Building a Solo CRM in Five Months: Lessons Learned with Laravel and Livewire

Embarking on the journey of creating an open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, I dedicated five months to develop a fully functional MVP. Working solo, I navigated technical challenges and made strategic decisions that shaped the project’s success. Here’s a reflection on what I uncovered along the way.

The Highlights

Exceptional Tools Enhance Productivity
One of the standout experiences was discovering Filament. Its capabilities accelerated development remarkably—what might have taken weeks, I achieved in mere days. For solo developers, such tools are game-changers.

Choosing the Right Frameworks
Laravel complemented Livewire perfectly, offering a seamless integration that eliminated the need for separate API and frontend layers. This stack proved ideal for solo development, enabling rapid iteration and simplified architecture.

Enjoyable Modern PHP
Upgrading to modern PHP practices made coding more enjoyable. With nearly complete typing (about 99.6%) and static analysis via PHPStan (level 7), the codebase became more reliable and maintainable.

The Challenges Faced

Scaling Custom Fields
Initially, adding custom fields seemed straightforward. However, once exceeding 50 fields per record, performance issues emerged—page load times jumped from 250ms to over 2 seconds. Addressing this required optimized eager loading and strategic caching, which improved responsiveness.

Target Audience Defining
Designing a product for a broad audience proved problematic—building for everyone often results in satisfying no one. Narrowing focus to small teams allowed for more targeted features and better user experience.

Open Source Is Commitment
Open-sourcing the project didn’t mean free time; it meant ongoing maintenance and community support. Sustaining an open-source project demands continuous effort.

Effective Technology Strategies

• Adhering to Laravel Conventions
  Following the framework’s best practices kept development streamlined and predictable.

• Early Adoption of Static Analysis
  Integrating PHPStan from day one helped catch bugs early, ultimately saving time and reducing technical debt.

• Leveraging Existing Tools
  Choosing Filament over custom admin panels sped up backend development and provided a professional interface out of the box.

Final Thoughts

Five months may sound quick for a Minimum Viable Product—but in the context of quality, it’s both a swift and deliberate timeline. The project is production-ready, but each new feature takes additional effort, especially when striving for robustness