Building a CRM with Laravel and Livewire: Lessons from 5 Months of Solo Development

In February, I embarked on a journey to develop an open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system as a solo developer. Over the course of five months, I gained valuable insights into the development process, technical stack choices, and project management. Here’s a reflection on what I’ve learned along the way.

Highlights of the Development Experience:

• Empowering Tools:
  Leveraging Filament significantly accelerated my development timeline. Tasks that could have taken weeks were completed within days, showcasing its powerful capabilities for rapid admin interface creation.

• Technology Synergy:
  Combining Laravel with Livewire proved to be an ideal setup for solo developers. This approach eliminated the need for separate API layers and front-end frameworks, streamlining the development process.

• Enjoyable Modern PHP:
  Working with contemporary PHP features—99.6% typed code and PHPStan at level 7—made the coding experience both enjoyable and robust, leading to fewer bugs and maintainable code.

Challenges Faced and How I Overcame Them:

• Handling Complex Custom Fields:
  While adding custom fields was straightforward initially, performance degraded noticeably with 50+ fields per record, affecting page load times (jumping from 250ms to over 2 seconds). This was mitigated through optimized eager loading strategies and implementing effective caching.

• Target Audience Focus:
  Attempting to build a CRM for everyone proved counterproductive. Narrowing the scope to small teams allowed for more targeted features and better user experience.

• Open Source Realities:
  Maintaining an open-source project demands ongoing commitment. It’s not just about code; community engagement, updates, and support consume considerable time.

Strategic Technical Decisions That Delivered Results:

• Adherence to Laravel Conventions:
  Keeping to familiar conventions sped up development and improved code quality, even if it felt routine.

• Early Adoption of Static Analysis:
  Integrating PHPStan from the outset helped catch bugs early, saving time and reducing technical debt.

• Choosing Filament for Admin Interfaces:
  Instead of building admin panels from scratch, incorporating Filament provided a flexible and feature-rich interface out of the box.

A Realistic Perspective:
Five months to reach a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a balanced timeline—fast enough to deploy a production-ready system, yet slow enough