SaaS Application Development with Laravel, PHP & AI
I am a Texas-based SaaS developer building MVPs, subscription applications, dashboards, and multitenant systems on the Laravel 13 + Livewire 4 + PHP 8.4 stack. 25 years in computer science, U.S. Army veteran, single-principal delivery. I have shipped multiple SaaS products solo — the work is engineered for a one-engineer maintenance footprint, not "built once, abandoned when the founder hires a team".
Who I help
Founders building their first SaaS who need a senior who has shipped subscription products end-to-end — not just "we can build whatever you scope". Indie hackers and bootstrappers who need the build done by a senior on a defined budget. Existing companies launching a SaaS adjacent to their core business who need a Laravel-shaped product and a single accountable engineer. Founders inheriting a half-finished SaaS codebase from a prior team who need a senior to finish it.
Services I offer
- SaaS MVPs. The minimum viable product done right — subscriptions billed correctly, auth that does not get hacked in week one, a deployment story that lets you ship on day one and Tuesday at noon.
- Subscription apps. Stripe-backed billing with proper webhook handling, plan upgrades / downgrades / proration, trial periods, dunning, and customer-portal access to invoices.
- Multitenant systems. Row-level tenancy, schema-per-tenant, or database-per-tenant — the architecture matches the security and scale profile, not a default.
- SaaS dashboards. Admin views, customer-facing dashboards, real-time data with Livewire 4, role-based access policies that survive an SOC 2 review.
- AI-enabled SaaS. When the SaaS competitive differentiator is AI — RAG-backed answers, LLM-drafted content, custom self-models for sensitive verticals.
Benefits
- One engineer, end to end. Discovery, architecture, build, deploy, payments, monitoring — same principal across all of it. No "the senior closed the contract, the junior writes the code" agency move.
- Production-ready, not demo-ware. Pest 4 test suite, Pint formatting, CI pipeline that blocks merges on red, structured logging, error monitoring, deployment automation. The day-one operating story is the operating story.
- You own the SaaS. Source code, deployment infrastructure, runbook handed over. Any senior Laravel engineer can pick it up. No vendor lock-in to a low-code SaaS-builder platform.
- Maintainable by one engineer. The stack is the version-current Laravel 13 + Livewire 4 + Tailwind 4 surface that lets a solo founder maintain the product after launch — not a microservice constellation that needs a team to keep alive.
Related technologies
Laravel 13 + Livewire 4 + Flux 2 + Tailwind 4 for the application surface. PHP 8.4 for the backend. PostgreSQL or MariaDB. Laravel Cashier or Stripe SDK for billing. Sanctum or Fortify for auth (with two-factor where the buyer needs it). Laravel queues + Horizon for background work. Pest 4 for the test suite. Forge, Cloudflare, and DigitalOcean / Hetzner / AWS for hosting depending on scale and budget.
How a SaaS engagement runs
- Scoping call (free). What you are building, who the customer is, what the differentiator is, what the budget shape looks like.
- Written specification (1–3 weeks, paid). Data model, multitenancy strategy, billing strategy, MVP feature cut, milestone plan, deploy plan.
- Two-week sprints with working demos. Pest tests written alongside features. CI pipeline in place from sprint one.
- Launch + handover. Deployed SaaS, test suite, README runbook, deployment automation, 30-day post-launch support window.
How long does a SaaS MVP take to build?
A focused SaaS MVP — one product, one subscription tier, the core workflow that proves the value — usually ships in 8–16 weeks. A SaaS with multitenant architecture, multiple subscription tiers, and an admin surface usually ships in 16–24 weeks. The written specification produces a milestone plan with dates before anything is signed.
Can the SaaS handle multiple tenants?
Yes — row-level tenancy, schema-per-tenant, or database-per-tenant. The choice depends on the security profile (do tenants share infrastructure?), the scale profile (how many tenants? how large?), and the compliance profile (does the buyer need physical data isolation per tenant?). The scoping call works through the matrix.
Will my SaaS scale?
For the volume most early-stage SaaS sees, yes — Laravel on a single Forge-managed server handles surprising amounts of traffic. For the volume large SaaS sees, the answer is "the architecture supports horizontal scale, and you will replace it before you outgrow it". The honest engineering answer: build for the next 10x, not the next 1000x.
Do you integrate AI into SaaS products?
Yes — this is where SaaS development overlaps the <a href="/ai-developer">AI developer</a> work. RAG-backed answers, LLM-drafted content, classification, summarization, custom self-models — whatever the competitive differentiator needs. The honest matrix for build / buy / wrap is on the <a href="/custom-ai-automation-developer">custom AI automation</a> page.
What happens after launch?
A 30-day post-launch support window covers the immediate stabilization period. Beyond that, ongoing engagements run as a monthly retainer (covering feature additions, monitoring response, vendor API changes) or as a project-based engagement for each new milestone.
Laravel Developer for Hire
The framework-specific entry point.
AI Developer for Hire
For AI-enabled SaaS products.
Custom Software Development
The broader page for internal business systems (vs. external SaaS products).
API Integration Services
Every SaaS needs integrations — payments, email, analytics.
Scope This Engagement
Single principal, plan first, working code on every checkpoint.
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