Lessons Learned from Building a CRM in Five Months: A Solo Developer’s Journey with Laravel and Livewire

Embarking on the development of an open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in February, I dedicated five months to creating a robust tool as a solo developer. Reflecting on this experience, I want to share some valuable insights I gained along the way, focusing on technology choices, challenges, and practical lessons.

Highlights and Successes:

• Filament Admin Panel: The effectiveness of Filament was a game-changer. Tasks that might have taken weeks became achievable in days, significantly accelerating development.

• Laravel with Livewire: This combination proved perfect for a solo developer environment. It eliminated the need for separate API and frontend layers by enabling seamless component-driven interfaces within PHP.

• Modern PHP Enjoyment: Writing modern PHP (with high typing discipline and PHPStan level 7) became surprisingly enjoyable. The language’s current capabilities opened up dynamic and maintainable development workflows.

Challenges Encountered:

• Scaling Custom Fields: Implementing custom fields was straightforward initially but became complex at scale—handling 50+ fields per record caused page load times to jump from approximately 250ms to 2 seconds. Optimizations like eager loading and caching were instrumental in resolving these issues.

• Target Audience Focus: Designing for “everyone” often results in catering to no one. Narrowing the scope to small teams allowed for targeted features and better user experience.

• Open Source Maintenance: Contributing to an open-source project isn’t just about initial development; ongoing maintenance requires sustained effort and commitment.

Tech Strategies That Made a Difference:

• Adhering to Laravel Conventions: Keeping close to established conventions ensured development was predictable and time-efficient.

• Proactive Static Analysis: Implementing PHPStan from the outset helped identify bugs early, saving time and reducing errors.

• Leveraging Filament: Using a pre-built admin panel simplified backend management, freeing time for essential new features.

Final Thoughts:

Completing an MVP in five months was both rapid and measured. It’s fast because the product is production-ready; however, it also highlights that adding new features often takes three times longer when done properly. Quality development demands patience and careful implementation.

For those interested, I’ve documented the project’s implementation at relaticle.com. I’d love to hear about your experiences building solo SaaS projects—how