Backend systems
built to survive growth,
not collapse under it.

Laravel is the right call when you need rapid feature delivery on a structured data model, when your team's existing PHP knowledge matters, or when the ecosystem (Eloquent, Horizon, Filament, Livewire) covers most of what you need out of the box. Node.js wins when you are building something with extremely high concurrency requirements (tens of thousands of simultaneous WebSocket connections), when you need to share code aggressively between frontend and backend, or when real-time event processing is the core of the product rather than a supporting feature. For most SaaS platforms, API backends, and enterprise applications, Laravel delivers faster and with a lower maintenance overhead than a Node.js equivalent. We build in both - so we have no incentive to recommend one over the other.

There are three patterns: single database with a tenant_id column on every table, single database with separate schemas per tenant, and separate databases per tenant. Single database with a global Eloquent scope is right for most SaaS products - fast to build, easy to query across tenants for analytics, and performant up to tens of thousands of tenants. Separate databases per tenant is right when your customers have data residency requirements, when tenant data volumes vary wildly, or when one tenant's heavy queries should never impact others. We use Spatie's Laravel Multitenancy package as the foundation and configure the isolation strategy based on your specific compliance and performance requirements.

A production-ready SaaS MVP - multi-tenancy, subscription billing, core feature set, API, admin panel - typically runs between £25,000 and £65,000 depending on feature complexity, number of integrations, and whether a frontend is included or handled separately. More complex platforms with marketplace features, event sourcing, or advanced workflow automation sit between £60,000 and £150,000+. We scope every project precisely before you commit and provide a fixed-price quote with a detailed feature list - so there are no end-of-project surprises.

Yes, and we do it regularly. The first step is always a paid codebase audit - we review the architecture, data model, test coverage, dependency versions, and security posture, then give you an honest written report on the state of the system and a prioritised remediation plan. About half the time the codebase is in reasonable shape and needs targeted improvements. The other half requires more significant refactoring. We will tell you which applies before you commit to anything further.

Carefully and with a specific sequence. We use expand/contract migrations - first adding the new column or table (expand), deploying the code that writes to both old and new structures, then backfilling historical data, then switching reads to the new structure, then removing the old one (contract). For large tables where a single migration would lock the table, we use pt-online-schema-change or gh-ost for MySQL, or native concurrent operations on PostgreSQL. We have never taken a production system down for a database migration.

Every project ends with: a working CI/CD pipeline that any developer can use without asking us how it works, a runbook covering deployment, rollback, queue management, and the most common failure modes, architecture documentation written for the developers who come after us rather than for us, a dependency upgrade path noting which packages will need attention and when, and a 30-day hypercare window where we are available for questions at no additional cost. The goal is for the handover to feel like gaining context, not losing it.