Honest opinions from architects who actually ship Laravel.

Laravel consulting is an engagement where senior Laravel architects review your application or proposed architecture and deliver written recommendations rather than build code. Typical consulting engagements include architecture review, code audit, performance audit, security audit, technical due diligence, and Virtual CTO. Output is a written report and a follow up working session.

Pick consulting when you need a senior opinion before committing to a direction. Before a major refactor or rewrite. Before choosing between competing architectural approaches. Before signing a development contract with another agency you want to validate. Before a Series A or B funding round where investors will run technical due diligence. When your application has performance, security, or scaling issues that the current team cannot fully diagnose. Pick development when you have already made the decisions and you need engineers to ship code.

A Laravel architecture review covers the application structure (controllers, services, repositories, domain layer), database schema and query patterns, queue and async work design, caching strategy, integration patterns, deployment and infrastructure topology, observability setup, and how the architecture will scale to the next milestone. We deliver a written report with prioritised findings (red, amber, green), a recommended improvement roadmap, and a working session to walk through the findings. Typical timeline is 2 to 4 weeks depending on application size.

A focused architecture review or code audit typically costs $2,500 to $8,000 and runs 2 to 4 weeks. A performance audit with load testing and SQL query analysis costs $4,000 to $10,000. A security audit covering OWASP Top 10, dependency scanning, and PII handling costs $5,000 to $15,000. Technical due diligence for acquisitions or funding rounds runs $8,000 to $25,000 depending on scope. Virtual CTO engagements are typically a part time retainer of $4,000 to $9,000 per month, depending on hours and decision authority. A full breakdown sits on our Laravel development cost page.

A Virtual CTO engagement is an ongoing part time retainer where a senior Laravel architect serves as your technical leadership without a full time hire. Typical responsibilities: technical strategy alignment with business goals, architecture decisions, vendor selection and oversight, hiring support for in house engineering, code review of major releases, security and compliance posture, and emergency response when production has serious issues. Suitable for startups raising a seed or Series A round, growing companies between $1M and $5M revenue, or businesses where software is part of the product but not yet large enough to justify a full time CTO.

Yes. The majority of our code audit engagements are on Laravel applications built by other agencies, freelancers, or previous internal teams. We have no skin in the game beyond delivering an honest assessment, which makes our review more useful than asking the original team to assess their own work. NDAs are signed before any review, source code stays in your repository, and findings are delivered in a written report with a recommended action plan.

Yes. Technical due diligence for acquisitions, funding rounds, or vendor selection is a regular engagement. We assess the target Laravel application's architecture quality, code health, security posture, dependency risk, scaling headroom, team capability, and the realistic cost of maintaining or extending the application. The output is a written report shareable with investors, board members, or acquiring entities. Typical engagement is 2 to 6 weeks depending on application complexity and disclosure constraints.

Yes. For specific technical questions that do not need a full audit, we offer single consulting calls (90 minutes) with a senior Laravel architect. Use cases: deciding between competing architectural approaches, evaluating a specific package or pattern, troubleshooting a tricky production issue, second opinion on a quote from another agency. Single calls are billed at a fixed rate with a follow up written summary of recommendations. Most clients move into a full audit or Virtual CTO retainer after the first call if the engagement needs deeper work.

Only if you ask. We deliberately separate consulting from development so the audit findings are independent. Many clients implement the recommendations with their own engineering team, with their existing agency, or with a different agency. Some clients move directly into a development engagement with us after the audit because they prefer continuity. Both are fine. There is no pressure to use us for the build, and the audit report is yours regardless.

NDAs are signed before any code or architecture access. Source code stays in your repository, we work with read only access. Stakeholder interviews are conducted under confidentiality. Reports are shared on encrypted channels and only with people you designate. For due diligence engagements, additional confidentiality structures (separate signed engagement letters, restricted distribution lists) are arranged as needed.