff. They enable fast onboarding, code reviews, and confident feature delivery.

Pro Tip: For large-scale applications, consider Domain-Driven Design (DDD) or modular monoliths using Laravel modules. It’ll future-proof your app and reduce interdependencies.

Performance Optimization Done Right

Laravel is capable of powering blazing-fast applications - but only if you follow performance best practices. And just like with security (something we break down in detail in our guide on securing Laravel web apps) performance needs to be engineered from day one. Here’s what we’ve learned:

• Eager load relationships with Eloquent to prevent N+1 issues
• Use Laravel Cache (Redis or file) to store heavy queries
• Offload intensive tasks (PDF generation, emails, imports) to queues
• Use Octane with Swoole or RoadRunner to serve apps faster with persistent memory
• Optimize Composer autoload using -optimize-autoloader

In a recent procurement intelligence tool we built, switching from a basic LIKE search to Laravel Scout + Meilisearch improved search performance by over 5x, especially on datasets exceeding 100K records.

Small changes in architecture or query design can create exponential performance gains. We bake performance considerations into every sprint.

Testing & Deployment: Ship with Confidence

Testing is non-negotiable for long-term stability. As official sponsors of Pest, we use it extensively across our codebase for unit, feature, and browser tests. Pest’s expressive syntax reduces developer friction and improves test coverage.

CI/CD is equally important. For deployment, our go-to tools include:

• Laravel Forge for provisioning and server management
• Laravel Envoyer or GitHub Actions for zero-downtime deployment
• Automated CI pipelines with test suites and linting

This structured approach enables us to ship faster without compromising quality. As a result, our production environments are safer, and rollbacks (when they happen) are clean.

Laravel Web Application Development Non-negotiables

After delivering 250+ Laravel web applications, here are the non-negotiables we swear by:

• Map workflows before coding. Understanding the business logic early prevents waste.
• Use Laravel conventions. Following the framework’s standards means faster onboarding and fewer surprises.
• Don’t build what’s already solved. Laravel’s ecosystem is deep - use it.
• Test everything. Pest makes it painless. CI makes it scalable.
• Optimize early, but not prematurely. Start with clean Eloquent usage, and only introduce Octane or Meilisearch when needed.

These aren’t just best practices - they’re battle-tested systems that have helped us deliver complex apps under tight deadlines.

Conclusion: Building Right from Day One

Laravel offers incredible tools to build robust applications - but only if you approach it with the right mindset, architecture, and processes.

Whether you're a startup founder planning your first MVP or a CTO scaling a large platform, the principles above will save you time, reduce tech debt, and unlock Laravel's full potential. And if you want to get it right from day one, we’re here to help.

Let Redberry's decade-long Laravel experience and community-backed expertise (we're an official Laravel Partner, Pest sponsor, and Filament supporter) guide you through a smoother development journey.