PHP development and modernization
Three things bring people here: something new to build in PHP, an estate that already earns money and is slow to change, or a team that needs senior PHP engineers now. We take all three, including white-label work behind an agency's brand, and we stay accountable for what ships.
01Capabilities
Four shapes of PHP work, and which one you are in
PHP work arrives here in three commercial shapes. We own the outcome, which on an existing system is legacy software modernization and on a new one is custom software development. We extend a team you already run. Or we work white-label behind an agency's brand, under a non-disclosure agreement, never in front of your client. The engineering is the same in all three. Four kinds of job account for most of it. Choosing a framework for something new is the Laravel argument; an inherited Yii2 application is the Yii2 one.
- Platforms
Subscription products with a decade of rules inside them
Long-lived SaaS platforms, including e-commerce and learning platforms. The engineering problem is changing them without breaking the customers who depend on the old behaviour. Every rule in there was added because something went wrong once.
- Upgrades
Getting off an unsupported PHP release
Moving an estate onto a supported runtime, getting dependencies back under Composer, and replacing the home-grown framework somebody wrote in 2013. An unsupported version is a security position, not only a technical one. You cannot install a patch that will not run.
- Payments
Payments, APIs, and the reconciliation between them
The real engineering is retries, and idempotency (the same request arriving twice must not charge twice), and what happens when a provider returns a partial success. Not the checkout page. We rebuilt payment processing in PHP to meet credit-card security (PCI) requirements on Sterling Test Prep's platform.
- Handovers
Code the last vendor left behind
Half-finished migrations, and systems where the original team is gone. We read the running application before we trust the handover pack. On a ten-year-old codebase the documentation describes an intention, not a deployment. This is legacy software modernization work.
02Case studies
Six PHP systems we built or took over
Six systems in production, across SaaS, healthcare, logistics, leisure and education.
See all case studies- SaaSAWS costs down 30%+ for a US B2B SaaS platformunicrew became the programming team for a B2B SaaS platform that had run for over a decade, streamlined how it used AWS and Heroku, and sped up rollouts.30%+Lower AWS costs
SaaSWaiverKing: Software Development for Waiver Form CreatorWaiverKing is a document management business serving primarily the health and fitness industries. The platform is partnered with MindBody Online, one of the largest business-systems providers for gyms and yoga studios.Weeks to hoursTime for an update to reach live
LeisureSaaS modernization for Paddle Sports Center in CaliforniaA kayaking and paddleboard rental business in the Santa Barbara area wanted one system for equipment, customers, time and billing. That system is Adventure Rental System.15-20%Increase in revenue
LogisticsCustom software for USA moving companyAn end-to-end SaaS platform for managing household moves and every business operation of a logistics company.Built from scratchAn end-to-end SaaS for household moves and the operations behind them
HealthcareCancerDocs: HIPAA compliant Healthcare Software DevelopmentDevelopment in accordance with HIPAA Security Rules within a medical project.- EducationScaling an online test-prep platform for a growing user base (Sterling Test Prep)A three-person unicrew team implemented website features and payment processing in PHP for a test-prep platform gaining users every day.
03Fit
When PHP is the wrong answer, and what we say instead
PHP runs a large share of the web, which means the question is rarely whether PHP is good. It is whether your PHP system should be modernized, rebuilt, or left alone, and whether a new system belongs in PHP at all. Here is how we answer that, including the cases where we say no.
| Your situation | What we recommend |
|---|---|
| A PHP estate that earns money and is slow to change | Modernize in placeRaise the version floor, get tests around the paths that take money, then refactor. A rewrite is usually the expensive way to buy what a refactor delivers. |
| Something new, PHP is the right family, and no framework is chosen yet | Different pageOur Laravel page. Deeper ecosystem, better documentation and an easier hiring position, which matter more over five years than any feature comparison. |
| A working application already on Yii2 | Different pageOur Yii2 page. Porting to Laravel as an opening move is rarely worth funding, and that page is honest about when it is. |
| Realtime features, websockets, or long-lived connections at volume | We argue againstFor that part, a Node.js service beside the PHP application. PHP is built to answer one request and finish, and holding thousands of open connections is not that job. |
| A transactional core several teams will maintain for a decade | We argue againstJava or .NET carry the deeper story on long-lived transactional systems. We say so even though PHP work is ours to win. |
| Old, patched, stable, and nothing is actually blocked | Leave it aloneSpend the budget where change is genuinely blocked. A modernization you cannot point at a blocked change is spending with no return. |
Scope
What we own on a PHP engagement is the modernization sequence and everything downstream of it: what gets touched first, what stays frozen, and whether the system is deployable on any given day. It also covers whether your own team can keep changing it after we stop. unicrew has been building this kind of system since 2012, with 100+ senior in-house engineers across six countries, under an ISO 27001:2022 certified information-security management system. Where the honest answer is a smaller piece of work than the one you came for, you get that answer, including when the larger piece would have been ours.
The PHP argument people bring us is usually about the language, and it is almost never the language. Modern PHP with types, a real dependency manager and a test suite is perfectly good for the systems it is running. What actually hurts is a codebase on an unsupported version, where you cannot take a security patch without losing a weekend to it. Fix the version floor before you decide whether PHP was the mistake.
Yaroslav HavrylivSenior Engineering Manager, unicrew04Delivery
The order we work in on a codebase we did not write
Inherited PHP is work we take on deliberately rather than reluctantly. Step one is what stops month three going badly, and it is the step most vendors compress to win the pitch.
- Read what actually runsThe deployed topology, the PHP and framework versions, the data model, the cron jobs and every integration. On a long-lived estate the surprise is almost always a scheduled job or a webhook nobody remembered.
- Get tests around the code that takes moneyBilling, checkout, authentication, and whatever the business cannot survive being wrong, covered before any refactor. On a codebase with thin coverage this is the difference between a modernization and an outage with a project plan attached.
- Raise the version floorRuntime, Composer dependencies and the deployment path first. An unsupported runtime blocks most library updates and leaves you unable to take security patches, which makes it the cheapest high-value thing on the list. This is the core of legacy software modernization work.
- Decide the framework question lastOnce the floor is current and the critical paths are covered, moving framework becomes an incremental business decision instead of a rewrite you fund up front. Plenty of estates never need that step at all.
05Client voices
Five clients, in their own words
They’ve been helping us grow our platform together since the beginning, from a couple hundred companies to around 2,000. Artelogic has been front and center in this process.
The goal was to replace legacy UI elements with new UI components. The new UI components already existed, key challenge was to map the existing implementations to the new ones while not losing functionality. They were super responsive and did exactly as we agreed upon. The colleague they send to us was an extremely good fit to the problem that we have described.
We’ve seen a 15-20% increase in revenue, which is through the efficiency gains and the ability to accurately track time on a permanent basis rather than just by a quarter hour or an hour. I’ve worked with a lot of development teams over the years and these guys have been the best. It’s nice to finally find a team that we can work with.
Artelogic has enabled us to develop and roll out products significantly faster than our previous service provider. The team has great knowledge of AWS and Heroku, which has helped us streamline and reduce costs. Artelogic has helped us reduce our AWS costs by 30% or more.
The quality of their coding was outstanding to our standards. Overall, their work was key for us. They were dedicated to solving our problems as a customer; their team was collaborative, listened to us, and fully engaged in our space to commit to the project.
06Stack
What sits next to PHP in these systems
Each of these has its own page, if that is the decision you are actually making.
07Questions
What people ask us before they start
Short answers, written the way we would give them on a call. If yours is not here, it is a good first message.
Yes. Our engineers join your repository, your board and your release process, as managed teams. What that does not mean is people handed over and the result left with you. An architect outside the delivery team reviews the architecture and the data model. Changes ship through the same QA practice we run on our own builds. Accountability for what ships stays with us.
Yes. Upgrading is not a precondition we impose before starting. What we will tell you plainly is what the version costs you: security patches you cannot install, libraries you cannot update, and a hiring position that gets worse every year. Raising the version floor is usually one of the first things we recommend, sequenced around your release calendar rather than used as a gate.
For anything new, Laravel. The ecosystem, the documentation and the hiring pool are all deeper, and that outweighs any feature comparison over the life of a system. If you already run Yii2, the answer is usually not to port it. A working Yii2 application with tests around it is worth more than a half-finished Laravel rewrite.
Yes, and it is normal work for us rather than an exception. We read the running system before the handover document, and we get tests around the critical paths before changing anything. Expect the first few weeks to look slower than a greenfield start. That is where the risk gets found, instead of discovered in production by a customer.
Yes. Your client keeps dealing with you, we sit under a non-disclosure agreement, and you ship the PHP as your own work. That is white-label web development, and the wider agency offer is for agencies. On PHP the usual asks are version upgrades on a platform you inherited with the client, payment and integration work, and steady delivery on a codebase you do not want to staff full-time.
A scoping call that is a technical conversation, usually with an engineer who would work on the system. If it already exists we ask for read access to the repository first, because an hour in the code is worth three describing it. You get back a written read: what we would do first, what we would not touch, and where the risk sits. Most engagements start within two to four weeks.
Three shapes, and which fits depends on how settled the scope is. Time and materials is billed hourly and quoted per project, which suits work still moving. Fixed price is outcome based and quoted per project, offered once the first read is done, because a fixed number on a system nobody has opened is a guess with a contract around it. Team extension is billed monthly per engineer.
Sitting on PHP that is slow to change?
Send us the repository and tell us where it hurts. You get an engineer's read on the sequence, including the parts we would leave exactly as they are.