The wrong question
"Should I build my MVP in Laravel or Next.js?" is the question we get every other week. It's the wrong question.
The right one is: who's going to maintain this in six months, and what skills will they bring? Pick the stack that matches the team you can actually hire — in Nairobi, in Kampala, or remotely.
When we reach for Laravel
- The product is database-shaped: invoices, ledgers, inventory, reservations, user accounts, role-based access.
- You need server-rendered admin panels fast (Filament + Laravel is unreasonably productive).
- M-Pesa and other PSP integrations live happily in the queue-and-job model.
- The team you'll hire knows PHP — and in Kenya that's a much larger pool than people admit.
Most of our fintech work — HyipX, JetX, the FelixTech POS — is Laravel. The platform is boring in the best way.
When we reach for Next.js
- The product is interaction-shaped: dashboards with real-time charts, collaboration, AI chat UIs.
- SEO matters and we want server-side rendering with React DX.
- The frontend deserves to be its own deployable.
- We have a separate backend (Laravel, Django, or Node) that exposes a clean API.
SokoPredict's frontend, the FelixTech marketing site, codewithfelix — all Next.js.
The hybrid that wins more often than not
Laravel API + Next.js frontend. Laravel handles the boring business logic, M-Pesa, queues, the admin panel. Next.js handles the customer-facing experience. They talk over JSON.
This is what we recommend to most early-stage Kenyan SaaS founders. It's not the smallest possible stack, but it's the one with the highest ceiling.
Decide in 60 seconds
1. Database-heavy + an admin dashboard + payments? Laravel monolith. 2. Customer-facing app that needs real-time UI? Next.js + a backend. 3. Both? Laravel API + Next.js client.
That's it. The framework choice matters less than the consistency of the choice.