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

Embarking on the journey of creating an open-source CRM platform over the past five months has been both challenging and rewarding. As a solo developer, leveraging the powerful tools available in the modern PHP ecosystem has been instrumental. Here’s an overview of my insights, successes, and hurdles faced along the way.

Key Advantages of My Tech Stack

• Filament Admin Panel: This tool proved transformative, drastically reducing development time. Tasks that might have taken weeks were completed within days, thanks to its extensive features and ease of use.

• Laravel with Livewire: Combining these two provided a seamless development experience. It eliminated the need to separate backend APIs from frontend interfaces, making it ideal for solo projects. The dynamic, reactive components of Livewire complemented Laravel’s strengths beautifully.

• Modern PHP Practices: With approximately 99.6% typed code and leveraging PHPStan at level 7, development became more enjoyable and reliable. Static analysis tools identified issues early, reducing bugs and improving code quality.

Challenges and Unexpected Hurdles

• Scaling Custom Fields: Initially, adding custom fields seemed straightforward. However, when the number of fields per record exceeded 50, page load times increased from under 250ms to over 2 seconds. Optimization through eager loading and strategic caching proved essential.

• Target Audience Focus: Aiming for a universal solution meant designing for everyone, which often led to compromises. Narrowing the target to small teams allowed for more tailored features and better usability.

• Open-Source Maintenance: Releasing the project as open source is fulfilling but demands ongoing commitment. Maintenance and community engagement take substantial time and effort.

Effective Technical Strategies

• Adhering to Laravel Conventions: While sometimes perceived as mundane, sticking to established practices sped up development and ensured maintainability.

• Early Integration of PHPStan: Starting static analysis from day one caught numerous bugs early, saving time and reducing technical debt later on.

• Utilizing Filament: Instead of building a bespoke admin interface from scratch, adopting Filament accelerated development and provided a polished admin experience out of the box.

Reflecting on Timeline and Progress

Completing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) within five months was both a sprint and a marathon. It’s fast in the sense that the platform is now ready for production, yet slower because each additional feature requires careful implementation to maintain quality