Insights Gained After Five Months Developing a CRM with a Single Developer Using Laravel and Livewire

Building an Open-Source CRM in 5 Months: Insights from a Solo Developer’s Journey with Laravel and Livewire

Embarking on a solo project can be both exhilarating and challenging. Over the past five months, I dedicated my efforts to creating an open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, leveraging Laravel and Livewire. Here, I want to share some of the key lessons learned along the way, including successes, hurdles, and effective strategies that kept me moving forward.

Highlights of the Development Experience

Impressive Tools and Technologies

One of the standout moments was discovering how powerful Filament is. Tasks that might have taken weeks using traditional methods were completed in days. This dramatically accelerated my development timeline and allowed me to focus more on refining features rather than building boilerplate code.

Simplicity of Laravel + Livewire Combo

For solo developers, Laravel combined with Livewire offers an ideal workflow. It eliminates the need for separate API and frontend layers, making the entire project more manageable and cohesive. Modern PHP, especially with tools like PHPStan set at level 7 and 99.6% typing, proved to be both enjoyable and reliable to work with.

Confronting Challenges

Handling Custom Fields at Scale

While adding custom fields per record seemed straightforward initially, problems arose as the number of custom fields grew beyond 50. Page load times increased significantly—from approximately 250 milliseconds to over 2 seconds. This was addressed through optimized eager loading strategies and implementing effective caching mechanisms.

Defining Clear User Focus

Attempting to develop a solution that caters to “everyone” often results in a product that appeals to no one. To maintain clarity and efficiency, I focused on small teams with specific needs. This targeted approach made feature development and user experience design much more manageable.

A Commitment Beyond Coding

Creating open-source software isn’t just about writing code; it’s an ongoing commitment. Maintaining and evolving the project requires dedication, patience, and proactive community engagement.

Strategies That Accelerated Development

Adhering to Laravel Conventions: Following established practices kept the codebase consistent and sped up onboarding and development.
Early Integration of PHPStan: Starting static analysis from Day 1 uncovered bugs early, reducing bugs in production.
Leveraging Filament for Admin Interfaces: Instead of building admin panels from scratch, utilizing Filament saved significant development time and effort.

Reflection on Progress

Completing the MVP in five months felt both fast and deliberate