Insights from Five Months of Developing a CRM with a Single Developer Using Laravel and Livewire

Building an Open-Source CRM Solo: Lessons Learned Over Five Months Using Laravel and Livewire

Embarking on the journey to develop an open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system from scratch is both exciting and challenging. Over the course of five months, I dedicated myself to creating a minimal viable product (MVP) for a CRM tailored to small teams. Here, I share insights gained along the way—covering successes, obstacles, and key technical decisions—that might help fellow developers pursuing similar projects.

Highlights of the Development Process

Impressive Tools and Frameworks

One of the standout aspects was leveraging Filament, an admin panel library that dramatically accelerated development. Tasks that might have consumed weeks were completed within days, thanks to its robust features and ease of integration.

Streamlined Stack for Solo Development

Utilizing Laravel with Livewire proved to be a game changer. This combination allowed me to build dynamic interfaces without separating frontend and backend layers, streamlining the development process and making it highly manageable for a solo developer.

Enjoyable Modern PHP

Thanks to the modern capabilities of PHP—especially with about 99.6% type annotations and static analysis tools like PHPStan at level 7—the development experience was surprisingly enjoyable. Writing PHP felt more reliable and less error-prone.

Challenges Encountered

Performance Scaling with Custom Fields

Initially, adding custom fields was straightforward. However, as the dataset grew—particularly beyond 50 custom fields per record—the application’s responsiveness suffered. Page load times increased from approximately 250ms to over 2 seconds. Addressing this involved implementing eager loading strategies and caching mechanisms that significantly improved performance.

Target Audience Focus

Designing a CRM for “everyone” proved to be counterproductive. Narrowing the target to small teams allowed for more tailored features and better user experiences, avoiding the pitfalls of generalized solutions that don’t quite fit any specific user group.

Open Source Commitment

While open sourcing the project offers countless benefits, it also comes with ongoing maintenance responsibilities. Balancing development efforts with community support and updates required dedication and consistent effort.

Tech Strategies That Made a Difference

Adherence to Laravel Conventions: Following established best practices enabled faster development and easier onboarding of new collaborators.
Early Adoption of PHPStan: Starting static analysis from day one helped catch bugs early, resulting in more reliable code.
Leveraging Filament for Admin UI: Instead of building an admin panel from scratch, utilizing