Building an Open-Source CRM: Lessons Learned Over Five Months of Solo Development
Embarking on a journey to create an open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can be both exciting and challenging. Over the course of five months, I developed a CRM using Laravel and Livewire as a solo developer, and I’d like to share some insights from this experience.
Key Advantages of My Tech Stack
Leverage of Modern Tools: Filament Panels proved invaluable, enabling rapid development—what might have taken weeks was accomplished in days. This significantly expedited the project timeline.
Streamlined Development Workflow: Combining Laravel with Livewire allowed me to build a responsive, dynamic application without needing separate API and frontend layers, simplifying development and maintenance.
Enjoyable PHP Experience: With nearly complete static typing (99.6%) and comprehensive static analysis through PHPStan (level 7), coding in PHP became both enjoyable and reliable.
Challenges Encountered
Handling Custom Fields at Scale: While adding custom fields was straightforward initially, performance issues arose when records exceeded 50 custom fields, causing page load times to jump from 250 milliseconds to two seconds. Optimizations such as eager loading and caching helped mitigate these issues.
Designing for a Target Audience: Attempting to create a product for “everyone” ultimately led to a bloated scope. Narrowing focus to small teams allowed for more meaningful and manageable feature sets.
Open Source Commitment: Maintaining an open-source project is a significant ongoing effort. It demands consistent time and energy, emphasizing that open source is not synonymous with free labor.
Effective Technology Strategies
Adherence to Framework Conventions: Following Laravel’s best practices ensured predictable and efficient development, even if it might seem mundane.
Proactive Static Analysis: Integrating PHPStan from the outset caught numerous bugs early, improving code quality and reducing future debugging time.
Choosing Ready-Made Solutions: Utilizing Filament for admin interfaces saved countless hours compared to building a custom admin panel from scratch.
Reflections on the Development Timeline
Completing an MVP in five months strikes a balance—it’s relatively quick for a production-ready release, yet each feature required approximately triple the time to implement carefully. Speed was crucial, but quality remained a priority.
Interested in the technical details? You can explore the project at relaticle.com.
I’d love to hear from fellow entrepreneurs and developers: How long did your solo SaaS MVP take? What lessons did you learn along the way? Share your experiences in the comments
