Laravel is one of the most popular frameworks for building web applications, and it’s our tool of choice.
It’s flexible, scalable, and fast, designed to help teams build high-quality products quickly. Whether you’re launching a new platform or evolving an existing one, Laravel gives you a strong foundation to work from.
As applications grow, more features are added, different teams or developers are contributing to the code and new systems are integrated. What started as a solid foundation can eventually evolve into a fragmented system.
Where we typically come in
At Rareloop, we’ve been working with Laravel for over 15 years, helping organisations build, improve and stabilise their applications.
We’re often brought in when a system has become business-critical, but harder to manage, or internal teams need support or a fresh perspective. By that point, the application is usually still delivering value, but it’s also carrying hidden risks or inefficiencies.
The most common issues
Outdated Laravel and PHP versions
The most common thing we see is applications running on outdated Laravel and PHP versions. Often, they’re multiple versions behind Laravel’s current release or running PHP versions that are no longer supported.
This usually happens when teams lose confidence in upgrading, due to the potential knock-on effects across the application. It gets pushed down the priority list in favour of feature work. The problem with ‘we’ll deal with it later’ is that upgrades only get harder and more expensive the longer they’re left.
Applications not supported by the latest versions will miss out on security patches and may lose performance improvements.
No real testing strategy
Another common issue we see when inheriting Laravel applications is a lack of testing strategy, coverage and automated testing. This typically means either code is tested manually (which is slow) or it’s not tested at all. As a result, bugs are fixed reactively rather than prevented proactively, increasing risk with every release. Over time, this can reduce confidence in the system and make small changes feel risky.
Learn more about testing strategies, and why it’s important here.
Poorly structured code
As applications grow, with new features, evolving requirements, multiple developers contributing, codebases can become increasingly difficult to navigate. This might show as logic spread across multiple areas, large, hard-to-follow files or unclear separation of responsibilities.
This is usually the result of coding without enough engineering. While coding focuses on getting something working in the moment, engineering is about designing systems that are structured, scalable and adaptable over time. Coding without an engineering mindset can lead to lots of short term decisions compounding, and a system that is harder to change, update and grow.
In simple terms, poor structure leads to slower development, a higher likelihood of bugs, and longer onboarding times for new developers. Instead of supporting progress the codebase starts to slow you down.
Inconsistent coding patterns and standards
This is particularly common in applications that have had multiple developers or teams contribute to the system over time.
Without clear standards or tooling in place, inconsistency can creep into your application, such as:
- Different coding styles across the project
- Inconsistent naming conventions
- Varying approaches to solving similar problems
When this happens, your developers might need to spend more time simply understanding the code, rather than improving it. It also makes reviewing new features more challenging as the lack of consistency creates additional noise during the quality assurance process.
Poor documentation (or none at all)
Most projects that come to us can improve on their documentation. We often see applications lacking README, onboarding guidance or explanation of how the system is structured. This just makes it slower to get going, to onboard new developers and harder to maintain and evolve the system.
Ownership and access gap
We sometimes find businesses don’t own the code repository, have limited access to hosting or critical third-party tools, or the knowledge is concentrated with one person or supplier. This is more common than you’d expect, and it creates unnecessary risk. If access is lost, or relationships change, your business can be left exposed.
Not sure what issues your system has?
We’ve created a simple Software Health Checklist to help you spot these issues early, without needing to read a single line of code.
