Both content management systems and PHP web development are widely popular these days. The differences are wide and huge when we must choose between one of them. We will briefly discuss both these ways of development before moving on to why choosing Laravel might be actually better.
So, let’s begin with what Laravel and WordPress are
What is Laravel?
Laravel is an iconic PHP framework of one of the most popular web development languages, PHP. PHP truly enables a new world of web development by making full use of HTML and CSS. So, you can essentially change everything what so ever when developing through the Laravel development solution. Laravel is based on PHP and helps make web development easier and smoother while keeping it as customizable as ever.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is widely divided into two parts, Wordpess.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.com is usually the choice of those who are looking forward to running a small blog and don’t know much about coding. WordPress.com also serves the large-scale business, through its excellent hosting which is included with the VIP plans.
WordPress.org is a different story altogether, you have to get the hosting on your own, and you own the website and its rights, instead of WordPress. You can customize it to any level, without any restrictions on the code or styling. This option is the most viable for medium to large scale companies, with a great hosting it will be much better than even WordPress VIP service.
Now that we have a basic idea, let us now begin with a comparison of Laravel and WordPress.
1. Ease of use
When you are at the beginning, you would be astonished by how tough it is to work with Laravel compared to WordPress.com. At the same time, WordPress will look like a breeze, you won’t even have thought about hiring a web development company. The fact that you will require a fair knowledge of Object-oriented Programming to work with Laravel stands tall. Laravel is highly customizable for ensuring you get just what you are looking for. If you aren’t going to pay at least 5000$ per month if your site grows exponentially, you will have to switch to Laravel for customization and cost-saving.
WordPress might look easy in the beginning but working with it when your project grows is a pain. It gets slow, your limited customization options payout in the worse ways possible, and the functionalities you can add squares down to nothing. The whole WordPress was never meant to be just a CMS, you can see how hard it is trying through plugins. But we need to accept the fact, over 30% of all world’s websites run on WordPress.
2. Long term viability
As we discussed in the previous point, you will need to switch or pay a lot, if your user base exceeds a million. The problem with WordPress is, it is open source, and to earn money, charges a minimum of $5000 per month if you want the VIP services. You expect you would get the most out of such kind of money right, you are absolutely wrong. The tough conditions and low customizability prevail throughout the website even if you take the VIP plan.
There are many aspects to a website when you are serving a million users, you need to take care of the smallest details. And guess what? With WordPress, you won’t be able to customize it according to your needs, or with minimum effort to say the least. Websites like Facebook and Spotify do run on it, so you may too very well run your website on it. The blazing fast speed and 24/7 support are two upsides of using WordPress VIP. Which also are very important when we consider long term viability.
Laravel on the other hand, gives you everything you need, right in its core functionalities. You may choose a hosting of your own to ensure you get the same blazing fast speed and uptime as WordPress’s. But, you either need to find a good team of developers, or a top PHP development company to make the development project smooth and scalable. You might wonder why you wouldn’t be able to do it all on your own, like with WordPress to some extent. With the extreme customizability of Laravel, comes the need to start with rock bottom, which will be a lot of work at the beginning of the project.
3. Availability of developers
You would easily find both Laravel developers and WordPress developers, but the problem would be to find the perfect ones. With WordPress, if you are aiming higher than what people usually seek, you are going to have a hard time. The thing with every developer is that they seek more to learn when they reach the ceiling, and WordPress has a ceiling too low. But however, you may always find some veterans who dived straight in and never gave up on WordPress after.
With Laravel, you will find all sorts of developers, all across domains. That is for the fact that PHP has been one of the most loved languages, and Laravel it’s the most popular framework. But, to find good developers is such a hard task, and it doesn’t get any better with Laravel developers. But of course, the number of developers available sure makes a huge difference, but there always are, PHP development companies to take charge.
4. Scalability
There is a real division of ideologies here, Laravel is, to be honest, scalable to any level whatsoever. While WordPress with its VIP program can handle 10s of millions of users with the utmost ease. The effort is to develop such a web app is more through Laravel, than to develop it through WordPress. But it doesn’t come without consequences, developing a web app through WordPress means very very few options of customizations. We believe the WordPress VIP program is just about the money, suppose you are a tech giant and your main focus is making a website with 0 downtimes that could handle millions of users, then this should be your choice.
If you are really counting on your business to serve purposes not achievable without customization, Laravel is the way to go. Also, WordPress bounds you in many ways, adding features and changing them is certainly the most important. A project like this will cost more to create in the beginning but will cost a lot less in the long term. So, in the end, there is no limit to scalability in both of these, but what remains is the level of depth you want to achieve. Think of it in a way that you can only add something special which the competition can’t when you go ahead and customize your project.
Conclusion
For very small businesses, WordPress is the go-to choice, because of its sheer simplicity. For the business that may have a chance of facing competition, the only things that will make them stand out are the level of wit they show while getting their web app developed. This simply translates to having some room for specific customizations, which WordPress web development doesn’t offer at all. Laravel will stand out as the best option to use in this kind of operation, to make your app truly stand out.
Once you cross the minimum threshold, it’s all a fair fight between Laravel and WordPress. We have already discussed how different metrics would differ when you choose either of them and how Laravel will be better. We stand in the middle, as we develop apps through both Laravel and WordPress, according to what the users demands, and what they actually need. If you are still confused, you can send us your requirements, we will recommend the best for you. We will send you a long-term plan along with a comparison of both Laravel and WordPress for your project. We wish you luck with your future endeavors.
