The debate of the PHP community about the pros and cons of using frameworks or CMS systems for website development has not stopped for a long time, and developers always choose the implementation path in accordance with their preferences. Our answer to this question is the goal of the developer of the site and its characteristics. In this text, we would like to give some aspects of projects in which it is worth choosing Laravel over CMS for the development of eCommerce project.
When should I choose Laravel for eCommerce?
1.High project scalability needed
In the desire to develop an eCommerce solution, as a rule, businessmen pay attention primarily to the budget and speed of development, unfortunately often overlooking optimization, improvements and reserve for growth. And these are often cornerstone factors that are of great importance for any online store that is aiming to high loads and amount of products.
As many store owners regularly add products, suppliers, and related inventory to their online stores, they need scalable application solutions to hold this. Increasing the customer base also requires network scalability at every stage.
Marketing and UI/IX does not stand still as well and that’s where Laravel’s flexibility allows you to use it’s scalable solutions that can be customized at any level to suit your requests.
2.Unique processes
If your idea and customer journey are unique or you have a. specific vision of the stages of the purchase b. additional features in the basket, on the product page, filling in data process or c. specifically thought-through back-end product management, d. managers and stocks communication and assignments and/or e. document flow needed f. other features that you understand that should be developed specifically for your business vision – Laravel would be a preferable option for you.
Note, the most popular CMS platforms, such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and others, initially were created specifically to meet the specific needs of the network, including blogging, social networks, online brand management, etc.
This is why their plugins/modules are not originally intended for high customization, that is, if your idea is unique enough, if you opt for CMS, although you get a lot of elements out of the box, each change of this ready-made functionality may result to be more costly in time and budget than if it were originally developed on a flexible platform like Laravel.
3.Want to be free from paid components and monthly fees
Having bought a ready-made solution, for example, a plugin for WordPress, you can get ready-made functionality quickly, but at the same time this ready-made functionality may not integrate easily with other site functionality, require renewal of your subscription, updates, and also be difficult to customize.
Paid CMS modules and plugins are dependent on their developers vision and updates, therefore, even with the initial purchase of a ready-made solution, then these updates often cause unwanted overhead in web applications and, therefore, create unnecessary changes for which you also have to pay. That is, if you want to not depend and not spend money on third-party subscriptions and updates, then it is better to develop your own solutions that will be especially for you and will not make your project dependent on third-party influence.
Like all open source solutions, Laravel is free and is supported by a large community, it is worth a large community. This is why at the moment, several good ready-made eCommerce packages have been developed, which makes it easy to manage Laravel’s online stores and shopping carts. These packages include predefined feature lists. You can manage your security, personalize the functions of your online store, customize the design of your workflow, etc. However, the best thing is free accessibility. The basic package code often comes pre-installed with the basic functions of carts, products, stocks, prices, payment gateways, and other services. This gives you an edge in developing your own workflows so that you can manage existing development tasks as well as make room for future operations.
Therefore, you can receive good flexible solutions independently of the third-party providers. Of course, it is worth mentioning that initially this might require bigger initial budget and longer timing, however if you want to avoid subscription payments and dependencies of website’s stability on third-party suppliers, it is better to choose Laravel.
4.High loads expected
If you are developing an online store designed to serve a wide audience and corporate e-commerce segment (more than 50 thousand products on your platform), you should develop applications on those platforms that are easy to expand and manage using custom solutions.
Laravel has unique advantages and is better suited for creating large applications than other PHP solutions currently. Laravel is the only framework that has an integrated queuing system to process tasks in the background. On top of that, CMSs don’t allow you to design a database, unlike the framework. The database’s performance directly depends on the flexibility of the database. With a competent approach, Laravel is very fast, even with a high number of customers and products.
5.High security level required
One of the major security features in Laravel is user authentication security. It provides a high level of security for users login/profile data
Laravel also by default requires the use of secure protocol HTTPS when exchanging sensitive data. Cookies are automatically signed and encrypted. This means that if they are tampered with, Laravel will automatically reject them.
By default, Laravel protects you from database attacks, such as SQL Injection and others.
All of these, as well as other security features, make Laravel a highly secure technology that can provide reliable storage of sensitive data for you and your users. Therefore, if the storage of sensitive data is one of the most important aspects for your eCommerce project (especially if it involves storing medical, legal, financial data and documents) then Laravel clearly outperform CMS systems.
Why choose us for your eCommerce project?
Bineks has been a Laravel, WordPress and Drupal technology team for more than 7 years and has been offering IT solutions in the US, Asia-Pacific and Middle East markets. We are an experienced web design and development company and have a staff of highly qualified developers who can provide Laravel, CMS WordPress and Drupal application development services, server setup, design and template development, as well as Laravel maintenance and support. Drop us a line and I’m sure we will work out the best fitting solution specially for your business!
Bineks CEO, Maxim Brynza
