Top 10 Laravel Alternatives – Which is the best?

This article will explore ten of the best Laravel alternatives. The list includes CakePHP, Angular, Slim, Django, Ruby on Rails, etc.

Laravel is outright one of the most popular PHP frameworks despite being one of the slowest available to developers right now.

It is designed to get you up and running website applications in no time, which it does with the help of a wide range of extensions, community libraries, and other tools that seamlessly integrate into the workflow. 

That said, being the most popular does not mean that Laravel is the best PHP framework for each and every project. Several benchmarks suggest that it is slower in running the web app when compared to other OOP-style PHP frameworks.

Moreover, Laravel is undeniably an opinionated framework, which might not be the best solution for certain kinds of projects, e.g., projects where you know from the get-go that you will need to replace specific parts of the frameworks with different tools.

In this post, we take a deeper look at the pros and cons of Laravel, followed by a deeper look at some of the most popular alternatives to Laravel.

If you have been wondering about using this framework for your next project, the following post regarding Laravel alternatives should help you make an informed decision.

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a free and open-source PHP web framework that provides the complete set of tools and resources required to build modern PHP applications.

It offers developers a complete ecosystem of features and compatible packages and extensions that help in streamlining the development process.

These include the Object Relational Mapper called Eloquent and the powerful command-line tool called Artisan, which allows developers to bootstrap new models, controllers, and other app components.

A significant practical advantage of Laravel is that it is written explicitly in PHP, which many developers are already familiar with and use on a daily basis.

As a result, the onboarding is less complicated, allowing developers to build the apps faster.

Advantages of Laravel

Laravel is a good framework and here are some benefits.

• Quick and Simple

As stated earlier, Laravel is written in PHP, which is a language that most web developers are already familiar with. Developer onboarding is a hassle-free process, which reduces the time needed to complete a project.

Moreover, Laravel provides a plethora of templates and extensions that deliver an amazing developer experience, reduce the overall development cost, and facilitates quicker results.

• Security

Laravel also brings in multiple security features that can be easily configured to prevent malicious attacks on web apps.

It uses the Bcrypt and Argon2 hashing algorithms, eliminating the need to save passwords in the database.

It has a robust user authentication system, which works with restricted access features to keep the data of consumers secure.

• Flexible

Opinionated frameworks like Laravel come with a myriad of built-in features and support for third-party packages, making it easy for developers to incorporate a range of features and functionalities like payment systems, social media log in, etc.

Laravel comes with extensive pre-installed authorization libraries, meaning it has the ability to create and support a variety of advanced features like password encryption and reset, etc.

Disadvantages of Laravel

• The composer is not strong

Compared to other frameworks available in the market, Laravel is considered a lightweight framework, i.e., it has lesser inbuilt support compared to heavyweights like Django and Rails.

The composer falls short compared to npm for Node.js, Ruby Gems, and pip for Python. While it can be easily solved by integrating third-party tools, these tasks can become tedious for larger projects.

• Lack of continuation between versions

Laravel has been under criticism for not providing a seamless transition between Laravel 4 and 5, leaving developers with broken applications when updating the code.

PHP platforms, in general, have suffered this issue with long-term support for older versions, leaving developers to pay extra attention when developing and updating the codebase to the newer versions.

• Upgrades may be problematic

While Laravel is easier to learn compared to other PHP frameworks, there is still a significantly steep learning curve associated with it.

It is slower in running apps, and the community support is still growing and hence not as extensive as some of the older frameworks.

Development involves heavy documentation and developers will need some experience before they are ready to build an app.

Keep reading to discover some alternatives that are similar to Laravel.

Top 10 Laravel Alternatives

Here are ten of the best Laravel alternatives.

CakePHP

CakePHP is arguably one of the biggest alternatives to Laravel and brings in multiple features that accelerate the development times.

It is an extensive and feature-rich open-source web development framework for PHP based on the Hierarchical Model View Controller (HMVC) architecture. It borrows several features from Rails, including the Convention over Configuration paradigm, built-in validation, app scaffolding, etc.

Angular

Angular is a component-based, open-source JavaScript web app framework that is developed and maintained by the Angular Team at Google.

Being a complete rewrite of its older version, Angular is a platform and framework that can be used to build single-page client applications using TypeScript and HTML, unlike Laravel, which is used primarily on the backend.

Angular’s data binding and dependency injection features eliminate the need to write redundant code every time from scratch, thereby improving development speeds and providing a quicker time to market.

Symfony

Launched in 2005, Symfony is one of the oldest PHP frameworks and essentially is a set of reusable PHP components that can be used to create fully featured web applications.

It was heavily inspired by the Spring Framework for Java and is also aimed at building robust enterprise-level applications. Symfony gives developers full control over the configuration, allowing them to customize everything in the project.

Slim

Slim is a PHP microframework that allows developers to write and deploy simple yet robust web applications and APIs.

It is ideal for rapid web app development and supports all HTTP methods, i.e., GET, PATCH, PUT, POST, DELETE corresponding to CRUD operations, making it an important part of REST API development. It contains a very handy URL structure with routers, middlewares, encrypted cookies, etc.

CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework Laravel alternatives with a very small footprint that follows the same model view controller architecture as Laravel.

It is primarily aimed at developers that need a simple yet elegant toolkit for developing fully featured web applications rapidly. CodeIgniter provides out of the box libraries to connect to databases and execute various functions like managing sessions, uploading files, sending emails, etc.

Phalcon

Arguably one of the fastest PHP frameworks ever built, Phalcon is an open-source full-stack PHP framework, written and delivered as a C extension.

This low-level architecture aims to boost the execution speed, reduce the use of resources, and handle more HTTP requests per second that its competitors. 

Laminas

Laminas Project is an open-source, object-oriented web application framework that is based in PHP 7 and has a New BSD License.

It is essentially a collection of professional packages based on PHP and provides a collection of enterprise-ready components, like dependency injection, event dispatchers, input validation, feed generation, etc.

Laminas Project can be used to develop and deploy a variety of projects, like web apps, PHP middlewares, and RESTful APIs.

Django

Django is one of the most popular full-stack Python frameworks that allow developers to build better web apps rapidly.

It was originally developed for content management systems, a functionality Laravel lacks. But since its launch in 2005, Django has grown to become widely used in a variety of projects due to its templating, database access later, automatic admin interface, automatic database generation, admin interface generation, etc.

Unlike Laravel and Ruby, Django follows the model-template-view architecture, making it easier to modify and suitable for a variety of projects.

Ruby on Rails

Rails is a full-stack web development framework written in the object-oriented programming language Ruby and follows the same model-view-controller architecture as Laravel.

Ruby on Rails has grown significantly since its launch and provides the default structures for a database, web service, and web pages. It can run on most services that support CGI and emphasizes the use of web standards like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS for user interface and JSON for data transfer.

Express.JS

Express is one of the most popular unopinionated, backend web application frameworks written in JavaScript and hosted within a Node.js built-in HTTP module.

It provides developers with a plethora of features that are primarily targeted toward improving the speed and comfort of developing a web server. It features robust routing and HTTP helpers, making it used by several popular websites like PayPal, Uber, IBM, and Fox Sports.

Conclusion

Laravel is certainly one of the most popular web frameworks available to developers right now. Since it is based on PHP, which itself is extremely popular, Laravel is easier to use and can be easily adapted for a wide range of projects. However, the final choice among Laravel alternatives rests on the developers, who need to study the exact requirements of the project before selecting the framework.

If you cannot come to a decision on your own, consider getting in touch with the experts at one of the leading app hosting companies for further assistance. They can also help you develop suitable web solutions for your upcoming projects.

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