Comparison
Laravel vs WordPress: which should you use?
WordPress and Laravel are both built with PHP, but they solve different problems. This guide explains the difference and when each one is the right choice.
The short answer
- Choose WordPress for a marketing website, blog or simple online shop that your team edits day to day.
- Choose Laravel for a web application: a SaaS product, customer portal, marketplace, booking system or internal tool with its own data, users and rules.
Many businesses use both: WordPress for the public website, and Laravel for the application customers log in to.
What each one is
WordPress is a content management system. It started as blogging software and now powers a very large share of the world's websites. You install a theme for the design and plugins for extra features, and editors manage content through a familiar admin screen.
Laravel is a framework for building custom web applications. There is no ready-made website or admin screen until a developer builds one. Instead, Laravel provides the building blocks, such as user accounts, databases, queues, payments and APIs, for developers to build exactly what the business needs.
Side by side
| WordPress | Laravel | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Content websites, blogs, simple shops | Custom applications, SaaS, portals, APIs |
| Time to launch a simple site | Days | Weeks |
| Editing content | Built in | Built to order, for example with Filament |
| Custom business logic | Possible with plugins and custom code, but can get messy | What it is designed for |
| Performance at scale | Depends heavily on theme, plugins and caching | Designed in, with queues and caching |
| Security | Mostly depends on keeping plugins updated | Depends on the application code and patching |
| Upgrades | Frequent small updates to core, themes and plugins | A major framework release every year, with two years of security fixes |
| Hiring developers | Very large pool, variable quality | Large pool of specialist PHP developers |
When WordPress is the right choice
- Your main need is pages, articles and media that marketing staff update.
- The features you need already exist as well-supported plugins.
- You want to launch quickly on a modest budget.
If that describes you, use WordPress, and spend the money you save on content and marketing.
When Laravel is the right choice
- You are building a product that customers log in to and use.
- You have business rules that plugins cannot express, such as complex pricing, approvals or scheduling.
- You need to connect several systems together, or offer an API.
- You are hitting the limits of a WordPress site that has grown into an application, with dozens of plugins and slow, fragile pages.
Moving from WordPress to Laravel
If your WordPress site has gradually become an application, you do not have to replace everything at once. Common approaches are to keep WordPress for content and move the application parts into Laravel, or to rebuild in Laravel with a Filament admin panel for editors. Our legacy modernisation service covers this kind of step-by-step migration.
Need advice?
We build with Laravel, but we will tell you honestly if WordPress is the better fit for your project. Book a free call, or read what Laravel is in more detail.
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FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is Laravel better than WordPress?
Neither is better in general. WordPress is better for content websites that non-technical staff edit. Laravel is better for custom web applications with their own data, users and business rules.
Can Laravel and WordPress work together?
Yes. A common pattern is WordPress for the marketing website and a Laravel application for the customer portal or product, sharing a domain and design.
Is Laravel more expensive than WordPress?
For a simple website, yes, because WordPress themes and plugins do most of the work. For a complex application, Laravel is often cheaper over time, because you are not fighting plugins that were never designed for what you need.
Talk to a senior Laravel engineer
Book a free 30-minute call. Tell us what you are building or what is worrying you, and we will tell you honestly what we would do, what it costs and how long it takes.