PHP Development Services

PHP development services with Laravel, CodeIgniter, Symfony and more

PHP runs a large share of the web, from WordPress sites to SaaS products, customer portals and internal business tools. Our PHP development services cover the full range: building new web applications in Laravel, maintaining and upgrading CodeIgniter projects, working inside Symfony, CakePHP or Yii codebases, and writing clean framework-free PHP where a framework would be overkill. They’re for businesses that need a custom application built properly, or an existing PHP system made faster, safer and easier to change.

When you need a PHP development team

PHP projects tend to reach us at one of a few familiar points:

• You need a custom web application, portal or dashboard, and an off-the-shelf tool or plugin only covers part of the workflow.
• Your application still runs on an old PHP version (5.x or 7.x) that no longer receives security updates, and you’re worried about upgrading it.
• You’ve inherited a CodeIgniter, CakePHP or custom PHP codebase with little documentation, and the original developer is gone.
• Pages and reports have slowed down as your data has grown, and nobody is sure where the bottleneck is.
• You need your application connected to payments, a CRM, email or SMS services, or another company’s API.

PHP frameworks we work with

Laravel development

Laravel is our default for new custom applications. Its routing, Eloquent ORM, migrations, queues, scheduled jobs and built-in authentication give a project a clear structure from day one, which means any experienced PHP developer can pick it up later. We use it for SaaS platforms, admin dashboards, booking and management systems, notification services and REST APIs, and we pair it with Livewire, Inertia or a separate React or Vue front end depending on how interactive the interface needs to be.

CodeIgniter development

CodeIgniter is lightweight, fast and simple to host, which is why so many business applications were built on it. We build new CodeIgniter 4 applications where a small footprint matters, and we maintain existing ones. A common request is moving a CodeIgniter 3 application to CodeIgniter 4 and a supported PHP version. Because the two versions differ significantly, we plan that move module by module so the application keeps running throughout.

Symfony development

Symfony suits larger, long-lived applications where strict structure and reusable components pay off. We work within existing Symfony projects, and we also use individual Symfony components (Laravel itself is built on several of them) where a project needs a specific capability without a full framework.

CakePHP, Yii, Slim and other frameworks

Plenty of reliable applications run on CakePHP or Yii, and rewriting them just to change frameworks is rarely worth the cost. We maintain, extend and upgrade these codebases in place. For small, focused APIs and microservices, a micro-framework like Slim keeps the code minimal and the response times low.

Custom PHP and WordPress

Not every project needs a framework. A small integration, a webhook handler or a single-purpose script can be cleaner as well-structured plain PHP with Composer packages. And where a site already runs on WordPress, which is itself written in PHP, extending it with custom post types, plugins or APIs is often the cheapest option to maintain. See our WordPress development services for that side of the work.

How we write PHP that lasts

Modern PHP, not legacy habits

We write for current PHP 8 releases, using typed properties and return types, enums, strict comparisons and Composer for dependency management. Code follows the PSR standards (including PSR-12 formatting and PSR-4 autoloading), so it reads the same way from file to file and works with standard tooling.

Upgrading legacy PHP applications safely

Before upgrading an older application, we audit it: PHP version, framework version, outdated dependencies, deprecated functions and the parts of the code nobody wants to touch. We add tests around the most important workflows first, then upgrade in controlled steps and check each one on a staging server. You get a written plan, with the risks spelled out, before any production code changes.

Security built into the code

Most PHP security problems come from a short list of mistakes, and we design against all of them: prepared statements or the ORM to prevent SQL injection, escaped output against cross-site scripting, CSRF tokens on forms, modern password hashing, validated file uploads, and secrets kept in environment files instead of the repository. We follow the OWASP Top 10 and keep dependencies patched.

Performance you can measure

When an application is slow, we profile it before changing anything. The usual causes are unindexed database queries, repeated queries inside loops, and heavy work done during the page request. The fixes are equally practical: proper indexes, eager loading, OPcache, Redis caching, and background queues for emails, reports and imports, so users don’t wait for work that can happen later.

What a PHP project delivers

Every project follows our five stages: Discover, Plan, Design & build, Test & launch, and Support. For PHP work, the Plan stage produces a written outline of the framework choice, data model, integrations and hosting approach that you can review before development starts. During the build you speak directly with the developers writing the code, and you can review progress on a staging site.

At handoff you receive:

• Source code in a Git repository you own, following the conventions of its framework.
• Database migrations, so the schema can be rebuilt and changed safely.
• Automated tests (PHPUnit or Pest) covering the core business logic.
• API documentation and setup notes a future developer can follow without guesswork.
• Deployment on your hosting or cloud server, or a working setup within your existing infrastructure.

There’s no lock-in. If you later move development in-house or to another team, everything they need goes with the code.

PHP projects and related services

Examples of our Laravel work include SaaS dashboard development with Laravel, a school management system built with Laravel, and status alert pages with email and SMS notifications in Laravel. PHP also powers the Moodle learning platforms we customize, such as this customer training portal for an EHR and RCM software company.

PHP development overlaps with our broader back-end development services, which also cover Node.js and API architecture. For the interface layer, see front-end development and UI/UX design, and for ongoing updates and security patches after launch, website maintenance and support.