Freelance Laravel developer for startups and growing businesses.

It depends on scope far more than technology. As rough ballparks (not a quote): a focused internal tool or simple portal is often in the low five figures, a first version of a SaaS product commonly lands somewhere between £15k and £60k, and a fuller business platform can run to £50k–£150k or more. After a short discovery conversation I’ll give you a realistic range, and I’m upfront if an off-the-shelf product would serve you better.

A focused first version often takes two to four months from kickoff, depending on scope and how quickly decisions are made. Because I release in small increments, you’ll see working software within the first few weeks and can steer as we go.

It depends on my current commitments, because I take on a small number of clients at a time. If I’m the right fit, I’ll tell you honestly when I could start, usually within a few weeks, and I won’t over-promise to win the work.

You deal directly with the senior engineer who writes the code, decisions are quick and more of your budget turns into working software. For bigger builds I bring in trusted specialists, chosen for your project, and you still deal with me directly. An agency is better only when you need a large team working in parallel from day one. For focused products, upgrades and ongoing technical leadership, one senior lead is often faster and better value.

It’s a fair question and the honest answer is to make the risk small. Your code lives in your own repository and hosting accounts, it’s covered by automated tests and it’s documented, so any competent Laravel developer could pick it up. For critical systems we can also agree a support arrangement and a handover plan.

Yes, it’s a common request. I usually start with a short technical audit so we both know what we’re inheriting, then agree a plan to stabilise it, add tests around the risky parts and move forward. You don’t need to have the original developer’s cooperation to get started, though it helps.

Yes. Old Laravel and PHP versions stop receiving security fixes, which becomes a real risk over time. I upgrade in staged steps with tests in place, so the site stays up and you can see progress. Sometimes a rebuild is genuinely better, and if so I’ll show you why.

Both. Startups usually want an MVP built quickly and sensibly. Established businesses more often want internal systems, portals, integrations and upgrades. The common thread is that they want a senior person who explains things clearly.

Whichever suits the project. I reach for Inertia with Vue when speed and a single codebase matter, a Laravel API with Nuxt when public pages, SEO or a future mobile app matter, and plain Blade for simple, content-led or back-office work. I’ll explain the trade-offs in plain English before we commit.

Features are covered by automated tests (Pest or PHPUnit) as they’re built, changes are reviewed and released to a staging site first, and production errors are monitored with Sentry. The aim is that releases are boring, which is exactly what you want.

I set up automated deployments and sensible hosting on providers such as AWS, DigitalOcean or Google Cloud, using CI pipelines like GitHub Actions or Envoyer. Everything is in your accounts, so you’re never locked in to me.

Yes. Everything I build for you belongs to you, in your own repository and hosting accounts, with documentation so another developer could take it on. I’m happy to sign an NDA before we talk specifics.

Yes. Typical examples are document processing, search, summarisation and assistants that answer from your own data, built with sensible safeguards. If you’re not sure where AI would help, start with an AI consulting conversation.

Yes. I regularly provide senior Laravel capacity to agencies, white-label and under NDA, to your standards and timelines.

I’m in London, on UK time, and happy to meet in person. Most work happens remotely, so I work with teams across the UK and Europe too.

We agree a written scope and price (fixed, or a day rate) before work starts, and I invoice through my company, KCM Group Ltd. Fixed-price projects are paid in stages tied to deliverables, and retainers are billed monthly.