Lessons Learned from Building a CRM with Laravel and Livewire: A Five-Month Solo Journey
Over the past five months, I embarked on an ambitious project: developing an open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system as a solo developer. This experience provided a wealth of insights into modern PHP development, effective toolchains, and the realities of building SaaS products alone. Here, I share key lessons learned, technical decisions that paid off, and insights that might benefit fellow developers undertaking similar projects.
The Bright Spots: What Went Well
1. Leveraging Filament for Rapid UI Development
One of the standout tools in my toolkit was Filament, an admin panel framework that significantly accelerated development. Tasks that could have taken weeks with custom UI coding were completed in days. Filament’s intuitive components and extensibility allowed me to focus on core functionality rather than reinventing the wheel.
2. Simplified Architecture with Laravel and Livewire
Choosing Laravel combined with Livewire proved to be a game-changer, especially as a solo developer. This stack allowed me to build a dynamic, reactive interface without the complexity of managing separate APIs and frontend frameworks. It streamlined development and kept the codebase maintainable.
3. Embracing Modern PHP Practices
My experience with modern PHP—writing with around 99.6% typed code and utilizing PHPStan at level 7—made development both safer and more enjoyable. Static analysis caught bugs early, reducing bugs in production and increasing confidence in the code.
Confronting the Challenges
1. Scaling Custom Fields
Initially, adding custom fields per record seemed straightforward. However, once the number of custom fields surpassed fifty per record, page load times increased from approximately 250ms to over two seconds. This bottleneck was addressed through optimized eager loading strategies and caching mechanisms, emphasizing the importance of performance considerations in dynamic data models.
2. Narrowing the Focus
Building a “solution for everyone” proved to be counterproductive. The broader the target audience, the more complex and feature-rich the product becomes, often diluting core value. I learned to refine my focus toward small teams with specific needs, allowing for more targeted development and faster iteration cycles.
3. Open Source Is a Commitment
While open source projects are publicly available, maintaining them demands consistent effort—bug fixes, feature additions, documentation updates. It’s a labor of love that requires dedicated time and resources
